Updated 4.15.26: Scroll to the end of this post and see the running list of people, places and things so far assigned to numbers 00 to 99.
What if we told you the history of Southern California sports in the Greater Los Angeles area can be explained in unique bios, stories and essays that are attached to the 101 different numbers worn on the front, back, or elsewhere on an athlete’s uniform?
Let’s say this covers, perhaps, the last 101 years.
Take a jersey number like 32. So many who have worn it represent all the different aspects of SoCal history. Look here: Koufax, O.J., Magic, Walton, Marcus, Quickie.
Quick — who might generate the most compelling story for anyone who has worn No. 32?
It’s probably not anyone you might think, even if given 32 guesses.
This isn’t so much about who “owns” the number, or who wore it best. Those discussions over a few beers have their own amusement element and entertainment value. Ultimately, they come up to personal preference, nostalgic entrancement, and the first one of these athletes you may have encountered between the age of 6 and 11.
We will start by defining SoCal territory as what starts below the 35°45′ latitude line, stops short of our friends in San Diego, and unites the counties of Los Angeles, Orange, Riverside, San Bernardino, Ventura, San Luis Obispo and Santa Barbara as kissing cousins. All are freeway adjacent, used to traverse the landscape fluidly. Otherwise, this becomes unremittingly sized up as a misunderstood gaggle of scattershot suburbs, all in search of a cohesive landmass.
Sports helps shape its boundaries, and its communities and neighborhoods.
Los Angeles, by itself, one of the most mythologized cities in the world, blurring a public idea of the city that blends fact, fiction and Hollywood; desert, beach and snow-capped mountains; landslides, earthquakes and floods. We all have some identify from it, via the prism of a traffic jam, a yoga session or plastic surgery. From high-priced villas to a beleaguered homeless population that can’t be blamed for just wanting to enjoy a warm day on the sidewalk tent not far from a local outreach facility.
We weather this storm as we can.
Modified over the years and attributed most notably to Dorothy Park, Aldous Huxley, H.L. Menken or Alexander Woollcott — maybe even Snoop Dogg — SoCal is far more fascinating than 88 surburbs in search of city. Plant that idea in its fertile desert soil, often in sorely need of watering, and it takes root.
But it’s not all that watered down.
“Los Angeles is a city built upon amnesia and denial,” Tom Curren wrote for the Los Angeles Times in 2025, helping to introduce a multi-faceted project trying to predict the future success, or failure, of the region.
“Graded and paved, bought and sold, it bears little likeness to Tovaangar, the home for the first people who, for thousands of years, walked its valleys and chaparral-clad basins and paddled its broad shorelines.
“Eventually, they were overtaken, falling silent to the noisy ambitions of foreigners and settlers who set about transforming this vast floodplain with imported water and orchards and homes. Branding their creation paradise, they never questioned their improbable aspirations.
“Instead, they mythologized their works, borrowing from the past what was convenient and discarding the rest, so the picture of the Golden State in the early 20th century was romantic enough to persuade more and more Easterners to board the trains that crossed the deserts to arrive in this transformed pueblo.”
Sports fits mightily into this ambiguous narrative that has blossomed into folklore as a geographical punchline for those outside the civic dysfunction of it all and dispassionate for clarification.
Sports shaped the region’s history — from the 1932 Summer Olympics, to the 1984 Summer Olympics, to the 2028 Summer Olympics. To baseball’s World Series championship teams jammed into the football arena that would host the first Super Bowl, Coliseums and Forums and do-it-yourself home repair-sponsored mini stadiums.
“In an area larger than Rhode Island and Delaware combined, there are 88 municipalities, countless unincorporated areas, and almost 10 million residents, many of whom aren’t entirely sure what jurisdiction they’re in at any given moment,” Conor Friedersdorf once wrote for The Atlantic in 2011.
You be the judge.
Expand your idea of the boundaries we want to cover here. And figure in all its numerology.
“Ford Frick: Baseball’s Third Commissioner And His Four Decades of Shaping the Game”
The author: Dave Bohmer The details: University of Nebraska Press, 416 pages, $39.95, released April 1, ’26 The links: The publisher, Bookshop.org
“A League of His Own: A. G. Spalding and The Business of Baseball”
The author: Mark A. Stein The details: Lyons Press, 352 pages, $39.95; released Jan. 6, ’26 The links: The publisher, the author, Bookshop.org
A review in 90 feet or less:
Americans, by and large, bi or straight, show an unreasonable hesitancy in electing a woman to hold the role as president of the United States.
Given the option of a credible female over an autocratic, nihilistic, narcissistic mad man, recent history disappointingly shows that if was a “perfect storm” aberration the first time, there was an unfathomable repeat performance to come. Along with claims that “the people have spoken” because of a general abstention of the majority in their “lesser of two evils” argument.
Major League Baseball if primed, if it wants, to change some of that kind of generalized thinking about America’s pastime — or what’s left of it.
When Rob Manfred decides he’s longer manning up in the role of commissioner as his term ends in 2029 — and he says he’ll be done by then — a top-tier dame is not only waiting in the wings, but openly campaigning.
Leave it to Jane Leavy (pronounced LEV-y) to come up with the most no-nonsense manifesto — womanifesto? — of how and why baseball can be great again with her late fall 2025 book, “Make Me Commissioner: I Know What’s Wrong with Baseball and How to Fit It” (Grand Central Publishing/Hachette, $32.50 — although stupidly available on Amazon.com for 77 percent off, so please don’t chase it down there).
The Long Island broadsider, who has already pounded out critically acclaimed books about the life and times of Sandy Koufax, Mickey Mantle and Babe Ruth, aligns her campaign promises in an aggressive way that is also as much about her journey to find the truth than it is reinforcing simple beliefs about how the game has strayed from its sweet spot.
American would love Leavy and her appropriately salty language. The game would be better for her. It already is just having her manifesto published.
New Yorker magazine, 2018
Leavy may not be reasonably labeled a Luddite, but she lovingly spitballs idea to take away as much technology as possible for the sake of restoring more humanity. Whatever brings back joy and romance that’s been buried in data-driven digbats. Her idea of “three true outcomes” is finding room for more afternoon games, better access for kids in the ballpark and reversing the epidemic of pitching injuries with better guidelines in place. Along the way, she saddles up next to like-minded thinkers — Dave Roberts, Dusty Baker, Bill James and Janie Marie Smith — to add their voices.
“I know you should be commissioner,” former big-league chucker Bill “Spaceman” Lee says at one point. “You’re not for the players. You’re not for the owners. You’re for the game.”
Leavy blushes, and carries on.
Maybe she can also reverse this whole thing involved how and why Athletics moved out of Oakland, escaped to Sacramento, and await a new ballpark in Vegas to be finished.
(And, by the way, pro baseball does already have a female commissioner. Google the name Justine Siegal if you have a moment. That’s “gal” at the end, not … never mind.)
For us, Leavy’s book leads us back to a late morning in November of 2018 when we sat at the café in the Beverly Wilshire and talked with her about Ruth (her latest book topic) and what it might have been for the Bambino to navigate today’s world of the media — both legacy and social.
After all, we knew writers in Ruth’s days protected him. That included Ford Frick, a scribe-turned-PR-man-turned-commissioner whose own ghostwriting for Ruth allowed him to appear in major newspapers across the country.
“It was complete collusion,” said Leavy of the media covering Ruth. “There is a quote from Marshall Hunt (a New York Daily News reporter and Ruth friend on many tawdry excursions) when he was ordered by (managing editor) Phil Payne to ask about a paternity suit brought against Ruth, and Hunt didn’t want to do it. He had this telling quote: ‘We’re doing so much with him?’ Why would you want to kill your access. He may have reported things I’m sure Ruth didn’t like. But overall nobody was looking to rock that boat.”
Especially someone like Frick.
At Metropolitan Stadium in Minneapolis, Minn., Baseball Commissioner Ford Frick doffs his hat in farewell gesture as he visits playing field a few hours before final game of 1965 World Series between Minnesota Twins and Los Angeles Dodgers. This was Frick’s last Series as game’s ruler, since he retires before another campaign begins. (Getty Images)
Before he was installed as baseball’s third commissioner in 1951, coming after the convenience of a 17-year run as president of the National League, the alliterative alluringly Ford C. Frick was all about shaping narratives.
The Hall of Fame plaque for Ford Frick clearly labels him first as a “sportswriter – sportscaster” who apparently happened to also be a museum founder, NL president and commissioner of the entire sport.
A sportswriter and high school English teacher in Colorado, Frick was invited to join the staff of the New York American in 1922. Amidst his time covering the Yankees, he penned “Babe Ruth’s Own Book of Baseball” in 1928. His ability to do the talking got him into radio broadcasting, doing the first sports-only show for WOR. Then he got into public relations.
Doors opened for him, including, at age 39, the chance to become the National League president in 1934. Mapping that time past the year he left as commissioner in 1965, the game’s achievements included influence:
== Expansion to the West Coast by the Dodgers and Giants.
== Further expansion of league in major cities, including the creation of the Los Angeles Angels, as well as the New York Mets.
== The idea of a Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, N.Y., with the Baseball Writers’ Association of America behind the voting process.
== Helping the Brooklyn Dodgers avoid bankruptcy by finding new ownership after the ’37 season. After all, Frick did the same for the Phillies, Reds and Braves as teams struggled during the Great Depression.
== Creation of the Cy Young Award for pitchers.
Dave Bohmer, photographed as he was doing research at the Baseball Hall of Fame Library on the Frick book, featured in a story by the Hall. (Milo Stewart Jr./Baseball Hall of Fame).
Why is it, then, that Frick so often didn’t think enough to shape his own life story to reflect the role he had in all those things?
Because the idea that Frick was just a do-nothing commissioners a false narrative, Dave Bohmer concludes.
After retiring in 2014 from 20 years of teaching at his alma mater of DePauw University, the liberal arts institute west of Indianapolis, Bohmer began an earnest pursuit to find more fact than fiction about Frick, who also attended DePauw.
Bohmer’s jouney included going to the Baseball Hall of Fame’s Giamatti Research Center in 2015.
“Frick is viewed as sort of a do-nothing owners’ Commissioner and baseball just sort of passed by during that era,” Bohmer was already telling a Baseball Hall of Fame interviewer in ’15, as he paid his way for a two-week visit to the library to research. “I think the game changed a lot, from expansion to franchise movement to the draft. In many ways, I think he’s a much more effective Commissioner than he’s given credit for.”
Bohmer, whose research has finally found a publishing vehicle, unapologetically calls his book “revisionist history.”
Ford Frick, right, as president of the National League, with Chicago Cubs manager Charlie Grimm as they watch an exhibition game on Catalina Island in 1935. (National Baseball Hall of Fame Library archives)
Part of the Frick friction stems from criticism by his predecessor, Happy Chandler. More was perpetuated by rebel owner Bill Veeck, especially in his 1981 biography. Frick caught even more flack for how he was played in Billy Crystal’s 2001 film, “61*” which dramatized the Roger Maris pursuit of Ruth’s single-season home run in 1961. Because that was the first MLB season that expanded to 162 games, Frick tried to take a stance that any homers hit past the 60 that Ruth had in the 154-game season of 1927 would warrant its own separate record-book listing. The general feeling was that Frick had a conflict of interest since Ruth was his friend, and he didn’t want to see the name so easily erased by a rounding-up scheduling error.
Bohmer, who actually started research on this project in 2007, leans into his background as both an academic, historian and working in business management to fully appreciate what Frick accomplished with his means and methods. Bohmer’s years of interviews purposefully includes Buzzie Bavasi, the former Brooklyn and Los Angeles Dodgers’ general manager who considered Frick a surrogate father. Bohmer was able to talk to Bavasi before his death at 93 in 2008, as well as two of Frick’s grandchildren and a daughter-in-law.
Frick, who retired as commissioner at age 71 and died 12 years later in 1978, was remembered in the New York Times as “unflappable” during the time he presided “over a revolutionary era in baseball.” Frick’s reign included having to step in and threaten St. Louis Cardinals players with banishment if they went through on a strike to protest playing against Dodgers’ newcomer Jackie Robinson in 1947.
An artist’s portrait of Ford C. Frick is in a place of prominence at the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum.
“If you do this,” Frick warned them, “you are through, and I don’t care if it wrecks the league for 10 years. You cannot do this because this is America.”
The Washington Post lede for Frick’s obit noted his contributions “elevated him to the game’s Hall of Fame,” with a 1970 induction. It’s also noteworthy that the Hall’s annual honoree of the broadcasting award is named after him, starting with honoring Red Barber and Mel Allen in 1978.
Bohmer concedes that Frick was “not encumbered with ego … was unbothered by criticism … rarely cared who got credit for successes in the game … was fair and competent.”
And now, Frick’s fair game for Bohmer to bestow until the Hall’s library.
A 2019 Topps Revolution of the Game Baseball card of Albert Spalding
Albert Goodwill Spalding, meanwhile, was adept at story shaping and creating as well, long before Ford.
A pioneer pro baseball pitcher/outfielder/first baseman (1871 to 1877, the first to reach 200 career wins), co-creator of the National League, a club owner, a sporting goods tycoon, a promoter of the game’s global reach and politician before dying in San Diego in 1950, Spalding’s goodwill for the game goes beyond his middle name and Hall of Fame plaque.
In “A League of His Own,” Stein gets to make a case for Spalding as the “Citizen Kane” of creating baseball’s canopy. Framed as the first comprehensive biography of Spalding — “including his compulsion to put his name on every ball, racquet, discus, bicycle, football, bat, hat, and mask his company produced” — there’s also the truth that he devoted himself to proving baseball a uniquely American game, including the promotion of the myth of its creation by Abner Doubleday.
A first-edition copy of the book, available for $350 on abebooks.com
Stein can also expand more on “America’s National Game,” which Spalding wrote and first published in 1911 as a way to give his own testament of the game’s history and narrative. Or, the gospel according to Albert, as it has been framed, coming out shortly before his death.
To which, a Wall Street Journal review of Spaulding leans into how “the main problem with ‘A League of His Own’ is Mr. Stein’s willingness to take at face value Spalding’s claims in his 1911 book, ‘America’s National Game,’ which systematically inflates Spalding’s role in events. The implicit claim in Mr. Stein’s title is that the National League was somehow Spalding’s own league in a way it wasn’t anyone else’s. … More concerning is the pervasive sloppiness. There are errors, contradictions and claims that either don’t match the citations intended to support them or lack citations entirely. … ‘A League of His Own’ is a valuable but flawed contribution. The book is a comprehensive narrative biography … but fails to keep its stories straight or put its subject’s life in context. Readers unfamiliar with 19th-century baseball will be misled while those familiar with early ball will be annoyed.”
This didn’t necessarily annoy us enough to stop reading after a certain point. It’s just that we weren’t entirely interested in finding out more about Spalding.
We were compelled to go to the end, on page 244, to read what the Sporting News wrote about Spalding upon his death: “When the grim reaper took Albert G. Spalding, he removed forever from the domain of sport an heroic figure, and from the National game the greatest man, in some respects, it ever produced — one who wrote his name large and indelibly upon every page of its history.”
And box.
How these go in the scorebook:
If these two add up to too many pages and too many ideas to consume over a period of time, it would be to your best interest to track down Leavy’s book instead.
You’ll feel more empowered.
More to followup:
== Charlie Bevis’ scholarly “Beavis Baseball Reseach” review — based on a 1-5 scale of how he feels the bio covered the subject’s life’s work, his character, how it was researched and how it was written, gives the Spalding project a L4C4R3W2 rating, noting it is “an update to Peter Levine’s biography of Spalding published 40 years ago in 1985, which was an impressive effort for its time when the literary sub-genre of baseball biography was still in its infancy.”
Meanwhile, Bevis gives the Frick project a L4C2R4W1 rating, noting that “research is Bohmer’s strength. … the minimal attention to character assessment is disappointing. In his writing style, Bohmer uses just limited storytelling skill and scant styling to engage readers, preferring a near-total focus on the historian’s mode of fact presentation.” Bohmer himself notes that there has been a 2016 bio on Frick done by John Carvalho as well as Frick’s 1973 memoir.
== A SABR bio of Frick by Warren Corbett at this link.
== A SABR bio of Spaulding by Bill McMahon at this link. And Stein’s visit with the Casey Stengel New York City SABR chapter in October of 2025:
The sudden death of the retired Angels’ outfielder at age 53 on April 16 at his home in Newport Beach from pancreatic issues was a real cause to pause.
GA gave us more than just general admission access to witness him as the only player to wear a team jersey spanning the California (1994-96), Anaheim (1997-2004) and revived Los Angeles (2005-2008) branding names. Which, coupled with his own rather common-man name, made it easier for him to slip under the national radar despite holding that unique spot in the franchise’s history.
The team’s current all-time leader in games played (2,013), hits (2,368), at bats (7,989), total bases (3,743), doubles (489), RBIs (1,292) and sacrifice flies (76), Anderson is momentary now tied with Mike Trout with most extra-base hits (796), second to Trout in runs scored (1,024), third in batting average (.290, behind Vlad Guerrero’s .319 and Rod Carew’s .314), and, if this comes as a surprise, he’s also third in home runs (272, behind Trout and Tim Salmon).
Garret Anderson carries the World Series trophy after the Game 7 win in Anaheim on Oct. 27, 2002. (Don Emmert/Getty Images)
One other key thing perhaps overlooked when those writing about his legacy covered his “graceful and enduring” 17-season MLB career:
Anderson was the first player to ever win a World Series title, a Home Run Derby title and an All Star Game MVP within a one-year span.
Not so trivial.
In the 2002 World Series, ending with so far the only title in the Angels’ 66-year history, Anderson’s bases-clearing double in the third inning of Game 7 gave the Angels a cushion to ride over San Francisco.
In the 2002 playoffs, covering 16 games, he was 21 for 70 (.300) with two homers, 13 RBIs and 11 runs scored.
In the 2023 Home Run Derby, Anderson proved he belonged — he did have a career-best homer total for a season with 35 in 2000, a year when he only walked 24 times. Anderson outlasted Albert Pujols in the final round to win it, using efficiency to get the job done.
“I don’t look at myself as a home-run hitter, but I know I’m capable of hitting some balls out of the park, and it’s just another platform to go out and show America what I can do,’‘ Anderson said after the eight-man, three-round competition. “That swing I used is not a swing I try to use during the season. It was just strictly for trying to hit the ball over the fence. During the season, mentally and physically, I don’t do that. I look for mistakes and try to hit them hard.”
In the 2003 All Star Game, won by the American League, 7-6, Anderson went 3-for-4 with a two-run homer in the sixth inning and key double off Eric Gagne in the eighth to lead a comeback. That was after he led off the fourth inning with a single against Kerry Wood. Anderson, hitting.316 with 22 homers and 78 RBIs at the All-Star break, wasn’t supposed to be in the starting lineup. Added to the AL roster as a reserve, he was inserted to start and bat fifth by manager Mike Scoiscia in place of the injured Manny Ramirez.
That ’03 All-Star game included Pujols, Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens, CC Sabathia, Todd Helton, Scott Rolen, Andruw Jones, Billy Wagner, John Smoltz, Edgar Martinez, Ichiro Suzuki and Alex Rodriguez.
A fourth-round pick by the Angels out of Kennedy High in Granada Hills in 1990, where he was also a high-scoring guard on the basketball team, Anderson was second in the AL Rookie of the Year voting in 1995 and made two more All-Star teams. His best statistical season was during that 2002 title run — 29 homers, a lead-best 56 doubles, fourth in the AL MVP voting.
“He didn’t really mind being misunderstood. For one thing it gave him room to take care of business. There was no way he’d be a team spokesman. Too presumptuous. But the closer people got to him, the more they heard his incongruously throaty laugh and heard his wide range of opinions. He was a cheery skeptic about the analytics “revolution” and never abandoned his method of swinging hard at the first thing he liked, yet striking out only 13.3 percent of the time. Fifty-one percent of his batted balls went up the middle, just like the coaches tell you.”
Former Los Angeles Times sports editor Bill Dwyre added that of the career stats Anderson had that really mattered, it was obvious he came up to hit. He never drew more than 38 walks in a season and never struck out more than 100 times.
He also noted that when Anderson retired and was eligible for the Baseball Hall of Fame consideration in 2016, he got just one vote. That represented 0.2% of the total. It also meant that he wasn’t even on the ballot the next year.
What an injustice. But not a surprise.
While Anderson was added to the Angels Hall of Fame in 2016, his No. 16 has yet to be retired.
It belongs up on the right-field wall, next to Jim Fregosi’s No. 11, Rod Carew’s No. 29, Nolan Ryan’s No. 30, Jimmie Reese’s No. 50, the No. 26 they’ve assigned to original owner Gene Autry, plus the No. 42 that’s there in all of baseball to represent Jackie Robinson.
GA, No. 16. Time to come through in the clutch now. Calling all Angels.
As hosts of that 2003 All Star game, the Chicago White Sox marked the 70th anniversary of the first gathering of the game’s elite in their previous home stadium of Comiskey Park.
The twist on that ’03 game — the winning team secured home-field advantage for the league once the World Series came around. That random rule came into effect because the ’02 All-Star Game in Milwaukee was its own shitshow, ending in a 7-7 tie and commissioner Bud Selig was left befuddled. (Anderson also played in that All-Star game, going 0-for-4 but driving in a run with a seventh-inning groundout and he moved a potential go-ahead run into scoring position with an 11th inning ground out).
Bud Selig, at the end of the 11th inning with the All Star Game tied 7-7, and no where to go to finish the fiasco.
That rule giving away World Series home field was erased n 2016 after a Collective Bargaining Agreement stipulated that the team with the best regular-season record deserved that edge, not a silly exhibition game result.
But then there was that bizarre ending to the 2025 All Star Game in Atlanta. Imagine Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig and Jimmy Foxx involved in “swing-off” to declare the winner. Well, that would be somewhat interesting. Instead, we’re still not sure how it’s recorded for posterity’s sake and it resulted in an MLB reporter covering that cockamamy mess with no choice but to create this accurate lede:
ATLANTA – The fly ball off Jonathan Aranda’s bat stayed in the park, and the National Leaguers assembled in front of the home dugout jumped for joy. No All-Star Game had ever ended like this. No MLB game had. It was the sort of ending ordinarily reserved for Wiffle ball wonderment or our most bonkers baseball dreams.
When the NL blew a 6-0 lead and, the game was tied 6-6 after nine innings, manager Dave Roberts had to wrangle a group of players from his then-active roster to enter a six-man “swing-off” with whomever the AL had pre-designated from a list it drew up before the game in case of emergency.
Then the NL out-homered the AL, 4-3, in what the MLB story called a “tater-driven tiebreaker.” That allowed Kyle Schwarber to power up a three-for-three swing performance (since he was still around to do so after most of the stars and starters already checked out by then) and he claimed the Ted Williams All-Star Game MVP Award Presented by Chevrolet.
The event was bizarre enough in that it was the first All-Star Game to feature the automated ball-strike challenge system, which resulted in three erroneous calls getting overturned. Now it could be shown to be useful, perhaps normalized and rushed into use for the 2026 season.
Turning back the clock to 1933 isn’t easy, or necessarily making baseball great again.
The Philadelphia Phillies’ Chuck Klein watches a first-inning single, along with Boston Red Sox catcher Rick Ferrel, during the 1933 All-Star Game in Chicago. (Getty Images)
That inaugural event happened just a few years after the stock market crash, four months after Franklin D. Roosevelt took office, and Chicago’s most famous citizen, Al Capone, had just been shipped off to federal prison. Prohibition was months away from being repealed by the 21st Amendment.
That allows Randall Sullivan to begin his new book about all that factored into the staging of that inaugural All-Star affair — he barely mentions the game itself until perhaps page 100, and it isn’t fully broken down until Chapter 43 on page 354 — with this:
“The first Major League Baseball All-Star game likely never would have been played if not for a five-foot, one-inch Italian immigrant bricklayer with a bad stomach named Guiseppe Zangara, who on the morning after Valentine’s Day in 1933 decided to proceed with his plan to assassinate the new United States president-elect.”
An event such as this had been discussed for decades, but never came to fruition. How did finally happen at the worst part of the Depression seems as perhaps unfathomable as it was needed.
Not exactly how the AL and NL lineups were when the game started, but that’s because the printer needed an earlier deadline to get the programs finished.
In concert with the World’s Fair happening in the Windy City, attractions were needed to bring attention and amusement. Baseball and the Hollywood film industry seemed to be the only two sectors of the American economy “to sail through the country’s financial crisis unscathed,” Sullivan notes on page 118, the start of Chapter 17. Ruth, who in 1922 received a whopping $52,000 paycheck, had seen it go up as high as $80,000 a year in 1930. It was scaled back in the economic aftermath to $75,000 for ’32, to $52,000 by ’33 and $35,000 in ’34 — all still the greatest salaries in the game. It all seemed trivial as Ruth had demanded “$60,000 or I’ll quit” in the spring training of ’32 and went off to mope.
The story of Chicago Tribune sports editor Arch Ward creating this event is, of course, covered, but not belabored as it has been in previous chronicling of the event. But the fact this was conceived as a one-off event, and is now closing in on 90 years of happening, shows its staying power despite all else watered down around its concept in modern-era, short-attention span theater.
Babe Ruth swings and misses during at at-bat in the 1933 All-Star Game at Chicago’s Comiskey Park.
Ruth is remembered best in the 4-2 AL win for hitting a third-inning homer to deep right field off the St. Louis Cardinals’ Bill Hallahan, who didn’t make it out of that inning without getting an out. In a game that took just a few ticks more than two hours, Sullivan notes that “looking back, the narrative of The Game of the Century is largely anticlimactic after Babe’s home run. It may have seemed that way to fans even back in 1933, but almost certainly not to the players. With six innings left, the American League’s 3-0 lead was to them far more insurmountable.”
Even more interesting, the game changed home plate umpires, with Bill Klem moving in after doing first base the first half and taking an ear-full of grief from NL manager John McGraw, who had retired the year before from the New York Giants.
The starting infield of the National League team included the Philadelphia Phillies’ Dick Bartell at shortstop, plus St. Louis Cardinals’ future Hall of Famer Frankie Frisch at second base, and Pepper Martin at third base.
Someone we had never come across before reading this book — General Crowder, a Washington Senators pitcher who won an AL-best 26 games in 1932 and 24 more in ’33 — came on in relief for the home team and gave up the NL’s only two run during his stint over the fourth, fifth and sixth innings. He got neither the win (that was starter Lefty Gomez) nor the save (that was reliever Lefty Grove). Crowder did get the NL’s Lefty O’Doul to ground out starting the sixth inning.
The AL’s Lou Gehrig, of course, played the entire game at first base. But that meant no appearance by the Philadelphia A’s Jimmy Foxx, even as A’s manager Connie Mack was leading the AL squad.
What’s just as intriguing for Sullivan to cover starts with Chapter 33, where he begins:
“Dizzy Dean, Rogers Hornsby and Mel Ott weren’t the only great players left out of the Game of the Century. So were Satchel Paige, Mule Suttles, Cool Papa Bell and the incomparable Oscar Charleston.”
Segregation, despite no rule against Black players on MLB rosters at the time. As the newspapers across the country were compiling votes for this contest in Chicago, the Negro Leagues had their own stars to consider, and players like Ruth and Gehrig had competed with and against them during previous barnstorming. It’s also worth noting that at this moment, Sullivan writes that “sympatheic biographies describe Franklin Roosevelt’s positions on civil rights for African Americans as ‘cautious’ or ‘complex.’ He made no real efforts to break through segregation until he was in his third term as president.”
As a result, the Negro League had its own East-West All-Star Game, organized by Pittsburgh Crawfords owner Gus Greenlee — also held at Comiskey Park later that summer. Half as many fans turned out, but it still happened. Thank goodness.
How it goes in the scorebook:
Complete-game contextual victory.
Not a surprise considering Oregon-based journalist Sullivan has been a contributing editor to Rolling Stone magazine for more than 20 years.
== After the 2026 MLB All-Star Game is scheduled for Philadelphia to be part of America’s 250th anniversary celebration, the 2027 MLB All Star Game will be back in Chicago — this time, at Wrigley Field.
“Baseball’s Most Outrageous Promotions: From Wedlock and Headlock Day to Disco Demolition Night”
The author: Joseph Natalicchio The details: McFarland, 254 pages, $29.95, released Dec. 4, ‘26 The links:The publisher, Bookshop.org
A review in 90 feet or less:
This isn’t the planned Chicago White Sox “Pope Hat Day” promotion. Just a suggestion.
In March 1966, John Lennon made his famously toxic comment that he considered The Beatles to be “more popular than Jesus.” It came from a restless give-and-take he had with a British reporter about the influence pop culture had on modern youth versus organized religion.
The backlash to something taken a bit out of context resulted in Lennon having to wear it. Where he stood in the U.K., it made more sense. And having experienced the U.S. Beatlemania, it had more context.
Sixty years later, as we sit in the spring of 2026, what if we were to suggest — Pope Leo XIV is more popular than the Beatles.
Talk amongst yourselves. And consider the role baseball has played in measuring all of this over the year with its promotional muscle.
The Chicago White Sox have fully embraced the ideology of how the man known in his previous religious life as Robert Prevost had a devout allegiance to the South Siders, because that’s where he grew up before ascending to the throne of St. Peter.
Earlier this month the team created a “Pope Hat” giveaway to take place on Aug. 11 against the Cincinnati Reds at their home park of Rate/Guaranteed Rate/U.S. Cellular/Comiskey Park Re-Do. Initially, it was supposed to be a theme-night giveaway, capped at around 1,500 who bought tickets in specific sections. The promo quickly went viral. Now it’s a “Pope hats for the masses” promotion.
Since Leo’s election last year, the Sox’s ballpark held a Catholic Mass in his honor. The team put up a mural honoring him near where he once watched a World Series game in 2005, a virtual video that went viral from researchers at Fox Sports, who covered that game.
This Pope hat event doesn’t seem to be all that outrageous, let alone bordering on anything considered blasphemous.
Not from a franchise once owned by the immortal Wild Bill Veeck Jr.
Veeck’s chief promotional rival during his time was Charles O. Finley.
And consider what Charlie O. tried to pull as his Kansas City Athletics were floundering in the American League during the ’64 season and sought relief from Lennon and friends.
Finley had the idea that, since the Beatles were already traversing the states that summer, why not hang out for a day in K.C.? The group’s landmark North America concert tour the previous February caused quite a sensation. They were now prepared to return and do 32 shows in 24 cities over 31 days from August to September.
The Kansas City Times, Aug. 29, 1964
The Fab Five’s manager, Brian Epstein, turned down Finley’s initial offer of $60,000. Finley went to $100,000. Still no. Finley upped it to $150,000. That’s merely as $1.6 million in today’s dollars — but the largest any American artist had ever received for a single show.
Done deal. Sept. 17 it will be.
At a time when the Beatles are doing more theaters, convention halls and arenas than massive ballparks — their famous events at Shea Stadium and Dodger Stadium came in 1965, and their last concert, at San Francisco’s Candlestick Park in 1966, about five months after Lennon’s “Jesus” remarks — Finley had a stadium venue that should have accommodated larger numbers and likely make up what he put out for it. It was much larger than places on this tour such as the Hollywood Bowl, Boston Gardens, Toronto’s Maple Leaf Gardens and New York’s Forest Hills Stadium (the private tennis club in Queens) and later the Paramount Theater.
“Baseballisms: A Murders’ Row of Metaphors and Idioms”
The author: Leonard Skonecki The details: McFarland, 334 pages, $59.95/$49.95 The links:The publisher, Bookshop.org The slight confusion: The publisher lists it at $49.95 in stock. Amazon (please don’t buy it there) also has it for that price, as of March 19, ’26. Bookshop has it for $59.94, available as of May 22, ’26. Target also offers it at $49.99 starting in May.
A review in 90 feet or less:
Leonard Skonecki, right, poses with former Fostoria mayor Eric Keckler. (Credit: The Review Times)
Bless you, Leonard Skonecki.
While not a renowned linguist but a dedicated and curious reader/researcher finding something meaningful and purposeful in retirement, Skonecki is best described as “well-known in Fostoria.” That’s from our own research in the matter.
Through a parallel search, we find Fostoria is “a city located at the convergence of Hancock, Seneca and Wood counties in the northwestern part of the U.S. state of Ohio. The population was 13,046 in the 2020 Census, slightly down from 13,441 at the 2010 Census. It is approximately 40 miles south of Toledo and 90 miles north of Columbus.”
It was named after Charles W. Foster, a local businessman. His son, also named Charles, became governor of Ohio and U.S. Secretary of the Treasury under Benjamin Harrison.
It is also was once famous for making glass.
Now we have a visual.
Skonecki’s author bio notes he once wrote for the weekly Fostoria Focus newspaper, which had a bold run between 1994 until 2014. He also worked in the reference department of the Kaubisch Memorial Public Library.
“Now retired, he lives in Fostoria, Ohio,” the bio wraps up.
We also learned from another source Skonecki “was born and raised in Fostoria and graduated from St. Wendelin High School in 1968. He then lived in Toledo and Dayton and returned to Fostoria in 1995. He has served as the president of the Fostoria Area Historical Society, and also worked for WFOB where he hosted the Friday edition of the Talk@10 interview show.”
Now, we have context.
His body of work includes an appearance in the 2013 documentary “History of Fostoria (Vol. 1),” and, because you can’t stop the flow of important material but you can only hope to contain it, Skonecki reprized his role in the 2014 update “History of Fostoria (Vol. 2).”
Last January, Skonecki was the guest presenter for “Fostoria First & Originals” at the Fostoria Learning Center as part of its “America 250” celebration. Flyers were distributed as the city noted on its Facebook post that it was a moment in time where “Fostoria history comes to life.”
This follows up from a time in April of 2024 when the Seneca County Museum started a “speaker series” where Skonecki presented a program on the robbery of the First National Bank of Fostoria. On May 3, 1934, John Dillinger and one of his gang, Homer Van Meter, robbed the bank of $17,299. In the course of the robbery, nine persons were shot, including Fostoria Police Chief Franklin Culp. In order to make a safe getaway, Dillinger and Van Meter took two bank employees hostage.
“Leonard will be sharing information about the robbery, related events, and how it affected the persons most directly involved,” the information noted. “He will also allow time for questions.”
Technically, it was an illogical technological clustermess. It nearly short-circuited the ebbs and flow and safety of all concerned in a recent Dodgers-Mets contest.
Fourth inning: Mets reliever Craig Kimbrel does his crab-like glare into catcher Francisco Alvarez for a sign — even though we assume he’s hearing it through a small speaker in his cap with the new-fangled PitchCom device. That was put into the game to speed it up and prevent sign stealing. Now we see some unintended consequences.
As Alvarez realizes the pitch clock is winding down to the final two seconds, has a panic attack. Rather than allow Kimbrel to be flagged as a violator, and the count to the Dodgers’ Shohei Ohtani to go to 3-2, the catcher leaps out from behind the plate, sidesteps Ohtani (just as he’s coiling to what he anticipates is a ball coming at him), seems to ask for a timeout amidst his arm flailing, lurches toward the mound and plants himself in front of the plate on the grass like a school crossing guard trying to stop an oncoming e-bike.
Kimbrel, head down, doesn’t notice all this happening. So when he leaps into his jerky windup, he suddenly realizes Alvarez is an object in his peripheral vision closer than he actually appears.
And Ohtani freaks out.
Already been hit by a pitch in his first at-bat and still feeling its affect, and already startled by Alvarez moments earlier when the catcher tried to make a back-pick of Dodgers runner Miguel Rojas at first base, Ohtani spins away to his right in some kind of self preservation mode.
Homeplate umpire Nic Lentz does his own ballet leap to his left. Did he agree to Alvarez’s time-out call? We’re not all that sure as Lentz is still trying to keep some integrity of the game.
Kimbrel almost falls down.
The Dodgers’ broadcasters gasp as well. What just happened?
Unbelievable.
Ninth inning: We’re being technologically challenged again with the Dodgers putting the final touches on a 4-0 victory. Gotta use those unused Automated Ball-Strike Challenge System head-taps, because they don’t carry over to extra innings. Or to tomorrow. Use ’em or lose ’em.
Dodgers reliever Tanner Scott pitches to Mets’ No 9 hitter Tyrone Taylor with a 1-1 count. It is called a ball by Lentz. Dodgers catcher Will Smith wants a review.
The ABS graphic shows that a sliver of the ball hit the side of the gray screen box graphic. The call is overturned. It’s a 1-2 count now instead of 2-1.
“That’s ridiculous,” says Dodgers TV analyst Eric Karros. “You gotta give me more than a seam on that part of the plate (to change it from a ball to a strike). I mean … you gotta give me half a ball or something.”
Undeniable.
And all there for the fans left in the expensive seats to capture on their iPhones to share later.
For all of today’s umpires — including C.B. Bucknor — are already flinching on calling runners safe or out on the basepaths, since instant replay continues to add more nuanced layers of challenge-able calls but also refuses others like a foul tip that make it seem rather arbitrary — this technology seems to add to this pursuit of perfection that will never be attained.
“MLB doesn’t really know in what direction they want the game to go,” Joe Posnanski has written about this on an almost daily basis since the 2026 season started, and before. “They know — they HAVE to know — that the Day of the Umpire has passed, and that the game will be officiated very differently in the years ahead. And I have been saying for a while now that ABS for every pitch is coming.”
Unacceptable.
Just went on CNN to talk about my book Unhittable—how technology is making pitchers nastier than ever… and also what robo umps could mean for both pitchers & hitters.
Amidst CNN’s March 25 broadcasting day, there was Phil Mattingly, the network’s chief domestic correspondent filling in for Jake Tapper on “The Lead” (and apparently no relation to Don Mattingly), trying to navigate that hour’s worth of more bizzaro news coverage. He found a way to segue from the Strait of Hormuz straight to Friedman toward the end of the show so Friedman’s new book could be discussed completely out of context before “Erin Burnett Outfront” comes on.
Mattingly: I do want to start with ABS. What do you think of this? What does this change? Friedman: So, it changes a lot. It’s going to change things like framing. It’s going to change what you’re seeing on the on the screen because some pitches, you know, you see those curve balls that barely clip the zone that umpires give up on, hitters give up on, and now they can be challenged and be a strike. There’s a whole level of strategy that comes to be now with robo umps. Mattingly: Does this benefit pitchers? Friedman: That’s a great question. I think that’s heavily debated. … There are hitters that say it favors them because the strike zone will be smaller and they can’t expand the zone. But there are pitchers that say they’re just going to clip the zone with breaking stuff, east to west, north to south. And hitters are going to be helpless against it. So, I’m curious to see what happens. Mattingly: Yeah, it’s going to be fascinating to watch it play out.
How unseemly. Unsuitable. Unbefitting for all.
And wait’ll next year when the automated check-swing review process is introduced.
Tom Hoffarth's The Drill: More Farther Off the Wall 