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Right-handed pitcher Ralph Glaze’s father was a silver miner in Georgetown, Clear Creek County, of the Colorado Territory – the town used 100 years later as the site for filming the climactic showdown in Clint Eastwood’s Every Which Way but Loose. Ohio native Daniel Wolf Glaze had made his way across the continent at the […]

More than 30 years after his major-league playing days, one-time journeyman pitcher Alex Ferguson contemplated the questionnaire sent to him by the Hall of Fame librarian. The information sought was matter-of-fact: height, weight, date/place of birth, ancestry, etc. The questionnaire did not ask Ferguson to identify the high point of his career, doubtless membership on […]

Jim “Rawhide” Tabor was a five-tool player before that phrase became part of the baseball vernacular. He was 6-feet-2 and played at 175 to 185 pounds. Often described as raw-boned and rangy, he hit from the right side for average and with power. He had great speed, was Mercury-quick, and had a terrific throwing arm. Tabor’s arm […]

Fred Spencer, penner of passionate prose. In the summer of 1910, wooing his newfound love, Blanche Enlow of Hannibal, Missouri, with a barrage of penny postcards from his various stops with the Hannibal Cannibals of the Class D Central Association, the 25-year-old pitcher-outfielder came up with such gems as, “Howdy! Well, how are you?,” and […]

Few paths to organized baseball were as unique as that of Joseph Mitchell Tysko’s. A collegiate pitcher in West Texas, the right-hander captured the attention of the Abilene Blue Sox after stymieing the team in an exhibition match; no other hurler had held the hard hitting Class C club to so few runs. In May […]

“I got the name Show Boat in St. Louis with the Cards in 1930,” wrote George “Showboat” Fisher in a 1985 letter. “The show ‘Showboat’ was in St. Louis most of the summer, the fans liked what they saw, so they started to call me ‘Show Boat.’ I hit .374 to lead the club, and we won […]

In baseball history, few major leaguers have turned to sports writing as a full-time profession after their playing days. Sam Crane and Tim Murnane were nineteenth-century players who then wrote for, respectively, the Boston Globe and the New York Evening Journal. Charley Walters twirled in a half-dozen games for the 1969 Twins before becoming a […]

It is largely forgotten that Larry Jansen was the winning pitcher when Bobby Thomson hit his “Shot Heard Round the World” to dramatically win the 1951 pennant in the Polo Grounds. Indeed, without Jansen, it is highly unlikely that the Giants would have even been in the playoff against the Brooklyn Dodgers. With 23 victories […]

In the summer of 1946, Pittsburgh Courier columnist Wendell Smith gave Newark Eagles manager Biz Mackey all the credit for molding “together the best all-around pitching staff in Negro baseball.”1 Assembling talent is one thing, using it wisely and coping with obstacles that arise is a totally different talent. Mackey’s ace, Leon Day, opened the […]

Generations ago it would have been difficult to determine which was the more unlikely — a fringe major-league ballplayer ascending to the governorship of his home state and later becoming one of its United States senators, or a Democrat being elected to such lofty posts in then rock-solid Republican New Hampshire. Whichever the case, Fred […]

José Manuel Morales was a master pinch-hitter. In 1976 he made his big-league reputation with 25 base hits in this role. This single-season record stood until Colorado’s John Vander Wal stroked 28 in 1995; it remained the third best one-year total as the 2013 season ended. Morales — the seventh of 11 men from the […]

John Trautwein comes from a baseball family. His father Jack and brother Dave both played minor-league ball, and his son Michael, selected in the 13th round of the July 2021 major-league draft and signed with the Cincinnati Reds, represents the start of a third generation. John pitched in nine games for the 1988 Boston Red […]

Em Lindbeck’s big-league career spanned only two plate appearances. Although unsuccessful in the major leagues, he achieved success in nearly all other areas of his life. Lindbeck was a high school class president, a decorated multisport collegiate athlete, an all-star minor leaguer, an esteemed professional educator, and a public servant. A series of poor decisions […]

4,256. 755. 5,714. 511. .366. As baseball has often been described as a game of numbers, fans, reporters, and students of the game would most certainly recognize the preceding list of significant digits. These were the career accomplishments forever linked to the respective immortals Pete Rose, Hank Aaron, Nolan Ryan, Cy Young, and Ty Cobb. To that list, another […]

Patsy Tebeau was a pugnacious competitor from the mean streets of St. Louis who sought any advantage he thought he could gain. His tactics delivered a brand of baseball that clearly was much dirtier than you see in the modern game. Bill James has written about 19th century baseball: “The tactics of the eighties were […]

Branch Rickey was “a man of strange complexities, not to mention downright contradictions,” wrote the New York Times’ John Drebinger. The great decision to break baseball’s policy of excluding blacks, for which he is justly praised, has, in recent decades, tended to overwhelm the highly negative image he had earned before that decision. He went […]

The “Pebble” game. After 85 years it remains one of the most memorable games in the history of the World Series. On October 10, 1924, at Washington’s Griffith Stadium, in the seventh game of the World Series between the New York Giants and Washington Senators, the Senators’ Earl McNeely came to bat in the bottom […]

After Fred Thomas of the Boston Red Sox left for the Navy in July of 1918, third base was a tough position for manager Ed Barrow to fill. Catcher Wally Schang played there on occasion, but the hot corner was mostly played by a succession of career minor leaguers. All had strengths and weaknesses as […]

In 2004, as the Boston Red Sox won their first world championship in 86 years, right-handed sinkerball pitcher Derek Lowe earned the rare distinction of winning the clinching game in the Division Series, the League Championship Series, and the World Series itself. He won 176 regular-season games pitching for seven different major-league teams, but his […]

Maynard Faye Throneberry was the decidedly less-colorful — and less-celebrated — of the major leagues’ two Throneberry brothers. His younger brother was dubbed “Marvelous Marv”, a player who gained infamy as a symbol of baseball ineptitude, particularly in the field and on the base paths. Faye (he was never referred to by his first name) […]

An integral role player on the Big Red Machine’s World Series-winning teams in 1975 and 1976, Dan Driessen developed into a dependable, consistent, clutch-hitting first baseman over his 15-year major-league career. One of the best fielding first-sackers of his era, Driessen was the first designated hitter in the history of the National League when he […]

Cecil Duff was a fixture of the semiprofessional circuits of northeast Oregon before pitching three games for the Chicago White Sox in September of 1922. When his playing days were done, Duff returned to Oregon to work in the lumber mills, briefly managing a semipro team called the Loggers. With the ponderosa pine forests depleted […]

It was veteran pitcher vs. rookie as the Houston Astros and the Philadelphia Phillies squared off for an afternoon game at Philadelphia’s Citizens Bank Park: ace Roger Clemens of the visiting Astros and rookie Cole Hamels for the home team. Making his 15th start in his 23rd major-league season, the 43-year-old Clemens entered the game […]

In an outstanding final season at Auburn University,1 which resulted in a 50-17 record and a trip to the 1997 College World Series, Tim Hudson compiled a record of 15-2 with a 2.97 ERA and 165 strikeouts in 118⅓ innings2 and batted .396 with 18 homers, 21 doubles, and 95 RBIs3 – breaking the school […]