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A good manager, like a good magician, always has a trick up his sleeve. But a true tactician has a trick up someone else’s sleeve. That’s how Cleveland skipper Birdie Tebbetts overcame the overpowering Jim Kaat and the first-place Twins on a night in June 1965 at Metropolitan Stadium, invoking an obscure rule about jersey […]

On the rainy evening of March 17, 1871, delegates from 10 professional baseball clubs met at Collier’s Rooms in New York City, an upstairs saloon run by 32-year-old character actor James W. Collier at the corner of Broadway and 13th Street, just across from Wallack’s Theatre, where he frequently trod the boards. The clubs had […]

The Chicago Cubs are the oldest pillar in big-league sports. They have played for the pennant every year since 1874. Originally known as the White Stockings, the club played for two years in the National Association before being a founding member of the National League in 1876. Over time they have suffered more than 10,000 […]

Stan Williams, a veteran right-hander, stood atop the mound at Metropolitan Stadium in the top of the ninth inning of a 1-0 game with runners at first and second and two out. At the plate stood pinch-hitter Vada Pinson, a dangerous batter and a new arrival in his first month with the Cleveland Indians after […]

The July 4 game was played neither in Boston nor in Washington, but in Cincinnati. The Ohio city had been the home of the 1869-1870 Cincinnati Red Stockings, considered the first openly professional club — a team famous for its undefeated 1869 season and national tours. The National Association began play in 1871. With neither […]

The conclusion of a three-game series in Minnesota the first weekend in 1967 featured two teams fighting for the top spot in the American League and two of the top pitchers in baseball. The Minnesota Twins, second-place finishers in 1966, had to go through a managerial change in June to climb into the race. The […]

On September 30, 1982, a recovering alcoholic and former Red Sox reliever was working at his bar on Beacon Street when a Boston University graduate student came in for a drink with her fiancé—and boss. Much to the student’s surprise, her fiancé decided to leave the bar and return to his ex-wife. Now unemployed, she […]

The Chicago Tribune called it “The Most Brilliant Contest in the History of the Game.” Sportswriter Henry Chadwick, an ardent supporter of low-scoring “scientific” games, labeled it “the model game.” Other news reports called the June 19, 1875, contest between Hartford and Chicago the “most extraordinary” and “most remarkable” game ever played. For years baseball […]

On Tuesday, May 9, 1961, before a crowd of 4,514 fans at Minnesota’s Metropolitan Stadium, the Baltimore Orioles played an afternoon game against the Twins. Baltimore’s record was 12-10, while Minnesota’s was 11-11. This game was Baltimore’s first in Minnesota, as the Twins franchise moved from Washington after the 1960 season.1 If any of the […]

It sounds like a corny Hollywood movie. The home team has its back against the wall. It calls on its best pitcher, who bravely goes to the mound despite being sick. He not only wins the game, but hits a home run to boot. And if that’s not enough cornball for you, a friend had […]

Harmon Killebrew clouted 573 home runs in his 22-year big-league career, but few were more dramatic than his walk-off, two-run smash with two outs in the ninth inning to give the Minnesota Twins an exciting victory over the New York Yankees, 6-5, on Sunday, July 11, 1965, at Metropolitan Stadium. “The scene could have been […]

Beginning on March 18, 1981, Comiskey Park was the new ballpark where Carlton Fisk would work to hone his craft. The catcher known as “Pudge” signed on the dotted line of a five-year $3 million contract with the Chicago White Sox. It would seem unlikely that the Boston Red Sox, Fisk’s former team, would have […]

In their first home opener, before 24,606 fans at yet-to-be-completed Metropolitan Stadium, the Minnesota Twins played from behind the entire game before tying it, 3-3, in the bottom of the eighth inning and then losing it when the expansion Washington Senators scored two runs in the top of the ninth inning. Both starters, Joe McClain […]

Time was running out for the Detroit Tigers to keep the Chicago White Sox from running away with the 1919 pennant. Ten years after manager Hughie Jennings took his Tigers to their last World Series, their third straight appearance and third straight loss in the fall classic, he knew his team had a narrow margin […]

This edition of the fall classic had so many bizarre twists and turns that they might as well have had Rod Serling do the pregame show. First there were the Twins beating both of the Dodgers’ best pitchers, Don Drysdale and Sandy Koufax. Then the punchless Dodgers turned around and won the next two games […]

Bob Quinn owned the Boston Red Sox from 1923 into 1933. In 1936 he became president of the Boston Braves and renamed them the Bees, changing the name of the ballpark from Braves Field to National League Baseball Park. More imaginative locals called the place the Beehive. Some continued to call it Braves Field. African […]

Part of the beauty of baseball is just how unpredictable the national pastime really is. No matter what the standings show, or what the prospects for a particular team are, on any given day at the ballpark, there is a chance that you might see something you’ve never seen before. That was certainly the case […]

On April 9, 1965, the former Houston Colt .45s took the field as the Houston Astros, inaugurating indoor baseball in the Astrodome with a 2-1 exhibition win over the New York Yankees. Three nights later, on April 12, a standing-room-only crowd of 48,546 (42,652 paid1), including Commissioner Ford Frick, National League President Warren Giles, and […]

When the Washington Senators suited up for the final game of the season on October 2, 1960, they didn’t know it would be the last one for the storied franchise in the nation’s capital. In what appeared to be a hasty action by the American League only a few weeks after the season ended, Senators […]

Eighteen members and guests of the Bob Broeg St. Louis Chapter gathered at Lester’s Bar & Grill, located at 9906 Clayton Road on Tuesday, July 18, 2017. Chapter president Brian Flaspohler called the meeting to order. Items noted in “Today in Baseball History”: 1882 – Ambidextrous pitcher Tony Mullane of Louisville pitched with both hands in a […]

Circuit Judge William Corwin Johns was a staple of the Decatur, Illinois, courthouse during the early twentieth century. When he died suddenly in 1914, he was eulogized for having laid down the law with impartiality while “preserv[ing] more strict decorum in his court room than any judge ever on the bench in Macon county.” (Decatur […]

William H. “Bill” Lennon was the first player in a professional major league baseball game to score a run. From 1871-1873, he played in 28 games in the National Association of Professional Base Ball Players, recording 26 hits and batting .215 with 13 RBIs. He also umpired 15 games in that circuit through 1874. Previously, […]

From 1922 to 1938, middle infielder Hal Rhyne went back and forth from the San Francisco Seals to the Pittsburgh Pirates, and back and forth from the Seals to the Boston Red Sox. Rhyne was the starting shortstop for the Red Sox from 1929 through 1931 and the first half of the 1932 season. He […]

Bob Cerv survived kamikaze attacks in World War II and put all 10 of his children through college. In between, he was a three-time New York Yankee. The Yankees signed him, traded him, brought him back, let him go, and brought him back again. His claim to Yankee fame came in 1961, when he shared […]