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Neither team had won a championship in decades. The Cleveland Indians and the Chicago Cubs, the two teams with longest postseason title droughts, knew that one of them would finally end the years of disappointment. For the Cubs, it had been 108 years since their last championship. Indians fans had to go back only 68 […]

In 2017 a major-league game typically lasted more than three hours. Imagine completing one in less than one hour? That’s what the Chicago Cubs’ Grover Cleveland Alexander did when he needed just 58 minutes to shut out the Boston Braves on the north side of the Windy City. [Alexander] “figured the game was not worth […]

Let’s ponder these statistics for a moment: 187 pitches in a 10-inning complete game, 10 walks and 12 punchouts, one hit batter, at least 13 full counts, bases filled twice, 10 stranded runners, and three outfield flies. Together they produced Cincinnati Reds speedballer Jim Maloney’s no-hitter, arguably the most astounding in big-league history.1 “It was […]

The 1964 National League pennant race might not have been the greatest one in league history, but it certainly ranked among the most exciting finishes. The Philadelphia Phillies had taken over first place from the San Francisco Giants on July 17 after a month of trading spots with them atop the NL standings. Philadelphia then […]

Tommy McCarthy of the Boston Beaneaters was one of the smartest players in baseball. The outfielder with the “smooth face and boyish smile” was quick thinking, “fast on his feet,” and “game to the core.”1 The Pittsburgh Pirates were victims of his astute play on Wednesday, August 15, 1894, at the South End Grounds in […]

Knowing visitors to Wrigley Field realize upon entering the venerated confines that they are walking into a veritable baseball museum. Visit Wrigley in the fall, when the ivy has faded from bright green to brown, and you can almost hear those iconic brick walls whisper a tale. A tale of what occurred on October 6, […]

“It’s just a crazy game,” said 39-year-old Warren Spahn. “How many years? Sixteen years I’ve been pitching and now I get a no-hitter.”1 Spahn had come close before, twice tossing one-hit shutouts, but in his 506th big-league start, the seemingly ageless southpaw accomplished yet another first by holding the Philadelphia Phillies hitless while striking out 15. […]

A sellout crowd packed Fenway Park and then waited 20 minutes for the rain to subside. Not a long wait to honor a man who had spent 23 years donning a Red Sox uniform. When he started in 1961, Carl Yastrzemski was just a kid charged with the unenviable task of replacing Ted Williams in […]

It was relatively early in the 1986 season, but when the Boston Red Sox (29-14) faced the Cleveland Indians at Cleveland Stadium on the night of May 27, 1986, they led the American League East Division and held a seven-game lead over the sixth-place Indians – who nonetheless owned a winning record (22-21).1 The Indians […]

As the Cubs occupied themselves with preparations for Game Four of the World Series against the Cleveland Indians, their fans were busy trying to convince themselves that the home team could overcome the previous night’s 1-0 loss — the second Cleveland shutout of the Series — that had put Chicago into a 2-1 Series deficit. […]

Cincinnati has long prided itself as the cradle of America’s national pastime. The Reds were founded in 1866 and were the first openly professional team in 1869, and the city’s love affair with baseball in general and the Reds in particular is unmatched in the annals of the game. But that faith was being tested […]

Bob Veale was one of the hardest-throwing and most intimidating strikeout pitchers in the National League from 1962 through 1972. The bespectacled left-hander stood 6-feet-6 inches tall and weighed 212 pounds — the combination of size, arm strength, and questionable vision made him an imposing figure on the mound and one of the most difficult […]

A baseball journeyman, Reno Bertoia nevertheless held a number of distinctions. He was one of baseball’s original bonus babies. Of the seven major leaguers born in Italy, he had the longest career, ten seasons. (One of the seven, Alex Liddi, was still active in 2012.) In Bertoia’s big-league debut, with his hometown Detroit Tigers, the […]

Dave Baldwin didn’t talk to the baseball or scream at the hitters. Offering no self-styled Mark Fidrych or Al Hrabosky theatrics on the mound, the relief pitcher was a quiet guy to the point of being shy, almost unnoticeable. Yet in 176 games over six seasons with the Washington Senators, Milwaukee Brewers and Chicago White […]

If Andy Kosco’s baseball career could be described in a song, it might be the old Hank Snow classic “I’ve Been Everywhere.” Australian country music artist Geoff Mack wrote the song; in the original version a man hitches a ride with a truck driver and proceeds to tell him that he has visited every town, […]

He delivered big hits on occasion but is still asked most often about a thrown ball that struck him in the wrist while he was running to first base in the 1969 World Series. “I kid around with the fans and show them how I swelled up. I just stick my arms out. I don’t […]

Paul Bunyan has nothing on Rich Rowland. Bunyan was a mythical giant lumberjack and folk hero in American and Canadian folklore. He had a pet blue ox named Babe, but never played in the major leagues.1 Rowland – who was “strong like an ox”2 – worked as a lumberjack and heavy equipment operator in the […]

“WHEN HE WENT up for his last at-bat, I looked up and saw his stats: 69 home runs, 144 RBIs, and I’m thinking, ‘Look at that; that’s not a season, that’s a career,’” Tom Lampkin said about his best friend, Mark McGwire. Lampkin had that thought during the last game of the 1998 season, just […]

A tenacious, feisty catcher who played six years in the 1890s with the Chicago club of the National League, Tim Donahue appeared in 466 major league games and compiled a .236 lifetime batting average. He was an outspoken individual, having what one sportswriter termed “a tongue as nimble as a squirrel’s and as sharp as […]

“Frank Killen is certainly a natural born pitcher,” opined sportswriter John M. Roche in Sporting Life in 1892 as the burly 6-foot-1, 200-pound southpaw was preparing for his first full season in the big leagues. “He is well built, young and possessed of all the attributes which go to make up a winning pitcher.”1 That […]

Circa turn of the Twentieth Century’s industrial post-war boom. An immigrant tide augurs writer Eric Goldman’s Metro-American. “The more people moved to the cities,” Bill Veeck observed, “enclosed parks moved the game downtown.” Self-interest led it where the action was. Slums, lumber yards, and vacant lots fell to baseball’s craze for cash.    By then, the […]