Search Results

Bob Davids, a career Federal government employee, never played professional baseball. However, he had a deep and lasting impact on the game by founding the Society for American Baseball Research (SABR) in 1971. This organization has had a large effect on how baseball is quantified and discussed, and its existence is a logical extension of […]

On a warm September evening in 1995 at Baltimore’s Camden Yards, Oriole shortstop Cal Ripken Jr. helped restore America’s faith in baseball. The contentious nature of the previous year’s strike had left many of the sport’s dedicated fans wondering what the future held for their beloved national pastime. Following the 1919 Black Sox Scandal, the […]

Reaching the major leagues takes so much hard work and talent that it’s always interesting to read about players who get there and then turn their backs on the game. Examples include Jack Shepard, the promising Pittsburgh Pirates catcher of the 1950s, who abruptly left baseball for an attractive job opportunity;1 Bruce Bochte of the […]

They called him “The Blazer.” As a minor leaguer he drew comparisons to Jackie Robinson. Don Blasingame wasn’t as talented as Robinson, but he was good enough to play 12 years in the major leagues, with appearances in an All-Star Game and a World Series. He married a Miss America finalist, who was the daughter […]

In the late 1930s, Malden (Massachusetts) Catholic High School principal Brother Gilbert, the same Christian servant who had recommended George Herman Ruth to Baltimore Orioles manager Jack Dunn two decades earlier, believed he had hit pay dirt again. He arranged a meeting between righthanded phenom hurler Joe Coleman and his former protégé. “Pleased to meet […]

The most athletically gifted of three big league brothers, Charlie High hit .323 across 14 minor league seasons, but could not turn that heavy hitting into anything more than a pair of September tryouts with the last-place Philadelphia Athletics in 1919 and 1920. Charles Edwin High was born December 1, 1898, in Ava, Illinois, to […]

A Wisconsin hero on the football gridiron and the baseball diamond, Robert James ‘Red’ Wilson was a bright, talented, and dedicated student-athlete who later enjoyed a good major league career as a catcher for the Chicago White Sox, the Detroit Tigers, and, briefly, the Cleveland Indians from 1951 to 1960. One of the greatest athletes […]

“There are a lot of men like Harry Warner at the fringes of the game,” observed Minneapolis Tribune columnist Doug Grow shortly after the 1982 World Series. “The game grabs them young and holds on forever. And it doesn’t give them a whole bunch in return.” Be that as it may, Warner certainly appreciated what […]

Lou Piniella was a key member of the expansion franchise Kansas City Royals. Piniella earned the nicknamed “Sweet Lou” because of his sweet swing and (facetiously) his temper tantrums. As a member of the Yankees of the 1970s, Piniella was never the best player on a team of superstars, but he was always a fan favorite […]

Lennie Pearson was one of the mainstays of the Newark Eagles for more than a decade, but it wasn’t until the 1946 Negro World Series that Pearson came out of the shadows. The first baseman batted an astounding .393 in the Series against the Kansas City Monarchs to help the Eagles put their stamp on […]

Third baseman Ty LaForest had one of the best home debuts in Boston Red Sox history. Just 21 months later, he was dead. LaForest was a local kid, called up to the big leagues after a superlative season in Double-A (then the top minor-league classification). Playing his first game on the road in Washington on […]

Babe Ruth was irreplaceable. So when the end finally came for Ruth during the first game of a doubleheader on May 30, 1935, Boston Braves manager Bill McKechnie sent in outfielder Hal Lee to replace the irreplaceable. Lee was accustomed to playing in the shadows of other stars of the 1930s, including Chuck Klein and […]

“Amazing,” said Ray Crone when asked by the author to describe fan support in Milwaukee in the 1950s.[1] A tall, lanky right-handed pitching prodigy signed by the Braves in 1949, Crone debuted in 1954 and pitched a ten-inning complete game in his first start in the major leagues. However, after four inconsistent seasons and a […]

Oscar Joseph Levy—known throughout the baseball world as Oscar Levis and “Oscal”, and before that as Chick Levy on the diamonds of Panama—was one of the finest pitchers in Black baseball. For more than a decade beginning in 1921, he was the Cuban Stars’ most trusted arm, a year-round competitor who traveled between New York […]

“I like to think of the world’s greatest athlete coming up to bat against me – Tiger Woods, Wayne Gretzky, I don’t care who it is – and I’m looking at him thinking, ‘You have no chance.’ “1 There was a moment in the third game of the 1996 World Series that felt eerily familiar […]

An aggressive right-hander who threw mostly fastballs, Roger Erickson pitched six years in the majors (1978-1983) for the Twins and Yankees. One of the top rookies of 1978, he bounced back from elbow surgery to enjoy another fine season, but threw his last big-league pitch at age 26 because of shoulder woes. Roger Farrell Erickson […]

Cleveland manager Kerby Farrell rushed to the mound after pitcher Herb Score was struck in the face by a line drive off the bat of the Yankees’ Gil McDougald on May 7, 1957. “He was bleeding from his eyes, nose, mouth and ears. All we could think of doing was trying to save his life,” […]

Until his fateful involvement in the plot to fix a World Series, Fred McMullin was known as the Chicago White Sox’ “lucky man.”1 His addition to the starting lineup coincided with late-season surges to win the American League pennant in 1917 and 1919. Today he is mostly thought of as the “forgotten man” – in […]

It may have been happenstance that made Ron Blomberg own a piece of history as baseball’s first designated hitter. After he overcame anti-Semitism in his hometown of Atlanta to become the number one overall pick by the New York Yankees in the free agent draft in 1967, his dream of playing in New York City, […]

If anyone knew the definition of pain, it was right-hander Al Nipper, who toiled for parts of seven seasons in the big leagues (1983-1988, 1990), most notably for the Boston Red Sox. His list of injuries and maladies seems hard to fathom: nerve problems in his neck and elbow, chronic elbow inflammation, a blood disorder […]

Like a multitude of others, right-handed pitcher John Fitzgerald owed his ascension to the major leagues to the turmoil of the 1890 season. Among the consequences of the arrival on scene of the upstart Players League was the enlistment of previously minor league clubs into the major league American Association. Among those so elevated was […]

Frank “Lefty” Hoerst was one of Philadelphia’s best high-school and college basketball players of the 1930s at a time when there was no viable national basketball league. Upon graduating from LaSalle in 1939 he turned to his second best sport, baseball, and signed with the local Phillies. A year later, he debuted with the lowly […]

Johnny Neun, the Detroit Tigers’ 26-year-old backup first baseman, was having breakfast with teammates on May 31, 1927. An article in the morning newspaper reported the unassisted triple play turned by Chicago Cubs shortstop Jimmy Cooney the day before, prompting Neun to remark, “I wonder how long it will be before anybody makes another one.”1 […]

Baseball traveled through rough waters beginning in the late 1960s, as it navigated increasing player unrest and the growing power of their union. Court cases, strikes, hearings, lawsuits—it was challenging to follow baseball in this period without a law degree. The off-field headliners—Curt Flood, Bowie Kuhn, Marvin Miller, Andy Messersmith, Charlie Finley—are as famous as […]