Glenn Higginbotham's Page

Who would really give a damn about this? OK, it's a classic AL team with an illustrious history vs an NL team that sell tickets but has no identity. Forgive me for sounding curmudgeonly, but I MISS the dynasties. This business of parity has only diluted the game, and appeals to the short attention spans of modern sports watchers. As Brian Wilson once said, "I Just Wasn't Made For These Times".

Baseball does reflect modern sensibilities, so this is a reflection of our times. I can watch…

That's the argument Robert Creamer presented in "Baseball in 41", which is part of my burgeoning baseball library. Apart from DiMaggio's hitting streak and Williams' .406 BA, you had a great pennant race in the NL between the Dodgers and the Cardinals.

In my PureSim version of this season, I manage the Dodgers. Before the season even started, I pulled off a major coup -- I traded a veteran pitcher to the Cardinals for a 21-year-old OF named Stan Musial. He's become an everyday starter,…

The more I read about O'Malley, the more I find that the real villain in the Dodgers' move to LA is a guy named Robert Moses. Moses was in charge of land development in New York, and was arguably more powerful than the mayor.

The truth of the matter is that O'Malley wanted to keep the Dodgers in Brooklyn, but wanted a new ballpark. The location he chose was set in the borough, but Moses wouldn't hear of it. Moses had other ideas for the tract of land O'Malley chose. Moses proposed…

It came out in 1984, but I'm reading it for the first time. What a great book -- I'm learning so much about the players and the power brokers (MacPhail, Rickey, O'Malley etc).

The first thing that struck me was the continual power struggles that went on behind the scenes. The Brooklyn front office almost seemed like a small Latin American country, with periodic coups as one dictator after another seized control. To me, it's as fascinating as the game on the field.

The triumvirat…

The late 1940s and the 1950s are often portrayed as a time of happiness and accumulation of wealth by the post -WWII generation. That is partially true. What this image hides is the fall of the Iron Curtain, and the spectre of nuclear oblivion when our erstwhile allies the Russians acquired the ability to build atomic weapons.

In the midst of these threats, America found escape on the ballfields. Major league baseball enjoyed skyrocketing attendance in most of the years between 1946 an…