Year In Review : 1910 American League

Off the field...

The Boy Scouts of America was introduced inviting boys eleven to seventeen years old an opportunity to join an organization dedicated to improving mental, moral, and physical development while stressing outdoor skills and training in citizenship and lifesaving. Originally, the movement was intended to be nonmilitary and without racial, religious, political, or class distinctions, but the Supreme Court affirmed the organization's right to limit membership to those who believe in God in 1993.

The "National Association for the Advancement of Colored People" was founded in New York, in November. The N.A.A.C.P. originally published an underground journal called "The Crisis," and was at the forefront of all the attempts by Blacks to achieve equality. For more than ninety-three years, the NAACP has continued include people of all races, nationalities and religious denominations, while remaining united on one premise, that all men and women are created equal.

In the American League...

Cleveland Indians ace Cy Young won his five-hundredth game on July 19^th after beating the Washington Senators 5-4 at American League Park II.

Washington Senators second baseman Red Killefer set a Major League mark on August 27^th after sacrificing four times in the first game of a Detroit Tigers doubleheader.

Eddie Collins of the Philadelphia Athletics set an American League record after stealing his eighty-first base of the season during an 8-1 victory over the visiting Boston Red Sox.

In the National League...

The Braves and Phillies combined on April 22^nd for a Major League record fewest at bats by two teams in nine innings: forty-eight (twenty-five for Boston, twenty-three for Philadelphia). The record was tied the following season, but remained unbeaten until 1964.

On August 13^th, the Pittsburgh Pirates and Brooklyn Dodgers played in perhaps, the most evenly matched game ever. Both teams finished the 8-8 tie (called on darkness) with exactly eight runs, thirteen hits, thirty-eight at bats, five strikeouts, three walks, one hit batter, one passed ball, thirteen assists, twenty-seven putouts and two errors with two pitchers used.

Around the league...

William Howard Taft became the first U.S. president to throw out the ceremonial "first pitch" after he opened the 1910 season at Washington's League Park. The Senators' Walter Johnson christened the tradition by pitching a one-hitter, beating the Philadelphia Athletics and Eddie Plank 3-0.

Both leagues agreed to adopt a resolution that would ban syndicate baseball, which had previously allowed owners to have financial interests vested in more than one team. They also mandated that all umpires were to announce any team changes to the spectators; batting orders were to be delivered to the head umpire at home plate before the game and a base runner was to be called out if he passed another runner ahead of him on the base path.