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“I’ll be part of that team for the rest of their life. Even though I wasn’t a big part of the team, I’m still connected with it.” – Jamie Brown, on his time with the 2004 Red Sox1 Jamie Brown pitched four games in the major leagues, all with the 2004 World Series champion Boston […]

In September 1976 Hall of Fame inductees Yogi Berra and Warren Spahn were only the two most prominent names among a large field of managerial candidates available to the expansion Toronto Blue Jays. But the Jays startled the baseball world by selecting the hardly-household-name Roy Hartsfield as the franchise’s first skipper. But the surprise may […]

It’s an old story. A player comes on the scene, dazzles in his rookie year, and is gone seemingly as fast as he came. Then there’s Jimmie Hall. Hall burst on the scene with a bang with the Minnesota Twins in 1963. Actually, he had 33 of them, which broke Ted Williams’s AL record for […]

He was as natural a ballplayer as you would ever want to see. His swing was as beautiful as a Michelangelo sculpture and his throws from right field were so powerful and accurate that a cartoonist for the Montreal Gazette drew a caricature of Ellis Valentine that had a cannon where his right arm should […]

“Up on the bank, back to the fence, and then almost to the infield sprinted the cyclonic human to capture torrid drives.”1 – from Dayton Herald, June 29, 1926, in a story of the fielding exploits of “‘Hawk’ Evans, One of Robin Hood’s distant kin.” This is the story of a man whose agility and […]

Pat Corrales spent more than 50 years in professional baseball as a player, coach, and manager. Although he will never be confused with a slugging catcher like Mike Piazza, Corrales was an excellent defensive catcher and a student of the game who parlayed his knowledge and experience into a long and successful career as a […]

Visiting Cincinnati hurler Elton Chamberlain was in Boston’s Congress Street Grounds pitcher’s box for the afternoon game of the May 30, 1894, Decoration Day doubleheader. “Icebox” had no-hit the champ Beaneaters the previous September in Porkopolis (in a game called due to darkness after seven innings) and he was about to face half the same […]

Returning home for the third game of the 2015 World Series after suffering two disappointing losses in Kansas City, the New York Mets hoped to turn things around on their home turf. The Royals were feeling confident after taking a 2-0 lead in the Series. They had shown they were not intimidated by the young […]

On May 5, 1943, the Chicago Tribune was chock-full of news. For a cost of 3 cents, one could absorb 48 pages from the Trib, self-described as the “World’s Greatest Newspaper.” With the United States nearing its 17th month as a combatant in World War II, the bulk of the front page centered on military […]

The Chicago Cubs swept all seven games against the New York Mets during the 2015 season but were swept by the Mets, four wins to none, in the National League Championship series. A season later, on June 30, 2016, the Cubs and Mets began their first series of the season, a four-game set at Citi […]

In a Monday-afternoon game at Wrigley Field, the “Cubs buried Philadelphia under an avalanche of twenty-four hits,” defeating the Phillies, 21-8.1 Every Chicago batter had at least one hit, reached base at least twice, and scored at least one run.2 Cubs center fielder Hack Wilson led the barrage with five hits, including the cycle. The […]

Wearing home pinstripes with powder blue logos and graphite caps, the Cubs defeated the Pirates for the 500th time at Wrigley Field in front of 41,024 fans and before a national television audience on Father’s Day 2016.1 The broadcasting crew of ESPN’s Sunday Night Baseball (Dan Shulman, Aaron Boone, and Jessica Mendoza) called the game […]

This article appears in SABR’s “Wrigley Field: The Friendly Confines at Clark and Addison” (2019), edited by Gregory H. Wolf.   William Sianis planned to spend the afternoon at Wrigley Field with his pet goat, Murphy. Sianis, a Chicago businessman and first-class attention-getter, had purchased two box-seat tickets for $7.20 apiece. It was Saturday, October […]