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“Amazing,” said Ray Crone when asked by the author to describe fan support in Milwaukee in the 1950s.[1] A tall, lanky right-handed pitching prodigy signed by the Braves in 1949, Crone debuted in 1954 and pitched a ten-inning complete game in his first start in the major leagues. However, after four inconsistent seasons and a […]

The cover of the March 20, 1978, annual baseball preview issue of Sports Illustrated featured a picture of Kansas City Royals rookie Clint Hurdle looking ready for action, with the caption “This Year’s Phenom” in bold yellow letters right next to his smiling face. Keeping with the “phenom” theme, the article described the 20-year-old Hurdle […]

Jesse Orosco appeared in 1,252 regular-season games during his career, the most of any major-league pitcher. As of Opening Day 2015, the active hurler with the most appearances was LaTroy Hawkins with an even 1,000, so Orosco’s record endured for at least some time. The lefty spent most of his 24 seasons in the majors […]

“For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?” The Bible may not have been referring to anything as crass as a baseball career, but this one sentence serves to describe Barry Bonds very well. A stellar career, rich, famous, holding many records, but his […]

Injury has curtailed the career of major league pitchers since the beginning of the professional game. In the days before rotator cuff and Tommy John surgery, pitchers had to hope for recovery or look for another line of work. Theodore A. Kennedy was one of those pitchers, but he was much more than a couple […]

At the close of the 1890 season, the Cincinnati Reds had high hopes for rookie backstop Jerry Harrington. The 21-year-old had proved a major asset for the fourth-place (77-55-2, .583) ball club – an able handler of pitchers; a sure-handed receiver with a powerful and accurate throwing arm, and a decent enough batter for any […]

Despite his diminutive size, Charley “Red” Dooin was an outstanding defensive backstop who caught 1,124 games for the Phillies, a team record until Mike Lieberthal topped it in 2006. “This writer has watched catchers from the days of Charley Farrell and Connie Mack and none could go farther for fouls or block off a runner […]

Joe Schultz Sr. – known as “Germany” for his ancestry – played in 11 major-league seasons from 1912 through 1925. By the end of that time, he had played for every National League team then in existence except for the Giants. His primary position was right field, but he was frequently used as a pinch-hitter […]

“Dave Roberts is a novice manager, but he seems born to the task,” longtime San Francisco sportswriter Bruce Jenkins wrote about the offseason Dodgers hire in mid-2016. “He took a disjointed clubhouse and made it whole, instilling a good-times brand of confidence and telling SI.com, ‘I put my hand on each player every single day […]

The rich farm country surrounding Lancaster, Pennsylvania, attracts visitors, and some of those visitors remain and thrive in the area. Many baseball teams at any number of minor-league and independent levels have called Lancaster home, dating as far back as 1884. In 1940 the Lancaster Red Roses came to town from Hazleton, Pennsylvania, and played […]

Hardworking, spirited, and optimistic are all apt descriptions of Jim Lefebvre. The switch-hitter spent more than 40 years in professional baseball, including eight years (1965-72) as a Los Angeles Dodgers infielder and six seasons managing the Mariners, Cubs and Brewers. Perhaps determined would be the best adjective of all for the former National League Rookie […]

From 1943 through 1954, when the All-American Girls Base Ball League operated in the Midwest,1 baseball was regarded as part of the male world. Females, if they played ball, usually played fast-pitch softball — a sport that became popular during the Great Depression of the 1930s. But Elizabeth Mahon (pronounced Muh-AN), who grew up playing […]

Clarence “Lefty” Heise had an extremely brief major-league career. He opened the 1934 season with the Cardinals but was released to their Columbus farm team on May 1 when major-league rosters had to be cut to 25 players. He pitched in just one major-league game, and he was the only man who played in a […]

It was, in a word, anticlimactic. On the basis of the performance of the two playoff teams in this final game of the 1979 NLCS, one could strongly argue that Cincinnati was a beaten team even before the third game was played on Friday afternoon. It would have been little short of a miracle for […]

The events of August 2 in baseball history are quite varied. In 1921 a Chicago jury arrived at a not-guilty verdict in the trial of the Black Sox, accused of participating in a fix of the 1919 World Series.1 In 1979 New York Yankees catcher Thurman Munson perished in an airplane crash in Canton, Ohio.2 […]

It was veteran pitcher vs. rookie as the Houston Astros and the Philadelphia Phillies squared off for an afternoon game at Philadelphia’s Citizens Bank Park: ace Roger Clemens of the visiting Astros and rookie Cole Hamels for the home team. Making his 15th start in his 23rd major-league season, the 43-year-old Clemens entered the game […]

“Is baseball in danger?” – Chicago Tribune, September 5, 1920.1   The charges of “attempted crookedness” sparked by a game between the Chicago Cubs and the Philadelphia Phillies on August 31, 1920, had repercussions well beyond what anyone could have expected. It was a game that, due to the chain of serious events it precipitated, […]

The Havana Red Sox baseball team arrived in Miami in March of 1929. The Red Sox, who had just finished playing winter ball in Cuba, were stopping off in Florida to tune up for their coming barnstorming tour of the United States. The eight games they played in Miami before they embarked on the trip […]

When Game One of the 1972 American League Championship Series between the Oakland Athletics and Detroit Tigers went into extra innings, A’s rookie Gonzalo Márquez turned to teammate Dagoberto “Bert” Campaneris and made a bold prediction. “If I get to pinch-hit,” Márquez said in Spanish, “I’ll win the game.”1 Márquez got his chance in the […]

In 1879 Will White of the National League’s Cincinnati Reds set single-season major-league records for complete games (75) and innings pitched (680) that will almost certainly never be broken. The first major leaguer to wear glasses on the field, White had as his batterymate a future Hall of Famer whom baseball historian Peter Morris called […]

In the days of two eight-team major leagues, “division” meant something quite different from the three regional designations currently used in the National and American Leagues. Back then, fans and writers alike tended to dwell at some length on which teams were in each league’s “first division” – among the top four teams in the […]

In 10 years of mostly futile baseball, the Montreal Expos had fluttered few Canadian hearts outside Quebec. Despite some solid players and occasional individual brilliance, they had yet to finish a single season with a winning record. All that changed in the late summer of 1979. Buoyed by a roster of emerging young stars that […]

Ebbets Field has been gone for more than half a century, but the place still has a remarkable grip on our consciousness. At least three books have been devoted to the lovable old ballpark in Crown Heights.1 Yet even these in-depth works don’t shine much light on what happened after the Dodgers left Brooklyn. They […]