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    A big, gruff-voiced, light-skinned Texan, Louis Loftin Santop was the  first of the great black sluggers, the head of a dynasty that would stretch  through John Beckwith, Mule Suttles, Turkey Stearnes, Josh Gibson, Willie Mays, Dick Allen, and right down to Hank Aaron himself.     Santop, who started hitting Texas-size blasts before most […]

While considerable attention has been paid to the home run feats of outstanding players such as Babe Ruth, Willie Mays, and Hank Aaron, comparatively little consideration has been given to outstanding team home run achievements, particularly those occurring in a single game. On 28 occasions, a major league team has nit at least 7 home […]

April 14, 1925 was a typical opening day of the baseball season. At least it seemed that way at the time. A quarter of a million fan watched the opening games. This included the 45,000 who watched the Yankees, led by Babe Ruth’s stand-in Ben Paschal, beat the Senators 5-1. Babe was hospitalized suffering from […]

The intersection of Grand Avenue and Dodier Street on the north side of St. Louis is one of the fabled locations in baseball history. Amateurs began playing on a sandlot there as far back as the 1860s. In 1875, the first professional team in the Gateway City, the Brown Stockings of the National Association of […]

The tragic death of Roberto Clemente in a plane crash on December 31, 1972 removes from the active rolls the seasoned player with the highest lifetime batting average in the majors. He left a mark of .317, a fraction of a point above Rico Carty, and several points above another Latin American, Tony Oliva, who […]

On June 28, 1970, the Pittsburgh Pirates swept a doubleheader from the Chicago Cubs and Forbes      Field’s role in Pirate baseball was over. The park was condemned and doomed to the wrecker’s ball. It was 61 years earlier, almost to the day, that Forbes Field opened, with the Pirates hosting the same Chicago Cubs. Over […]

The 1964 Phillies enjoyed a six-and-a-half game lead in the National League with 12 games left in the season, proceeded to lose 10 in a row, and surrendered the pennant to the St. Louis Cardinals. The closing two weeks of the 1964 regular season inflicted psychic baseball wounds which began to heal after the Phillies’ […]

Golf Magazine deemed that Babe Ruth was “once America’s most famous golfer.” Ruth was hitting the links while the Olympic trials were being held in Baltimore. (NATIONAL BASEBALL HALL OF FAME LIBRARY)   It has been noted that history is cyclical, and there is nothing new under the sun. Baseball’s relationship with the International Olympic […]

The Almada family of Sinaloa, Mexico sought refuge from the civil unrest of the Mexican Revolution, emigrating to the United States in 1914. The Southern California city of Los Angeles offered Baldomero Almada a safe place for his family and a ranking position in the Mexican consulate. “My father always wanted us children to have […]

Mickey Mantle was turned into a switch hitter when he was “barely old enough to walk.” He remains the only switch-hitter in the history of the game to earn Triple Crown honors. (National Baseball Hall of Fame Library)   Mickey Mantle posted a .353 batting average, slammed 52 homers, and drove in 130 runs in […]