Our Game - Medium

Stereoviews that may be new to you; by Mark RuckerJoe DiMaggio in 1936; Novelview card

Let’s not start this demonstration by exploring why collectors are as they are. That is a topic for psychologists and therapists, though I will admit that collecting is a compulsion.

I have the collecting gene, and I cannot get rid of it. In case you have never heard of it, the collect...

The birth of a big idea — MLB itself — backdatedGrand Central Hotel, Broadway and West 3rd, birthplace of Major League Baseball

Recently I wrote about the All-Star Game in Philadelphia and Major League Baseball’s season-long partnership with America250, focusing on the beginnings of baseball in the city, going back to the Olympic Ball Club of 1833. But MLB’s first game also to...

“The Catch,” plus how we measure defenseThe glove that made The Catch, courtesy Baseball Hall of Fame and Library of Congress

On September 29, 1954 the Cleveland Indians played the New York Giants at the home of the latter in the first game of an incredible World Series sweep. The Indians had won an American League record 111 games, topping the Yankees, who won 103, their high...

The ballpark, from the Elysian Fields to Shibe Park and beyondThe Polo Grounds fences were so distant that bullpens were on the field and in play

Remember your first time in a big-league ballpark? How dark and cool and secret it felt to prowl the caverns under the grandstand and, when you left the ramp to climb the aisle, that dazzling first view of the great green field?

S...

An exchange with me from October 16–17, 2008Baseball the way it was, from The American Boy’s Book of Sports and Games, 1864

Craig B. Waff provided an invaluable service to Protoball research before his sudden demise in 2012. His game accounts have been added to since, but his ambition — fully seizing upon an idea had in an odd hour — and his thoroughness remain unmatched; see:...