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By the time Johnny Vander Meer came to the Cleveland Indians a few weeks before the 1951 season kicked off, he was far from the dominating starter who threw back-to-back no-hitters in 1938. After he was released by the Chicago Cubs on March 30 for loafing,1 Vander Meer made a call to an old friend […]

1. Who were the two Cincinnati pitchers who took a rowboat across the outfield wall of a flooded Crosley Field in 1937? 2. Where did the 1914 Boston Braves and the 1915-1916 Boston Red Sox play their home World Series games?3. In several World Series, all the games were played in one park; name the […]

Some of the great pitching duels in baseball history have received little publicity because more than 30 extra-inning contests ended in 0-0 ties. Extra-inning tie games are rare these days since most games now can be suspended and finished at a future date, but in the old days natural elements usually put an end to […]

A pitcher who tosses a no-hitter receives instant acclaim and is assured of a lasting place in the record books. But what about the man behind the bat who skillfully called the pitches that silenced the opponents’ bats? One of the most famous of all sports photos shows Yogi Berra jumping on Don Larsen following […]

The drama of All-Star, championship series, and World Series contests notwithstanding, the no-hitter remains the most intensely exciting game in baseball for spectators and participants alike. The pressure felt by a pitcher striving to realize a rare achievement that will ensure him both fame and immortality in the record books is widely appreciated. And the […]

Is Henry Aaron a greater player than Willie Mays? Was Joe DiMaggio better than Ted Williams? Those were just two of the tough decisions members of the Society for American Baseball Research were asked to make in a survey of the greatest baseball players born in the different states. Aaron and Mays were matched because […]

The Brooklyn Dodgers wanted Babe Ruth for his box office drawing power, not his coaching expertise. (National Baseball Hall of Fame Library)   Of all the facets of Babe Ruth’s long and distinguished career, his time as a coach with the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1938 has received the least consideration. Perhaps that is justified: Ruth […]

More than any other sport, baseball as we know it today is infatuated with numbers. Every movement, whether from defensive positions, the pitcher’s mound, or the batter’s box, is examined, analyzed, and quantified. As a result, we are treated to “quality starts,” “holds,” and batting averages with two-strike counts or on artificial turf in night […]

One hundred years ago on Thursday, September 2, 1880, teams representing two of Boston’s prominent department stores, Jordan Marsh and Company and R. H. White and Company, played a game of baseball at Nantasket Bay on the oceanside of Hull, Massachusetts. This game would have held no historic value and would long since have been […]

Ever since Boston’s Pedro Martinez fired a one-hit, no-walks, 17-strikeout gem against then-defending World Series champion New York in Yankee Stadium in September 1999, a friend of mine has repeatedly said that he’d never seen, in the 30+ years he’s been watching the game, any pitcher be as consistently dominant as Martinez. That made me […]