Search Results

“Flint and Corcoran had funny signals for changes of curves,” recalled Tommy Burns, a teammate of catcher Frank “Silver” Flint and pitcher Larry Corcoran of the Chicago White Stockings of the 1880s. “(Corcoran) invariably carried a mammoth chew of tobacco in his mouth, and when he chewed he shifted it about with a movement that […]

“The Reds were woefully weak with the willow, not being able to hit beyond the diamond and not scoring a base hit in thirty times at bat.”1 That was the brief description by the Boston Globe of Larry Corcoran’s no-hitter on August 19, 1880, the first of three in his career. These were the days before the phrase […]

In slightly over a century of professional baseball history, seven major league clubs have attained a winning average of .750 or better for a single season. Five of those teams were relatively easy victors against little better than nominal opposition as shown by the following table.   Year Club League Won Lost Pct. Games Ahead […]

September 29, 1980 marked the 100th anniversary of one of the landmark dates in New York baseball history — the first baseball game played in the original Polo Grounds. This was not a major league game as New York City did not have a National League club at that time. In early September 1880, the […]

Old Orioles’ Record for Triples Doubled Up The old Orioles of the 1890’s were one of baseball’s legendary teams. They played their home games in Union Park, Baltimore, one of the larger playing fields in the National League. As a result the Orioles did not hit too many home runs, but they got their share […]

There have been only a handful of major league pitchers who threw three no-hitters: Larry Corcoran, Cy Young, Bob Feller, Sandy Koufax, and Nolan Ryan. Similarly, only Johnny Vander Meer, Allie Reynolds, Virgil Trucks, Jim Maloney, and Nolan Ryan threw two nine-inning no-hitters in a single sea­ son. Bill Doak almost joined these two elite […]

When Albert G. Spalding wrote his American National Game in 1911, he hired the well-known cartoonist, Homer C. Davenport, to provide appropriate works of art, and in the front of the book he thanked Mr. Davenport, “to whose genius much of the interest in this volume is due.” Theodore A. Dorgan, who used the nom […]