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1998 New York Yankees (National Baseball Hall of Fame Library)   Baseball is unique in that its postseason has existed for over 110 years, enough time for teams to have many ups and many downs. This produces a vast trove of data with which to examine franchise success and failure. The history is deep enough […]

Stan Hack, who spent his entire big-league career (1932 –47) with the Chicago Cubs, was one of baseball’s all-time top leadoff batters.1 In 1931, playing with the Sacramento Solons, he compiled a .352 batting average and earned the nickname “Smiling Stan.” As Edward Burns wrote in the Rochester Democrat and Chronicle, “No matter how hard […]

Introduction The most important events of the season were the founding, organization, and successful completion of its championship season by the American Association of Professional Base Ball Clubs (AA), and the market responses by the National League of Professional Base Ball Clubs (NL), the incumbent, and the death of longtime NL President William Ambrose Hulbert. […]

Umpires, the unsung heroes of baseball, predictably received less than an appropriate share of the publicity generated by the 75th anniversary of the World Series in 1978. Although the men in blue are both essential and conspicuous participants in the National Pastime, they continue to be regarded generally as necessary evils by fans and as […]

Jake Brown deserves to be remembered as a profile in courage. A gruesome industrial accident in February 1974 could well have ended his baseball career. Yet even though his left forearm was nearly severed, Brown came back after surgery repaired the limb. A catcher by trade, he could no longer play behind the plate, but […]

Outfielder Román Mejías played in 627 big-league games from 1955 to 1964. Alas, just three of those came with the 1960 Pirates, his one US team that won a pennant. He was not on the roster when Pittsburgh won the World Series that year. Mejías was “an affable, good-natured player …  whose demeanor, humility and […]

Harry Walker was born to baseball and spent his life in the game. The son of one major leaguer and the brother of another, he was an All-Star outfielder, the lightning-rod manager of three teams, and a controversial hitting guru. Harry and Dixie Walker are the only brothers to win batting titles. When Harry came […]

In an era when baseball players, collectively and individually, began to clash with management as never before, it is likely that no one clashed more than Alex Johnson. Though he was blessed with much-coveted talent, teams that employed him tired of him fairly quickly. The winner of a batting title, his emotional disability was at […]

“I’ve seen a lot of powerful hitters in my time but for sheer ability to knock a ball great distances, I’ve never seen anybody better than Easter — and I’m not excepting Babe Ruth.” — Del Baker1   Luscious “Luke” Easter was born August 4, 1915 at 8:15 PM in Jonestown, Mississippi. During his playing […]

Earl Williams’ career was one marked by achievement and controversy. During his newsworthy career, spanning parts of eight seasons, Williams reached the heights of a 1971 National League Rookie of the Year season, and the low of leaving baseball as persona non grata at the age of 29. Born July 14, 1948 in Newark, New […]

Pack your bags. Frank Lane’s in town. The compulsive trader known as Frantic Frank shuffled at least 690 players in 414 transactions with five teams.1 Wherever Lane went, turmoil followed. He traded one manager for another. He traded a home run champion for a batting champ. He traded local heroes and future Hall of Famers. […]

Del Pratt was arguably the second-best second baseman of the second decade of the 20th century. And his argumentative nature led The New York Times’ John Kieran to call him “the greatest clubhouse lawyer baseball ever knew.” Pratt was born into a well-off family on January 10, 1888, in Walhalla, South Carolina, near the Georgia-North […]

“Jarvis fires away … That’s a fly ball, deep to left, back, back … HEY HEY! He did it! Ernie Banks got number 500! The ball tossed to the bullpen … everybody on your feet … this … is IT! WHEEEEEEEE!”— Jack Brickhouse, WGN-TV, May 12, 19701 When the curtain rang down on the 1969 […]

To tell the story of Buck O’Neil, one needs only to retell the stories by Buck O’Neil. He told stories of Satchel Paige, Josh Gibson, and other Negro League greats forgotten to history because of the color of their skin. He told them with a twinkle in his eye, a smile from ear to ear, […]

Franklin Walter Olin was born on January 9, 1860, in a backwoods logging camp in Woodford in the southernmost corner of the Green Mountains, near the Vermont-Massachusetts line. From that humble origin he went on to build a multi-million-dollar business that became the giant Olin Corporation, one of the largest in America’s military-industrial complex. En […]

Following the Pittsburgh Pirates’ loss to the Chicago Cubs on October 1, 2000, 60-year-old Willie Stargell emerged to throw a ceremonial final pitch at the soon-to-be-demolished Three Rivers Stadium. Even though most people who followed the Pirates knew “Pops” was in poor health his frail, spectral appearance that afternoon was shocking. He was almost unrecognizable, […]

At 6-foot-3 and 260 pounds (or more), burly Joey Meyer could really lay into a ball. The Hawaiian was a very promising minor-league slugger. On June 2, 1987, he unloaded a homer that is still talked about today — a shot into the second deck of the left-center stands at Denver’s Mile High Stadium that […]

The game meant nothing. Well, virtually nothing. The Detroit Tigers were ending a three-game series in Cleveland looking for a sweep after taking the first two contests. But that was all that Detroit was playing for on August 14, 1958. The Tigers and Indians were playing out the string, holding down fourth and fifth place […]

“People don’t know how good the Pacific Coast League is,” a onetime miner named H.V. “Hardrock Bill” Lane said in 1935. “There’s Oakland, or San Francisco.”1 A year later he moved the then-Double-A Hollywood Stars to San Diego, renamed them Padres for a nearby mission, opened single-tier 9,100-seat Lane Field, and began to fill a […]

On April 12, 1955, the former Philadelphia Athletics, having moved that winter to Kansas City, opened their first season at Municipal Stadium: A’s 6, Tigers 2, before a standing-room crowd of 32,147. Flanked by franchise progenitor Connie Mack, former President Harry Truman tossed the team’s first ball in Missouri’s first American League (AL) opener since […]

Pennant fever for Baltimore Oriole fans was unusually high as the 1966 season began because the newest Oriole, Frank Robinson, had excelled for the Cincinnati Reds the previous 10 seasons. His teammates admired his leadership qualities, hitting, and overall play during spring training, beginning on March 7, and many fans considered Robinson to be the […]

As areas of urban and suburban Baltimore simmered without electricity on the steamy afternoon and evening of Tuesday, September 22, 1970, the lights at Memorial Stadium shone brightly – and so did Earl Weaver’s Baltimore Orioles. Sweltering end-of-summer heat and a shortage of electrical capacity forced Baltimore Gas and Electric, along with other East Coast […]

Joe DiMaggio was scheduled to throw out the ceremonial first pitch prior to Game Six of the 1977 World Series between the New York Yankees and the Los Angeles Dodgers. In the Yankees dressing room before the game, DiMaggio grabbed a stool and sat next to New York’s star right fielder Reggie Jackson. A high-priced […]