The National Pastime: 2017 Issue: New York, New York: Baseball in the Big Apple

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In 2017 the SABR national convention took place in New York City. As SABR has done since 2008, the annual issue of The National Pastime centered around the convention site. Organized chronologically, the articles in the 2017 issue on "Baseball in the Big Apple" run from a detailed roster of 19th century baseball pioneers researched and compiled by John Thorn, to a recap of Cubans who have played for New York teams in the postseason and World Series by Reynaldo Cruz Diaz. Along the way we meet figures both obscure and well known, from the 19th century promoter of women's baseball teams to the clown prince turned managerial genius, Casey Stengel, from the first champion broadcaster of the World Series, Graham McNamee, to the first woman to own a baseball team purchased with her own fortune, Joan Whitney Payson of the Mets. Among the city's fascinating episodes in baseball history, we have the day the Giants and Yankees put aside their feuding to raise money for the survivors of the Titanic, Babe Ruth and the Yankees playing a game at Sing Sing Prison, and Jackie Robinson and Alvin Dark colliding at the peak of the Dodgers-Giants rivalry.

Complete table of contents:
• The Making of Legends by Francis Kinlaw
• New York’s First Base Ball Club by John Thorn
• Captain John Wildey, Tammany Hall, and the Rise of Professional Baseball by Mark Souder
• The Starring Tours of 1875: The “Amateurs” Tours, Tournaments and Regional Rivalries by Paul Browne
• Women’s Baseball in Nineteenth-Century New York and the Man Who Set Back Women’s Professional Baseball for Decades by Debra A. Shattuck
• The First and Last Games on the Polo Groundses by Stew Thornley
• The Asylum Base Ball Club: The Great Reunion Game September 29, 1905 by Bob Mayer
• “A Foremost Part in the Work of Relieving Distress”: The Week New York, the Giants, and the Yankees Offered a Lifeline to the Titanic’s Survivors by Dan VanDeMortel
• The 1920 Brooklyn Robins: Uncle Robbie Leads Brooklyn to Third National League Championship by Gordon J. Gattie
• Graham McNamee: Broadcast Pioneer by Cort Vitty
• The Day Babe Ruth Came to Sing Sing by Gary Sarnoff
• Roosevelt Stadium: The Forgotten Ballpark by David Krell
• From Mexico to Quebec: Baseball’s Forgotten Giants by Bill Young
• Bats, Balls, Boys, Dreams and Unforgettable Experiences: Youth All-Star Games in New York, 1944–65 by Alan Cohen
• The Remaking of Casey Stengel by Marty Appel
• Brooklyn, The Dodgers…and The Movies by Rob Edelman
• Remembering Earl—Not George—Toolson: The Plaintiff Who Took the New York Yankees to the US Supreme Court by Ed Edmonds
• The Dodgers-Giants Rivalry during “The Era”: The Dark-Robinson Incident by John J. Burbridge, Jr. and John Harris
• A Pioneer for the New York Mets: Joan Whitney Payson by Leslie Heaphy
• The Turbulent ’70s: Steinbrenner, the Stadium, and the 1970s Scene by Tony Morante
• A Hall-of-Fame Cup of Coffee in New York by Steven Glassman
• Los Cubanos in New York’s October by Reynaldo Cruz Díaz
• Contributors