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In all of Major League Baseball history, 119 players originated in the “Tree Planters’ State”1 of Nebraska. Charlie Abbey was the first, arriving during “the mauve decade”2 of the 1890s. Abbey doggedly zig-zagged his way through the loosely knit minor leagues with uneven progression. He was an anomaly as a lefty second baseman early on […]

“Pete Hill was the first great outfielder in black baseball history,” suggests baseball historian Lawrence Hogan.1 The left-handed Hill was a five-tool star with several famed independent African-American teams: the Philadelphia Giants (1904 to 1907), Leland Giants (1908 to 1910), and Chicago American Giants (1911 to 1918). He then slugged his way to Ruthian heights […]

Max Macon was the top pitching prospect in the St. Louis Cardinals’ farm system before he blew out his arm in his first spring training appearance. The left-hander, so skinny he could “close one eye and look like a needle,” was the rare pitcher who hit well enough to make a comeback as a position […]

Like Bob Caruthers, Jack Stivetts, and Guy Hecker, right-hander Dave Foutz embodied a singular 19th-century baseball species: the staff ace so adept with the bat that he was often penciled into the lineup on his pitching off-days. In fact, after a thumb injury reduced his hurling effectiveness, Foutz spent the latter part of his career […]

In the early evening of February 28, 1894, former Baltimore Orioles pitcher Pete McNabb and his paramour, actress wannabe Louise Kellogg, retired to the room that they shared in a Pittsburgh hotel. Moments later, three gunshots rang out from inside. Then, a fourth. Those responding to the scene found McNabb lying on the floor, dead […]

“It’s too bad,” John Roseboro said, “because a ballplayer would like to be remembered for something better than a bloody brawl, but that’s what everyone always remembers.”1 What everyone remembers is August 22, 1965: the day Juan Marichal bashed Roseboro in the head with a bat. He was so quiet, he was nicknamed “Gabby.” Roseboro […]

Catcher Russell “Hack” Ennis played in one major-league baseball game. Though he did not get to bat, he was behind the plate when Ty Cobb got his last hit in a Detroit Tigers uniform. On September 19, 1926, with his Washington Senators ahead, 7-6, Ennis entered in the bottom of the ninth inning of the […]

Eleanor Callow was more than just the greatest power hitter in All-American Girls Professional Baseball League (AAGPBL) history. On top of being the all-time leader in home runs and triples, Callow was perhaps the league’s best all-around position player. A speedy outfielder with a strong throwing arm, Callow ranks in the Top 10 in career […]

Few players in baseball history have jumped directly to the major leagues without ever playing a game in the minors. Many of these were the Bonus Babies in the years before the amateur draft was established in 1965. Before that, Hall of Famers Bob Feller, Frankie Frisch, Mel Ott, and George Sisler went directly from […]

Few individuals in the history of baseball can boast of a career to rival that of Clark Griffith’s. In terms of duration, as a player, manager, and executive, it was one of the longest ever, spanning nearly 70 years. Griffith is the only man in major league history to serve as player, manager, and owner […]

It is often the fate of those who are the second to complete a remarkable feat to be relegated to the dust bin of history. Any school child can tell you that Ferdinand Magellan was the first explorer to circumnavigate the world. But can you name the second? Most Americans know that Alan Shepard was […]

Born to a prominent family doctor in central Michigan, this one-game major league pitcher later became more noted as an umpire, thanks to a run-in with a star ballplayer. One of the few men to play and umpire in the major leagues, Charles Ferguson traveled the across the country playing baseball, and after retiring from […]

Pete Charton’s time in the big leagues was brief; he pitched in 25 games for the Boston Red Sox in 1964. It hadn’t taken him long to get there, having worked just one season in the minors beforehand. He showed considerable promise, but professional baseball did not hold the attraction he had hoped for. Before […]

Luis Eleuterio Tiant (1906-1976) was one of the finest pitchers that Cuba has ever produced. So was his son, Luis Clemente Tiant, who won 229 games in the major leagues from 1964 through 1982 – more than any of his countrymen. When asked about his namesake, Luis C. said in 1974, “He was a better […]

For someone who always preferred the simple things in life, James Augustus Hunter was a complex man. To most of the world, he was Catfish, the big-game, big-money, right-handed ace who anchored an Oakland A’s pitching staff that won three straight World Series titles from 1972 to 1974. It was Catfish who in May 1968 […]

In 1927, the Chicago Cubs signed local sandlot hurler Roy Hansen. Skipper Joe McCarthy thought highly enough of the 20-year-old to extend him an invitation to spring training for the first of three successive years. Hansen was surely overwhelmed by the team’s picturesque training facility on Catalina Island, club owner William Wrigley’s private sanctuary located […]

Hawaiian reliever Ryan Kurosaki was the third American of Japanese Ancestry (AJA) to play major-league baseball — but the first of 100% Japanese descent.1 His time at the top was brief — seven games with the St. Louis Cardinals in 1975 at age 22. The Cards called up the righty from Class AA early in […]

Art Fromme struggled often with illness and injury, but when healthy he was among the best pitchers in the National League. In his finest season, the right-hander achieved a 19-13 record for the 1909 Cincinnati Reds. He never threw a major-league no-hitter, but from 1907-14 he hurled four one-hitters and four two-hitters. Arthur Henry Fromme […]

The lesser known of two professional baseball-playing brothers, Mutz Ens had a nightmarish tryout with the 1912 Chicago White Sox. In three early September games, he went hitless at the plate, made a rash of physical and mental miscues at first base, and was relieved of his uniform little more than a week after making […]

The idea of a winter retreat appealed to many in the baseball business. The men the game attracted were by their nature sportsmen. Unless a man resided in a remote area during the winter, he gravitated towards his baseball companions, especially if he was a bachelor, to partake in any number of activities such as […]

This article was originally published in the December 2024 edition of the SABR Black Sox Scandal Committee Newsletter.   Judge Hugo M. Friend presided over the Black Sox trial during the summer of 1921, less than a year after he was tabbed to fill a temporary vacancy on the Cook County circuit court bench. (Photo: […]

This article appears in SABR’s “When the Monarchs Reigned: Kansas City’s 1942 Negro League Champions” (2021), edited by Frederick C. Bush and Bill Nowlin.   Were it not for the Chicago Defender, New York Amsterdam News, Pittsburgh Courier, Baltimore Afro-American, and other African American newspapers, there would have been scant coverage of Black professional baseball. […]

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 […]

Any time a baseball team ends a game with more errors than hits, chances are that it had a tough day at the office. That sums up the Kansas City Royals’ performance against the Oakland Athletics on the night of May 13, 1974. The six-hit complete-game pitching of Oakland’s Vida Blue would have been tough […]