My ‘Field of Dreams’ Above Carpinteria

At Santa Barbara County’s Ken McMullen Baseball Camp, a True Team Player Taught Us How to Teach Others

Did you have strange dreams during this unsettling, crazy California summer? Me too.

Mine compressed time and space. In dreamland, I toggled between the anxious claustrophobia of summer 2020 and memories of the sun-splashed Santa Barbara County baseball camp I attended as a kid in the mid-1980s.

I’m not sure what took me back to Ken McMullen Baseball Camp in the hills above Carpinteria. Maybe it was because most summer camps were closed, and my three young sons were stuck at home, having lost all interest in everything but looking at screens …

by Joe Mathews | September 15, 2020

Why Was Baseball Legend Oscar Charleston Forgotten?

The Pathbreaking Player, Scout, and Manager Was Part of a Black Baseball Tradition That Is Still Obscured

by Jeremy Beer | March 1, 2020

History, more often than we would like, is an unjust judge. Consider the case of Oscar Charleston, a baseball player who for nearly 40 years was one of the most …

What the Dodgers and Giants’ 1958 Move West Meant for America

When the Two Teams Left for California, They Shifted the Country’s Focus From New York and Helped Fragment the Nation’s Culture

by Lincoln Mitchell | March 27, 2019

Few phrases are as evocative of a mythical, imagined urban past as “Brooklyn Dodgers.”

Those two words, particularly in the borough that is now a punch line for hipster jokes, …

Why Major League Baseball Tried to Rein in Babe Ruth

The Sultan of Swat Saved a Discredited Game, But the Sport’s Establishment Sought to Tame Its Headstrong Superstar

by Edmund F. Wehrle | October 22, 2018

Babe Ruth was baseball’s greatest hero. So why did the national pastime’s establishment turn against him?

The answer lies in the untold story of Ruth’s challenge to the authorities ruling …

How Baseball Got Its Groove Back in the Turbulent 1960s

New Franchises, Colorful Characters, and the Miracle Mets Gave Life to a Sport Grown Stodgy

By Paul Hensler | March 29, 2018

When examining American history of the late 1960s, one is often tempted to gravitate toward the foreign and domestic strife fostered by the war in Vietnam, the ongoing struggle for …

Take Me Out to the California League

The Golden State's Major League Baseball Is Slow-Paced and Pricey, but Our Minor League Beautifully Binds Us Together

By Joe Mathews | August 21, 2017

Take me out to the ballgame this summer? Sure, as long as you’re taking me to San Jose or Visalia or Lake Elsinore.

Yep, I know those cities don’t have major …