The Sporting News

Unique view of the history of baseball, through the eyes and pages of The Sporting News, a weekly publication created in 1886. This book charts the story of baseball's growth, discovery, perseverance, and accomplishment. Begins with modern baseball in 1901, the year the American League began play.

Profiles of 100 of the greatest baseball players of all time.

Presents a homer-by-homer review of the St. Louis Cardinal slugger's single-season home run record.

Completely updated for 1999, this is the official rule book used by major league umpires as well as other professional and amateur baseball organizations. When an arbiter is needed to settle disputes regarding baseball rules, this is the book to consult.

The first owner of the Santurce Crabbers, Pedrin Zorrilla, was a visionary, with many Negro League and big league contacts (he signed up Josh Gibson, Satchel Paige, Roy Campanella, Ray Dandridge and Leon Day in the first decade). Santurce was the most successful winter league team of the 1950s, with three Caribbean Series titles. Roberto Clemente, Ruben Gomez, Willie Mays, Willard Brown and Bob Thurman played for the Crabbers. Tom Lasorda used to pitch for them. Santurce set up working agreements with the Giants, Orioles, Dodgers and Astros, among other teams. Earl Weaver and Frank Robinson were team managers; several Hall of Famers were early-career Crabbers. Orlando Cepeda and Tony (Tany) Perez played their entire winter league careers with Santurce.

Major League Baseball today would be unrecognizable without the large number of Latin American players and managers filling its ranks. Their strong influence on the sport can trace its beginnings to professional leagues established south of the border and in the Caribbean nations in the 1940s. This narrative history of Latin American baseball leagues during the 1940s and 1950s provides an in-depth, year-by-year chronicle of seasonal leagues in the seven primary baseball-playing areas in the region: Mexico, Nicaragua, Panama, Venezuela, Cuba, the Dominican Republic, and Puerto Rico. The success of these leagues, and their often acrimonious competition with U.S. Organized Baseball, eventually ushered in a new era of contract concessions from owners and general labor advancements for players that forever changed the game.

Ford Frick is best known as the baseball commissioner who put the "asterisk" next to Roger Maris's record. But his tenure as commissioner carried the game through pivotal changes--television, continued integration, West Coast expansion and labor unrest. During those 14 years, and 17 more as National League president, he witnessed baseball history from the perspective of a man who began as a sportswriter. This biography of Frick, whose tenure sparked lively debate about the commissioner's role, provides a detailed narrative of his career and the events and characters of mid-20th century baseball.