Most baseball historians rate Buck Leonard as the best first baseman in negro leagues history, and while he was called “The Black Lou Gehrig,” he may not have been quite on that level. Still, Buck was an Eddie Murray-type hitter, renowned as a clutch hitter. Legendary negro league pitcher Leon Day said that he would have rather faced Josh Gibson than Leonard with the game on the line. R321-Helmar, card #40 featuring Homestead Grays teammates Buck Leonard, Sam Bankhead, Vic Harris, and George Scales. Grew up poor in Tobacco country Leonard was born as Walter Fenner Leonard, which is a perfectly ..read more

Card #536 of the T206-Helmar series, featuring Stuffy McInnis. What would the $100,000 infield be worth today? Inflation would make the Philadelphia A’s famed deadball infield foursome’s value of $100,000 worth about $3 million today. But in real dollars, the greatest infield in baseball would probably command more like $60 million in 2022. The $100,000 Infield consisted of Philadelphia first baseman Stuffy McInnis, second baseman Eddie Collins, shortstop Jack Barry, and third baseman Frank “Home Run” Baker. The group was a big reason Connie Mack’s A’s won pennants in 1910, 1911, 1913, and 191 ..read more

Helmar This Great Game, Card #59 featuring Bobby Avila Mexico’s population is more than double that of Venezuela, Cuba, the Dominican Republic, and Puerto Rico combined. Yet those four Latin American countries have sent far more players to the major leagues than Mexico. Why? The answer is cultural When was baseball introduced to Mexico? When Was Baseball Introduced to Mexico? Historians figure that baseball was introduced to Mexico somewhere around 1840, most likely from visiting Cubans. But Mexico didn’t latch on to America’s National Pastime as eagerly as other nations. First, Mexico shares ..read more

Old Judge Cigarette card featuring Fred Dunlap, 1889. Photo courtesy The Metropolitan Museum of Art. What was baseball like in the 1880s? Or I should say “base ball,” which is what they called it back in the 19th century. In many ways, “base ball” in the Victorian Age was similar to today’s game. If you time traveled back to May of 1880, when Fred Dunlap made his National League debut, you’d see a lot of familiar things, but some aspects of the game would be radically different. A paying customer at a game in 1880 (what they called a “crank”), would see lots of guys running around a field in b ..read more

R318-Helmar Hey-Batter! Lefty Grove #252 The Sporting News announced the deal on December 21, 1933: “The news of Grove’s purchase came literally as a bombshell to most Boston baseball followers …” Which goes to show you that even literary folks back in the 1930s didn’t know what the word “literally” meant. No, there weren’t any bombs or firestorms in Boston when Lefty Grove became a member of the Red Sox at the annual winter meetings in 1933. But his acquisition was a big deal for a franchise that hadn’t sniffed a pennant in more than a decade. The purchase of Grove (still commonly referred to ..read more

You wouldn’t think that Babe Ruth and his teammates would need luck on their side. Not when the New York Yankees, spearheaded by the Babe’s prodigious slugging, earned the moniker “Murderers’ Row” in the 1920s. But even the Yankees and their mighty home run champion liked to have lady luck on their side. That’s what led to the presence of little Eddie Bennett, at the birth of the greatest dynasty in sports history, of a sympathetic figure who earned a living for being good luck. Babe Ruth at the Polo Grounds in 1921. Yankee Batboy Eddie Bennett is over Ruth’s right shoulder, sitting on the ben ..read more

Helmar E145 featuring Ty Cobb, and Helmar Oasis of Cy Morgan. There’s a tendency by baseball historians to focus on three things when it comes to Ty Cobb: His .367 career batting average Ty’s famous temper and alleged dirty play “Only one person from baseball attended his funeral” Working in reverse, the myths surrounding Cobb have been disputed by myself and other writers and baseball historians in recent years. There was not “just one” representative of baseball who attended Cobb’s funeral. The fact is, Ty’s family had a fairly private service in Georgia, and did not extend invitations to ..read more

Walter Johnson Colgan’s Chips Helmar Baseball Card Any baseball historian worth a bag of Cracker Jack will tell you that Walter Johnson is the greatest pitcher in the history of the game. Johnson threw the ball harder than anyone before him, and his fastball was so intimidating that it placed fear in the minds of opposing batters. The story goes that Duffy Lewis, the fine Boston outfielder, was at the plate facing Johnson during a game and fell behind quickly 0-and-2, hopelessly watching fast pitches blaze into the mitt of the catcher. Lewis whirled and made his way to the dugout. The home pla ..read more

No one ever thought to call Charles Vance “The Orient Express,” but seeing as how he entered the world in Orient, Iowa, a tiny little community that sprung up to accommodate the burgeoning railroad industry in the late 19th century, it may have been appropriate. Why “Express”? Not because of any fast-charging locomotive: Vance was a purveyor of speedballs that he propelled from a right shoulder that was gifted with amazing strength and elasticity. Charles tossed the baseball hard enough in dusty Iowa to get himself a professional contract when he was only 21 years old. That was in 1912, but th ..read more

Today (December 18th), Ty Cobb would have been 135 years old. Somehow it seems like if he were alive, he would still manage to hit .300. Cobb played 24 seasons, and when he retired he held most of the records for batting and base stealing. His marks for hits, runs, runs batted in, and stolen bases were legendary, and it took decades for most of them to be surpassed. Cobb’s iconic .367 career batting average remains the standard bearer in major league baseball. Rarely does a hitter even reach that mark in a single season. No batter in the last 50 years has retired with even a batting average as ..read more