Are you blind? Where do you think you are? In a cow-pasture?-- Thomas Wolfe, A Portrait of Bascom Hawke The cash-poor lower leagues of the South assigned a single umpire to each game. Most worked behind the plate until a runner reached base, then took a position...

Charles Philip Durmeyer, Jr. was born in New Orleans on August 29, 1889. His father, Charles Durmeyer, Sr., was a butcher with a few seasons of minor league ball to his credit. Charles Sr. gave up the professional game when his son was born but continued to play...

And is there anything that can tell more about an American summer than, say, the smell of the wooden bleachers in a small-town baseball park, that resinous, sultry, and exciting smell of old dry wood.– Thomas Wolfe, letter to Arthur Mann, 1938 Captain W.T. Crawford...

Table of Contents (click chapter title to view post) ForewordThe Name on the Base The Jack Corbett Hollywood Base appears today on every Major League Baseball diamond. Does a player ever look down at a base and think, “Jack Corbett? Who the heck was Jack Corbett?”...