Major League Baseball is the highest-level professional baseball organization in America, and the oldest professional sports league in the US, dating back to the Civil War. It generates the second-highest revenue among the Big Four US sports organizations and features the longest season in professional sports.
Hours of research by our editors, distilled into minutes of clarity.
This visual analysis of baseball lineups from 1970 through 2024 identifies a few fascinating trends, including the altered role of the lead-off batter and the metaphorical death of the clean-up spot. Thanks to an abundance of data and some sleek design, this doesn't read like a standard data-driven presentation about sabermetrics. Instead, you're able to click through iconic batters' stats like you would flipping over a pack of baseball cards.
Few baseball stars are more infamous than "Shoeless Joe" Jackson, one of the game's greatest hitters. Jackson was part of the Chicago White Sox team (notoriously dubbed the "Black Sox") accused of fixing the 1919 World Series. This resource breaks down the criminal trial that investigated those allegations. Curiously, Jackson and his teammates were acquitted, but Major League Baseball commissioner Judge Kenesaw Mountain Landis still banned them from the league for life.
A pitch timer, limits on defensive shifts, and bigger bases are coming to Major League Baseball in 2023.
“Sebring Parlor Base Ball,” a tabletop board game in which players flicked a coin as if they were hitters is believed to be the first game that allowed players to imagine themselves as athletes without actually taking part in physical activities.
Tommy John surgery allows baseball pitchers to revitalize damaged elbows through a tendon replacement. This history explains how Dr. Frank Jobe first attempted the procedure in 1974 with Tommy John, a Los Angeles Dodgers pitcher who'd been experiencing severe pain that many believed to be permanent. After the surgery, John would win a National League Championship and play for 14 more years.
"I swing big, with everything I've got. I hit big or I miss big. I like to live as big as I can."
In the spring of 1984, a reporter at Sports Illustrated answered a call on the newsroom tip line claiming player/manager Pete Rose was gambling on baseball games. That March, the magazine published the bombshell report that led Major League Baseball to investigate and then ban Rose for life.
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."
The song is often played at the start of amateur and professional sports games, a tradition that historians say became popular during World War I. During the seventh-inning stretch of the first game of the 1918 World Series, a band started an impromptu version. Red Sox player Fred Thomas, on leave from the Navy, turned to salute the flag, and the crowd followed his lead.
The team had not won a World Series for nearly 100 years—while their rivals, the Yankees, had won 26. The Dominican pitcher joined the club in 1997 and helped lead the team to reverse the curse.
Art, music, sports, entertainment, movies, and many other subjects—these elements define who we are as a society and how we express ourselves as a culture. Take a deep dive into the topics shaping our shared norms, values, institutions, and more.