Henry Chadwick invented the box score in 1859—and wrote off walks as a pitcher's failure

Before 1920, during the Deadball Era, a single baseball was used throughout a Major League game, leading to a notoriously dirty style of play.

Sabermetrics, the empirical analysis of baseball statistics made famous by 'Moneyball,' redefined how people evaluate baseball players, overturning a century of assumptions about which metrics matter most.

Visualize how changes to lineups, driven by modern analytics, could have changed one of MLB's most iconic moments.

Walter Camp revolutionized American Football

When Walter Camp was introduced to the game of football in the late 1800s, the rules weren’t set, the field wasn’t uniform, and the game was brutal. Camp joined early rules committees and was instrumental in shaping the modern game. Read this deep dive into Camp’s early life and influences, and find out how he established the line of scrimmage and the series of downs.

Some say baseball's drug problem goes back to the late 1800s

At age 32, pitcher James “Pud” Galvin was feeling tired and decided to take "the Brown-Séquard elixir," which contained a testicular fluid from dogs and guinea pigs, believed to invigorate tired bodies. It might've worked: Galvin pitched a two-hit shutout the next day.

Why ‘Shoeless Joe’ Jackson was banned from Major League Baseball

Few baseball stars are more infamous than "Shoeless Joe" Jackson, one of the game's greatest hitters. Jackson was part of the Chicago White Sox team (notoriously dubbed the "Black Sox") accused of fixing the 1919 World Series. This resource breaks down the criminal trial that investigated those allegations. Curiously, Jackson and his teammates were acquitted, but Major League Baseball commissioner Judge Kenesaw Mountain Landis still banned them from the league for life.

Walter Camp shaped the rules that transformed football into the modern game

Known as the “Father of American Football,” Walter Camp introduced key innovations in the 1880s—such as the line of scrimmage, the system of downs, and the snap—that distinguished football from rugby and defined its modern structure.

A history of the rare, chaotic moments when MLB batters charge the pitcher on the mound

They typically occur when a pitcher has slung a pitch a little too close to the batter—though the exact causes vary, from quick tempers to longstanding grudges. No definitive account of these infrequent but highly visible incidents has existed, so sportswriter Jon Bois compiled data on 264 such moments between 1950 and 2025. The resulting 23-minute video explores the rich narratives leading to these charged events.

The first MLB All-Star Game was designed by a sports journalist who believed the spectacle would boost baseball's reputation during the Great Depression.

Explore the data behind every Major League Baseball player's success rate with ABS, its new tech-assisted challenge system.

A 1930s card game birthed modern fantasy sports

"National Pastime" used the statistics of real Major League Baseball players to determine a winner, creating the template for the modern fantasy sports model.

100 moments that shaped baseball history

Published in 2018 by baseball historian Jacob Kornhauser, this list examines the defining moments throughout more than a century of play on the field, from Pittsburgh Pirates pitcher Dock Ellis purportedly throwing a no-hitter while on acid to Jackie Robinson breaking the color barrier.

Cricket used to be America's pastime

Before baseball, American football, basketball, or hockey ever organized in the US, there was one sport which could be found up and down the East Coast: cricket. The second-most popular sport in the world, cricket is mostly ignored by Americans, despite its prevalence in early American history. Learn more about the forgotten role cricket played in the US with this article.

How baseball shaped Black America during Reconstruction

A cornerstone of the budding Black culture following the Civil War was baseball, with several clubs springing up in Black neighborhoods and leaders like Frederick Douglass cheering on the players, including his son, who played for a team in Washington. This detailed history of the early Black leagues unpacks how the game enhanced the upwardly mobile community—and why that fact led to the segregation of what would become Major League Baseball.

"Guessing what the pitcher is going to throw is 80 percent of being a successful hitter. The other 20 percent is just execution."

- Baseball star Hank Aaron (1934-2021)

Statcast, MLB's sophisticated real-time data analytics system, runs machine learning models in the 23-second gap between every pitch.

Inside MLB's robo-umping experiment

Human umpires call roughly 94% of pitches right overall, but performance reduces on borderline pitches in high-leverage moments, the calls that shape game outcomes most. A professor and historian analyze early experiments with the full "robot ump" system that helped shape MLB's decision to implement a compromise "challenge" system.

The 2026 MLB season is the first to allow players to challenge umpires' calls on balls and strikes.

Fourteen ways to make baseball cool again

Baseball, while commonly known as America's pastime, gets a bit of a bad rap for being long, slow, and boring. Here are fourteen fun ideas to make the sport more interesting to combat dwindling attendance.

Browse a timeline of the fascinating history of board games in America.

A sophisticated data analysis found that stadiums with roofs or in cities that regularly have sunny skies are the easiest for outfielders to play in.

Bowling was long male-dominated, but women pushed for change through the sport

The sport was often played on lawns attached to breweries and became a leisure activity for folks in taverns—mostly men, in the 1800s. But the game's highly communal nature attracted a more diverse set of participants who pushed for social change.

Fantasy sports' roots go back to an 1860s parlor game that simulated real-world baseball.

MLB 2023 rules changes were the most dramatic alterations in decades, drastically speeding up the game.

Long before Major League Baseball began allowing instant replay for balls and strikes, an umpire reluctantly used the technology to determine whether a hit was a home run, a move that inadvertently ushered in a new era for the sport.

'Out in left field' is an idiom used to describe an eccentric person, and some researchers believe it likely originated at a minor league baseball park in Massachusetts that had an unusual outfield.

The 1919 Chicago White Sox, later known as the 'Black Sox,' were banned from baseball for fixing that year's World Series despite being acquitted in court.

The evolution of the baseball bat

Torpedo bats may be the latest, most powerful kind of baseball bat, but the instrument's history is long. This Smithsonian resource traces the bat's evolution from handmade objects forged by the players to mass-produced marvels of physics designed by companies like Louisville Slugger. Along the way, you'll see some interesting takes on the form, including bats referred to as "mushrooms" and "bananas."

In 1975, a Major League Baseball clause that kept players legally tied to their teams after retirement was dismantled, creating the modern concept of free agency.

Basketball was invented in 1891 by Dr. James Naismith

When Dr. James Naismith hung two peach baskets at either end of a Springfield College gymnasium, he was just looking to keep the school’s athletes occupied and safe during harsh New England winters, but the game he created would quickly turn out to be a national sensation.

Sidearm pitchers—who throw the ball at an odd angle, sometimes very close to the ground—are a rarity in modern baseball, which often makes them more difficult for batters to hit.

'Take Me Out to the Ballgame,' the song that's now a 7th inning tradition at every MLB game, was inspired by a billboard advertisement.

Modern tennis was formalized in 1874

In the late 1800s England, a growing middle class could afford homes with lawns. With more lawns in England, Major Walter C. Wingfield saw an opportunity to bring lawn tennis to the masses. Modern tennis was formalized in 1874, when Queen Victoria granted a patent for Major Walter C. Wingfield's lawn tennis box set. The game was an instant hit, and by 1877, the new All England Club in Wimbledon began hosting a tournament.

Explore some of the best baseball books, including Michael Lewis' influential 'Moneyball' and Bob Uecker's autobiography 'Catcher in the Wry.'

The original basketball was hand-sewn

When the first basketball landed in a peach basket in 1891, it didn't look like the leather Wilson ball you see on today's NBA courts. The basketball evolved from the nondribbling days, when a hand-sewn ball with stitching like a football was used.

The inventor of fantasy football first experimented with two other sports

In the mid-1950s, Wilfred “Bill” Winkenbach, a part-owner of the Oakland Raiders, concocted two fantasy sports games: one for Major League Baseball and one for the Professional Golfers’ Association. In 1962, he invented fantasy football alongside two writers from the Oakland Tribune.

The word 'jazz' evolved from slang for 'energy' and was used to describe a baseball pitch before it came to mean a genre of music.

Every baseball used by the MLB only lasts about 7 pitches before it's discarded.

In 1970, Pittsburgh Pirates' pitcher Dock Ellis threw a no-hitter—a rare feat that was just the 174th in MLB history—while high on LSD.

Check out a list of the top 100 players in baseball history, from Barry Larkin to Babe Ruth.

Jackie Robinson's iconic 42 is the only number that's been retired leaguewide, meaning no current players can wear it except in his honor.

The MLB's reserve clause gave owners rights to players after their contracts expired

The clause was added to contracts in 1879, allowing owners to hang on to players after the expiration of their contracts, sometimes in perpetuity.

MLB pitchers were charged with benefiting from sports betting

In November 2025, two pitchers for the Cleveland Guardians were charged with coordinating with sports bettors to enrich themselves and others. In many instances, they shared the kinds of pitches they would throw at specific points in the game. Bettors then placed money on those actions.

'I swing big, with everything I've got. I hit big or I miss big. I like to live as big as I can.'

- Baseball legend Babe Ruth (1895-1948)

Thomas Cook invented modern tourism in the 19th century by creating package tours and travel guides for aspiring travelers.

A visual guide to identifying baseball's pitches, from common pitches like 'fastball' and the 'change up' to specialty types, like 'cutter' and 'slurve.'

Magic: the Gathering was inspired by baseball cards

Richard Garfield originally pitched a game publisher on a more complex game about programming robots, but he was told that they were looking for something less expensive and more portable. Inspired by the way baseball cards were collected and traded, he came up with the idea for Magic: the Gathering, which gave players packets of random cards, effectively pieces of the whole game, rather than the entire deck.

Unpacking Thoreau's diet, which once included a woodchuck

The writer's diet was notoriously simple, preferring an inexpensive combination of rice and vegetables to meat, though he usually ate it when offered. In "Walden," he mentions eating a woodchuck after it got into his beans, which one Thoreau biographer said was likely true.

Every MLB baseball needs to be rubbed with a special kind of mud, provided by one New Jersey family.

How Shohei Ohtani made baseball fun again

To rise to the level of Major League Baseball in recent decades, a player needs to become a specialist in at least one of the sport's many skills: hitting, pitching, throwing, running, fielding. For decades, this specialization has made a so-called...