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Richard Leo Gedman fulfilled his childhood dream in his tenure in the major leagues, suiting up for over a decade for the team he grew up rooting for. Gedman, a native of Worcester, Massachusetts, spent parts of 11 seasons (1980-1990) as a catcher for the Boston Red Sox. The two-time All-Star also played for the […]

Thomas Williams’s pitching career spanned only eight years, but in that time he proved to be an important member of Rube Foster’s Chicago American Giants teams in the early years of the Negro National League. Although not much is documented about Williams’s early life, he was born on September 28, 1896, in Charleston, South Carolina, […]

The very best parts of a game always were at the end for Eric Plunk. He was a starting pitcher early in his career, but like many hard throwers, he had problems with his command, especially with his secondary offerings, and he found his highest and best use in major-league bullpens for 14 seasons. Plunk’s […]

Third-string catcher Charlie “Legs” Dorman played in his lone major-league game on May 14, 1923, for the Chicago White Sox only after the starting catcher was removed and the backup split his finger open on a foul ball. Dorman took quite the circuitous route to his one moment on the big stage: from a San […]

Do we call him Junior or Gene? Was Junior his given name or a nickname? Could it be both? No matter. As a fresh-faced youngster Junior Thompson helped the Cincinnati Reds win two consecutive National League pennants. As a mature veteran Gene Thompson impacted the game of baseball for half a century. Junior Eugene Thompson […]

For those of you have never heard of the Magnus Force, as first described in 1852 by the German physicist Heinrich Gustav Magnus, it is a force generated by a spinning object moving through a fluid experience with a sideways deflection in its path. The force is perpendicular to the velocity vector of an object, […]

Bob Lennon hit 64 home runs for the Southern Association Nashville Vols in 1954, but his most memorable homer came on April 30, 1957, when he was playing for the Chicago Cubs. “It was what I had dreamed about,” he recalled in a 1993 interview. He hit it in Ebbets Field, where he had rooted […]

During his late 19th-century heyday, right-handed pitcher Ad Gumbert was regarded as one of the game’s most well-rounded performers. That status was founded on 123 major league victories led by two seasons of 20-plus wins; fielding skills that made him an outfield option; and a formidable bat with extra-base power. Gumbert was just 29 years […]

Billy Sorrell was the type of player scouts coveted: a 6-foot, 190-pound left-handed hitter with power and speed who could play both infield and outfield. Legendary scout Tony Lucadello tracked and signed Sorrell for the Philadelphia Phillies in 1959. Sorrell was a good batsman, often clutch, who played 14 professional seasons from 1960 until 1973, […]

Gary Kroll, a hard-throwing right-hander who once pitched 20 consecutive hitless innings in the minors, made his big-league debut for the Philadelphia Phillies on July 26, 1964. Less than two weeks later, the 22-year-old pitcher was gone, traded to the New York Mets for 35-year-old slugger Frank Thomas. Kroll had been regarded as a tremendous […]

In four years of high school and two in college, Daryl Spencer won just one varsity sports letter. In his first season of Ban Johnson baseball, he hit about .260. Not a single major league scout even nodded toward him until well into his first season of professional baseball. Yet he was in a major-league […]

“A real man is Bill Tuttle – someone who will stand up and tell the truth.” – Joe Garagiola, 19981   Bill Tuttle was a capable journeyman outfielder who played during 11 seasons in the American League (1952; 1954-63). He had his best year at age 25, manning center field for the 1955 Detroit Tigers. He […]

Few Flatbushers made the effort to attend the game on a cloudy, warm afternoon.1 Just 3,874 – only 12 percent of Ebbets Field’s capacity in 1955 – bore witness to a record-breaking 10th straight win to start the season.2 Before the season, Dodgers President Walter O’Malley reminded Brooklyn that the Dodgers had won four pennants […]

The Chicago Cubs, managed by Joe McCarthy, were on a roll. They had won 11 of their last 12 games, and had vaulted from fourth place to second place in the National League, when they arrived in Boston for a three-game series with the Braves, July 25-27, 1928. The seventh-place Braves had just returned from […]

The Pittsburgh Pirates clashed with the Philadelphia Phillies on a Saturday afternoon in July at the Baker Bowl in Philadephia. The game “brought out a test of strength between the two pitchers who figured in the recent trade involving the Pirates and Quakers — Lee Meadows and [Whitey] Glazner.”1 On May 23, 1923, Meadows and […]

Baseball’s distinctive aspects – the most scheduled games of all team sports, greatest amenability to playing two games in one day, and highest likelihood of suspended games getting completed at a later date – have produced more than a few chronological oddities. On May 30, 1922, Max Flack and Cliff Heathcote swapped teams between games […]

With crews on hand from all three major television networks and reporters from a dozen newspapers that did not normally cover the Brewers crowding the press box, all eyes at County Stadium were fixed on Paul Molitor. Molitor had stretched what was already the fifth longest hitting streak since 1900 to 39 games by lining […]

The Minnesota Twins were fully aware of how, just one year before, the Philadelphia Phillies had blown a seemingly insurmountable lead with very little time remaining in the season. The Twins had been on the verge of clinching the pennant for about a week when they traveled to Washington in late September of 1965. They […]

On October 4, 1969, nearly 40,000 fans filed into Memorial Stadium in Baltimore for the first-ever American League Championship Series. Beginning in 1969 the American and National Leagues were separated into two divisions, East and West. At the end of the season, each division winner would square off in a best-of-five series to decide who […]

The Philadelphia Phillies opened a two-game weekend series at Wrigley Field on Saturday, April 17, 1976, in a bit of a slump. Their record four games into the new season was an uninspiring 1-3, putting a damper on the enthusiasm surrounding a team that had been picked by many to win the National League East. […]

“The Cubs had 25 base runners, and (the public-address) announcer grew hoarse saying, ‘Next batter …’” 1 The league-leading Cincinnati Reds completed a four-game series at Wrigley Field with a doubleheader on June 28, 1961, and found that the seventh place Cubs were not without life. Despite their lowly station, the Cubs (25-41) had won […]

After the Cubs had split the first two games of the 2016 World Series in Cleveland, they returned home to the friendly confines of Wrigley Field for what would be the first fall classic game at the venerable stadium since October 10, 1945. On that date, Chicago’s North Siders had lost the seventh game of […]

When Cubs fans preview the day’s game, they look at the weather report for Wrigley Field, even before asking, “Who’s pitching?” This afternoon they could expect warm temperatures (upper 70s) with steady winds from the southwest (10 mph gusting over 30 mph, from home plate toward the batter’s eye in center field). If the light […]