Every MLB baseball needs to be rubbed with a special kind of mud, provided by one New Jersey family.

Every baseball used by the MLB only lasts about 7 pitches before it's discarded.

Before 1920, during the Deadball Era, a single baseball was used throughout a Major League game, leading to a notoriously dirty style of play.

Some say baseball's drug problem goes back to the late 1800s

At age 32, pitcher James “Pud” Galvin was feeling tired and decided to take "the Brown-Séquard elixir," which contained a testicular fluid from dogs and guinea pigs, believed to invigorate tired bodies. It might've worked: Galvin pitched a two-hit shutout the next day.

Major League Baseball, explained

Major League Baseball is America’s oldest professional sports league. Alongside triumphs, the league has faced scandals, including drug abuse and steroid use, shaping its path over the decades. Today, MLB embraces new rules, international talent, and a growing connection to legalized sports betting.

The 2026 MLB season is the first to allow players to challenge umpires' calls on balls and strikes.

A history of the rare, chaotic moments when MLB batters charge the pitcher on the mound

They typically occur when a pitcher has slung a pitch a little too close to the batter—though the exact causes vary, from quick tempers to longstanding grudges. No definitive account of these infrequent but highly visible incidents has existed, so sportswriter Jon Bois compiled data on 264 such moments between 1950 and 2025. The resulting 23-minute video explores the rich narratives leading to these charged events.

Inside MLB's robo-umping experiment

Human umpires call roughly 94% of pitches right overall, but performance reduces on borderline pitches in high-leverage moments, the calls that shape game outcomes most. A professor and historian analyze early experiments with the full "robot ump" system that helped shape MLB's decision to implement a compromise "challenge" system.

Statcast, MLB's sophisticated real-time data analytics system, runs machine learning models in the 23-second gap between every pitch.

MLB pitchers were charged with benefiting from sports betting

In November 2025, two pitchers for the Cleveland Guardians were charged with coordinating with sports bettors to enrich themselves and others. In many instances, they shared the kinds of pitches they would throw at specific points in the game. Bettors then placed money on those actions.

Fourteen ways to make baseball cool again

Baseball, while commonly known as America's pastime, gets a bit of a bad rap for being long, slow, and boring. Here are fourteen fun ideas to make the sport more interesting to combat dwindling attendance.

How Shohei Ohtani made baseball fun again

To rise to the level of Major League Baseball in recent decades, a player needs to become a specialist in at least one of the sport's many skills: hitting, pitching, throwing, running, fielding. For decades, this specialization has made a so-called...

A Bay Area lab was supplying MLB players with steroids

The Bay Area Laboratory Co-operative, also known as BALCO, began as a modest vitamin shop, but by the 1990s it was at the center of a doping scheme that rocked Major League Baseball and other professional sports.

MLB 2023 rules changes were the most dramatic alterations in decades, drastically speeding up the game.

How baseball shaped Black America during Reconstruction

A cornerstone of the budding Black culture following the Civil War was baseball, with several clubs springing up in Black neighborhoods and leaders like Frederick Douglass cheering on the players, including his son, who played for a team in Washington. This detailed history of the early Black leagues unpacks how the game enhanced the upwardly mobile community—and why that fact led to the segregation of what would become Major League Baseball.

MLB teams can travel with roughly 12,000 pounds of gear and luggage.

World Cup venues spend months cultivating their fields and choosing their grass based on the cities' climates.

Each July 1, six-time Major League Baseball All-Star Bobby Bonilla gets $1.19M from the New York Mets, thanks to a 25-year-long deferred payment agreement.

Why professional tennis players are so picky about balls before serving

Just as swimmers shave their bodies before competitions to swim faster, experiments show that tighter, less fluffy balls experience less drag forces when moving through the air and thus produce faster serves at the cost of less control. Players may select a fuzzier ball in scenarios that call for safer, more cautious play.

A visual guide to identifying baseball's pitches, from common pitches like 'fastball' and the 'change up' to specialty types, like 'cutter' and 'slurve.'

100 moments that shaped baseball history

Published in 2018 by baseball historian Jacob Kornhauser, this list examines the defining moments throughout more than a century of play on the field, from Pittsburgh Pirates pitcher Dock Ellis purportedly throwing a no-hitter while on acid to Jackie Robinson breaking the color barrier.

Minor leaguers once unionized for better pay, housing, and medical care

For decades, Minor League baseball players endured overcrowded housing, indifferent medical care, and all-night bus rides for a chance to make it to “The Show.” And they did it for as little as $4,800 a year.

The first MLB All-Star Game was designed by a sports journalist who believed the spectacle would boost baseball's reputation during the Great Depression.

Some athletes warm up with equipment from other sports

Baseball superstar Shohei Ohtani uses a cricket bat; his teammate Yoshinobu Yamamoto throws a javelin. Quarterback CJ Stroud shoots free throws. The reasons are partially physical (it's good to exercise different parts of your body) and partially mental (it's nice to take the pressure off with someone else's game).

Explore some of the best baseball books, including Michael Lewis' influential 'Moneyball' and Bob Uecker's autobiography 'Catcher in the Wry.'

The evolution of the baseball bat

Torpedo bats may be the latest, most powerful kind of baseball bat, but the instrument's history is long. This Smithsonian resource traces the bat's evolution from handmade objects forged by the players to mass-produced marvels of physics designed by companies like Louisville Slugger. Along the way, you'll see some interesting takes on the form, including bats referred to as "mushrooms" and "bananas."

Designing the pitches for the FIFA World Cup 2026 took turfgrass scientists about eight years, as they sought to create identical conditions for indoor and outdoor fields across North America at various altitudes and climates.

The MLB consist of 30 teams

The league is home to the National and American leagues, which include 780 active players. The MLB season is the longest in professional sports, with 162 games played during the regular season, typically from April through September, ending with the World Series championship in October.

'Take Me Out to the Ballgame,' the song that's now a 7th inning tradition at every MLB game, was inspired by a billboard advertisement.

A sophisticated data analysis found that stadiums with roofs or in cities that regularly have sunny skies are the easiest for outfielders to play in.

Ballpark nachos—the messy but delicious combo of liquid cheese, pickled jalapenos, and tortilla chips—were invented for the Texas Rangers.

Sidearm pitchers—who throw the ball at an odd angle, sometimes very close to the ground—are a rarity in modern baseball, which often makes them more difficult for batters to hit.

Measuring which nation has the most baseball fans

It's known as America's pastime, but just how devoted are Americans to baseball? FiveThirtyEight outlines several metrics indicating Puerto Rico may have the most devoted fanbase. See how they used an adjusted metric to rank the world's biggest...

Tennis balls get their bounce from pressurized nitrogen inside vulcanized rubber, made from heating natural rubber with sulfur to create molecular links that harden the material.

A 1930s card game birthed modern fantasy sports

"National Pastime" used the statistics of real Major League Baseball players to determine a winner, creating the template for the modern fantasy sports model.

Long before Major League Baseball began allowing instant replay for balls and strikes, an umpire reluctantly used the technology to determine whether a hit was a home run, a move that inadvertently ushered in a new era for the sport.

'Out in left field' is an idiom used to describe an eccentric person, and some researchers believe it likely originated at a minor league baseball park in Massachusetts that had an unusual outfield.