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Graveyards are not a significant part of baseball lore. True, the 1919 Cincinnati Reds held spring workouts in a Texas town’s cemetery. Moe Berg, visiting a Baltimore cemetery after dark, is reported to have stood on the grave of Edgar Allan Poe and recited “The Raven” from beginning to end. Edd Roush administered a cemetery […]

   When you ask a man who has made an unassisted triple play what his biggest thrill in baseball was, you expect him to say “making an unassisted triple play.” But this is not the case with Glenn Wright, star shortstop with Pittsburgh and Brooklyn from 1924 to 1933. “It was before the opening game […]

Hall of Fame second baseman Johnny Evers, left, and manager George Stallings helped lead the 1914 Boston Braves to their first World Series championship. (LIBRARY OF CONGRESS)   This year marks a century since the historic run of the 1914 Boston “Miracle” Braves. They were dead last in the National League on July 4, 15 […]

Not all fans attend the ballpark on a regular basis, but that doesn’t diminish their fandom. Take Kathryn Gemme, interviewed by this author at age 109. The paragraphs that follow were written in midsummer 2003 and are, in places, obviously dated — given the fact of the 2004 and 2007 World Championships. Red Sox fans […]

It’s the top of the 10th inning, and there is one out in this hotly contested All-Star Game. A runner is on third by way of the triple, another on first via the intentional walk, but now the pitcher has this batter on the ropes with a 2–2 count. The crowd is evenly split between […]

The highly regarded “five-tool” label is a relatively modern term in baseball’s lexicon, usually traced to Leo Durocher proclaiming the greatness of his star player of the early 1950s, Willie Mays.1 The five tools are: hit for average, hit with power, run with speed and prowess (particularly on the basepaths), catch the ball, and throw […]

John Montgomery Ward, one of the early masters of the curve ball, is also credited with developing the raised pitcher’s mound. He devised many infield techniques as well, including signaling for pitchouts to prevent stolen bases and using the intentional walk to increase chances for a double play. When Ward retired after the 1894 season, […]

Introduction and Context As the American and National Leagues prepared for the 1924 winter meetings in New York City, drama laced the usual business agenda of trades, rulings, and discussion of regulations. The NL had faced trouble internally since the end of September, when its president, John Heydler, disclosed, first to Commissioner Kenesaw Mountain Landis […]

Baseball “common wisdom” says that in the days of yore, the shortstop was a defensive specialist whose bat was secondary, and that it is only in recent decades that we have seen the “rise of the offensive shortstop.” But the word “shortstop” alone conjures thoughts of some of the game’s greatest players, both past and […]

It was 1977 and I had never been to Connecticut before. I was impressed with the pine-studded hills and small ponds. They looked especially nice with the patches of snow on the ground. What do I know about Al Schacht? I asked myself. He was born November 11, 1892 in New York City. He pitched […]