Search Results

There is an expression in baseball that refers to a player “having a cup of coffee” in the majors. The inference is that he was with a team such a short time about all he had time for was a cup of coffee. In that parlance, the “shortest cup of coffee” is appearance in one […]

The San Diego Padres have been around since 1969 and are awaiting their first. The New York Mets have been around since way back in 1962 and, amazingly, still do not have one.[fn]Baseball-almanac.com (www.baseball-almanac.com/recbooks/rb_noh2.shtml)[/fn] Yet the Montreal Expos, who started play in the same year as the Padres, set a record for the fewest games […]

Curt Flood, Gene Conley, and Danny Ainge had nothing on Baltimore native Peck Lerian, who challenged the reserve clause and earned fame on both the basketball court and the baseball diamond. Showing great promise as the leading member of the Philadelphia Phillies’ young receiving corps at the close of the 1920s, he also stood out […]

It started with a radio broadcast and a baseball glove. In late 1946 my father, my pregnant mother, and I lived in Chicago with my grandparents. World War II over and business picking up, my father decided to request – actually, I was told later, it was more a demand – a transfer to his […]

This article was originally published in “A Celebration of Louisville Baseball,” the 1997 SABR convention journal.   Barney Dreyfuss was the last president of the National League Louisville Colonels. Using business skills honed at a Louisville whiskey distillery, he made a commitment to succeed in baseball. Unfortunately for Louisville, Barney could only guide the Colonels […]

A number of apparently pennant-bound teams have collapsed in the closing weeks of a season, most recently the 1978 Red Sox, but the most dramatic nosedive in recent decades was that of the 1964 Philadelphia Phillies. By losing ten straight games in the season’s final two weeks, Gene Mauch’s Phils blew a 6½-game lead and […]

Mark Belanger, winner of eight Gold Gloves in the last ten years, received more votes than any other player in SABR’s recent survey to determine the best fielders of the 1970s. The Baltimore shortstop received more than 90% of the nearly 400 votes cast for American League shortstop. Johnny Bench led all National League players. […]

Honus Wagner, or Hans as he was almost universally called, was relieved the season was over. His 20th campaign in the big leagues and 17th with the Pittsburgh Pirates had been physically and emotionally draining. The 1916 season had been troublesome even before it started and had only gotten worse. Many had predicted Wagner would […]

Your team clings to a lead in the late innings and is trying to get out of a first-and-third, one-out jam. Your pitcher gives up a long fly to right-center, and both runners take off. But your fleet center fielder seemingly saves the day. She sprints, leaps, extends, dives, and snags the drive inches off […]

The work of establishing the Union Association of Base Ball Clubs began on September 12, 1883, at the Monongahela House hotel in Pittsburg. Sporting Life commented that the “men in the room are well known in baseball circles.”1 In all, representatives of nine teams met that day: Chicago, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Baltimore, Washington, Richmond, Virginia, Indianapolis, […]