What's New:

Steve’s book on 1921 to be Published by University of Nebraska Press

Steve has collaborated on a book with baseball historian Lyle Spatz, which will be published by the University of Nebraska Press, tentatively scheduled to appear in the Spring 2010. 1921: Babe Ruth, John McGraw, and the Battle for Baseball Supremacy in New York focuses on a dramatic and historic season, when the New York Yankees won their first pennant and then faced the New York Giants in the first all-New York World Series.

Read more...

SABR National Convention June 26-29

SABR (Society for American Baseball Research) 2008 National Convention June 26-29 at the Renaissance Cleveland Hotel in Cleveland, Ohio

Steve will be presenting a paper at the convention on Thursday afternoon, June 26, on legendary Cleveland Indians’ player-manager Tris Speaker.

Details on Steve’s Paper…

Articles on Jack (John Picus) Quinn Appear in NINE: A Journal of Baseball History and Culture

The Spring 2008 issue of NINE (Volume 16, No. 2) reveals that the first baseball player of note born in the European region of what is now the Czech and Slovak Republics was not Elmer Valo, who began his major-league career in 1940, but Jack Quinn, who began his in 1909.

Details on the Jack Quinn articles...

Award Winner

Steve’s article, “Matty and the Browns: A Window onto the AL-NL War of 1901-1902,” appeared in the Spring 2006 issue of NINE: A Journal of Baseball History and Culture (Vol. 14, No. 2). It examines the story of pitching great Christy Mathewson’s signing with the St. Louis Browns and how the Browns’ visionary owner Robert Lee Hedges gave him up in the peace settlement of January 1903. The article has received the 2007 SABR-McFarland Award. Read more...

SABR National Convention July 25-29 at the Adams-Mark Hotel St. Louis

Steve will be presenting a paper at the convention. (He’s tentatively scheduled for 3:30, Thurs. July 26.) . More Details...

Jack Quinn Update (Find out more about Jack Quinn...)

Two papers were presented at the March 2007 NINE conference in Tucson, and both are tentatively scheduled to be published in the Spring 2008 issue of NINE: A Journal of Baseball History & Culture. Read more...

Steve’s article has just been published in the Baseball Research Journal, No. 35. The in-depth piece looks at the New York-Boston trades of the late Teens and early 1920s, in which the Yankees acquired enormous pitching talent from the Red Sox, including two future Hall of Famers, Waite Hoyt and Herb Pennock. Read more...

Deadball Stars of the American League

At long last, the companion book to SABR’s Deadball Stars of the National League (2004) has arrived. The American League book, also published by Brassey’s and available on-line and in bookstores, looks at more than 140 AL stars from the start of the league in 1903 until the end of what is known as the Deadball Era, in 1919. The book includes more than 200 photographs and captures the National Pastime in the early 20 th century.

Steve has contributed three of the biographies, of colorful and important baseball figures. They are: Read more...

Steve will be presenting a paper on the Methuselah of the Mound, Jack (John Picus) Quinn, whose career spanned more than three decades, including 23 years in the majors...

Read more about Steve's paper and also about the conference...
Find out more about Jack Quinn... 

Rain Check: Baseball in the Pacific Northwest

This is a collection of more than 170 photos and two dozen essays, which tell the 120-year history of baseball in the Pacific Northwest. The stories range chronologically from the origins of the professional game in the region in the 1890s through the account of the 2001 season of the Seattle Mariners and focus on baseball in Seattle, Portland, Spokane, Tacoma, and Vancouver, British Columbia.

Steve Steinberg contributed to Rain Check, with the article “Spitballing to the Hall of Fame.” It covers the years of 1913 to 1915, when future Hall-of-Fame spitball pitcher Stan Coveleski played minor league ball in the Pacific Northwest. It captures baseball in that time period and includes many of the colorful players “Covey” crossed paths with (Read more).

Baseball Experts on What Might have Been: Play it Again

What if Ty Cobb and Shoeless Joe Jackson had stood side by side in Cleveland’s outfield? What if integration had taken place in the major leagues before 1947? Who would have won the World Series had a strike not shortened the 1994 season? In this compilation of fantasy scenarios, the history of baseball from 1869 to the controversial 2003 playoffs is literally rewritten by fifty journalists, historians, authors and former baseball players.

Play it Again: Baseball Experts on What Might have Been , a book on how baseball history could have been different, has just been released by McFarland. Steve Steinberg joins a group of experts, more than 35 historians and journalists, including Bill James, Alan Schwarz, Rob Neyer, Maury Allen, Gary Gillette, Mike Sowell, and Bill Deane, as well as former players, including Bobby Doerr, Bob Feller, Brooks Robinson, Carl Erskine, Bill Lee and Ron Cey (Read more).

New York Yankees Official 2006 Yearbook:

The New York Yankees OFFICIAL 2006 YEARBOOK is out, and Steve’s feature ”Unsung Heroes” is in it. Throughout Yankees’ history, their sluggers have earned most of the headlines, yet their pitchers have been vital for the team’s ultimate success each season. Steve looks at the 1920s, the decade of Ruth and Gehrig, and discusses thirteen pitchers who meant so much to the team those years. From Hall-of-Famers Waite Hoyt and Herb Pennock to Urban Shocker and Carl Mays.

Order the New York Yankees OFFICIAL 2006 YEARBOOK for $25 from 1-800-GO-YANKS . It’s more than 500 pages of features on the 2006 Yankees and the Bomber teams of the past. There are other articles on Yankees history by Maury Allen, Marty Appel, Bob Klapisch, Keith Olbermann and John Thorn.

The New York Yankees OFFICIAL 2005 YEARBOOK is also still available at 1-800-GO-YANKS . That Annual includes “Heralding Hug,” Steve’s in-depth look at Miller Huggins , the Yankees’ great manager of the 1920s.

NINE: A Journal of Baseball History and Culture:

Steve's feature article, MATTY AND THE BROWNS: A WINDOW ONTO THE AL-NL WAR (1901-1902), has just been published in the Spring 2006 issue of Nine: A Journal of Baseball History and Culture, Vol. 14, No. 2. Read more...

What's New in Baseball History (see Spitball section under Baseball History):

In the early 20 th century, the games greatest spitballers, Ed Walsh and Jack Chesbro—as well as the greatest number of spitballers—were both American Leaguers. This led Chicago sportswriter Charlie Dryden to write:

“The American League consists of Ban Johnson ( AL president], the ‘spit ball’ and the Wabash Railroad.”

Alfred Spink, The National Game, 1910:

The Spitballers’ Database has been updated and now includes almost 100 early 20 th century pitchers.

Speaking Out against the Spitball includes a new 1917 quote from the president of the Western League. His remarkable insight talks about the rationale for banning the pitch, as well as the physics that makes the ball so difficult to hit.

Famous Pitchers Dabbling in the Spitter has a feature about Christy Mathewson’s taking up the pitch near the end of his career, including his own words. Taken together with the details about Walter Johnson and his spitter, this article shows just how much the spitball penetrated pitching circles in the Deadball Era (1901-1919).

Read about Philadelphia Athletics’ pitching great Jack Coombs and his spitball, or, more accurately, his “bloodball.”

Spitball Features include the story of how Larry Cheney use the spitter to resurrect his career and to lead Brooklyn to the 1916 pennant. There’s also a story on Clark Griffith, who used to scuff baseball as a pitcher in the 19 th century and who led the fight against the spitter and other “trick pitchers” as a team owner in the 29 th century.

19 th Century Spitballers Revisited adds more supporting evidence that the spitter was used well before the early 1900s.

What's New in Features (see below):

• The first time a team made a radical defensive switch against a hitter. The year was 1920, and the hitter was Babe Ruth
• The major league game with only 36 fans in attendance
• A 1913 discussion of the dangers of being hit by a pitch and baseball’s good fortune that no major leaguer had been killed by a pitch. [While a batter was killed in 1920, Ray Chapman remains the only big leaguer to be killed on a ballfield
• The rookie pitcher who beat the mighty 1927 Yankees five times that season!
• Grantland Rice’s thoughts on pitching greatness, written in the spring of 1915. It complements Damon Runyon’s discussion on the subject, written just a month earlier and posted previously on this web site (under FEATURES)

Now that the St. Louis Cardinals have reached the 2004 World Series, interest in the rich history of this great baseball city is both timely and relevant. BASEBALL IN ST. LOUIS 1900-1925 makes a great Holiday gift for fans of baseball history.

The Start of a World Series City

JUST PUBLISHED! About the Book | Author Purchase this book from: Arcadia Publishing, Amazon, or Barnes & Noble Read what people are saying about this book!

New Book:

Steve Steinberg’s new book, Baseball in St. Louis, 1900-1925, is being published by Arcadia (www.arcadiapublishing.com) this summer. The book consists of 180 photographs—many never before published or last seen decades ago—and 40,000 words of text. It conveys a good understanding of this rich and important period.

Steve has extensive background on baseball in St. Louis during this time period. He has published a number of articles and lectured on the subject. His two books, one on Miller Huggins (now being shopped with publishers) and one on spitball pitcher Urban Shocker (will be completed later in 2004), both have strong St. Louis angles.

Steve was excited to do this book, which helps fill in a gap, a period of St. Louis baseball on which little has been written. With the Cardinals’ first World Series appearance (and championship) in 1926, many books use that as a starting point. Recently, Jon David Cash published a book on St. Louis baseball of the late 19th century, Before They were Cardinals (Univ. of Missouri Press, 2002). Steve focuses on an oft-overlooked time period and links the glory years of the 1880s with those that began in 1926 with Baseball in St. Louis, 1900-1925.

This was a rich period for the National Pastime in the Mound City. The St. Louis Browns (American League) and the St. Louis Cardinals (National League) competed for the area’s support, with the Browns usually having the upper hand. While these more than 50 seasons did not provide St. Louis with a pennant, they were a vital, vibrant part of baseball and St. Louis history:

• Some of the game’s greatest players ever performed here. George Sisler and Rogers Hornsby are but two of twenty-one future Hall-of-Famers (and many more near Hall-of-Famers) who appeared in St. Louis uniforms during this time period.
• Some of the game’s most colorful players, including Dave Danforth, Heinie Mueller, Bugs Raymond, Slim Sallee, Urban Shocker, and Rube Waddell, played here.
• Some fine teams fell just short of the pennant in St. Louis, including the Browns of 1902, 1908, and 1922, and the Cardinals of 1921-22. The best team of this time period was the 1922 Browns, who finished just one game behind the New York Yankees, in one of the best pennant races ever.
• The St. Louis Browns, often thought of as baseball’s hapless losers, were actually the more popular and successful St. Louis ballclub in the early 20th century.
• Important baseball executives and owners, from the legendary Branch Rickey to the remarkable Helene Britton, major league baseball’s first female owner and president (owner of the Cardinals from 1911 to 1917.
• The forefront of the rise of the American League in 1901-1902 and the Federal League wars of 1914-1915, when St. Louis had a team in all three leagues
• The seeds of the Cardinals’ success of the next quarter century, with systems (i.e., the farm system) and players who would carry the team forward to a number of pennants.
• Many members of the 1926, 1928, 1930, and 1931 pennant winners
  were contributors to the Cardinals of the early 1920s.
• Negro League ball and stars like Cool Papa Bell and Oscar Charleston were an important part of St. Louis baseball.

Baseball in St. Louis, 1900-1925, an exciting and important era, comes alive with revealing images and informative commentary from a city that has been passionate about its baseball for more than a century.

New Articles:

Steve Steinberg recently published “The Spitball and the End of the Deadball Era,” a comprehensive look at the mysterious pitch that was banned in 1920, for all but 17 pitchers—including Urban Shocker and future Hall-of-Famers Burleigh Grimes and Stan Coveleski—who were “grandfathered” and allowed to continue throwing the “wet one.” This work focuses on the seminal year of 1920 and the forces that brought one era to an end and gave rise to the Lively Ball Era. The article appeared in The National Pastime, Volume 23.

Steve Steinberg’s article, “George Grantham Bain, Pioneer of News Photography,” a look at the father of photojournalism and a number of his baseball images from the early 20th century, appears this summer in The National Pastime, volume 24.

The National Pastime is a publication of The Society for American Baseball Research, free to members. It can be ordered from the University of Nebraska Press, www.nebraskapress.unl.edu or (800) 755-1105.