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When Shufflin’ Phil Douglas arrived on the baseball scene in 1910 at the tender age of 20, he brought with him size and a fastball impressive enough to draw comparisons to Walter Johnson’s. Douglas, a product of Cedartown, Georgia, was a big man, especially for that era, standing 6-feet-3 and weighing 190 pounds, who threw […]

Oscar “Heavy” Johnson was briefly one of the premier power hitters of the Negro Leagues. After spending nearly eight prime seasons playing for the U.S. Army’s 25th Infantry Wreckers (where he was the batterymate of Hall of Famer Wilber “Bullet” Rogan), Johnson joined the Kansas City Monarchs in 1922 and immediately won back-to-back Negro National […]

Because he was born on an Indian reservation, Roy Johnson was considered a ward of the government. He and his younger brother Bob Johnson, who joined the Red Sox in 1944, were both born in Pryor, Oklahoma (some 35 miles east of Tulsa) – before Oklahoma became a state. Roy was the eldest of the […]

Carl Everett made an impact on and off the baseball field, and not always for positive reasons. Everett, born in Tampa, Florida, was an incredible athlete at Hillsborough High School, where he played three sports, baseball, football, and track. Everett’s athletic ability was impressive enough for him to be drafted by the New York Yankees […]

Eric Hetzel was selected four separate times in the major-league draft, ranging from January 1983 to June 1985. The last two times, he was a first-round pick. The Red Sox wanted him, the Royals wanted him, and the Pirates wanted him. He finally signed with the team that first selected him, the Boston Red Sox, […]

The tale is familiar to followers of baseball legend: Young boy growing up in rough-and-tumble circumstances, running roughshod over parents and teachers, unrepentantly scoffing at law and decency, finally ends up in front of the local magistrate who has him declared incorrigible and packed off to the nearest reformatory. There, the lad discovers an outlet […]

Second baseman Newt Allen’s Kansas City Monarchs teammates gave him the nickname “Colt” in 1922 because he was the youngest member of the team.1 Over the course of a 23-plus-year career in the Negro Leagues that also included stints in other countries, Allen proved to be one of the best players ever to man the […]

Perhaps Joe Simpson was destined to play and describe a game of pitch and catch and hit. For one thing, the holiday baby was born December 31, 1951, at a time when baseball was the only game in town. Imagining the pastime, hearing it on radio, or watching on television, no one needed slow motion, […]

 In the age of 100-pitch limits and “five and fly” starters, this sounds like a video game gone haywire: Leon Cadore and Joe Oeschger each pitched 26 innings on May 1, 1920, completing the longest game in major-league history. Cadore was a Brooklyn favorite who spent his childhood in the borough and earned respect for […]

Numbers don’t define Tom Brookens, but one has to start somewhere. Third base was his primary home for 10 major-league seasons with the Detroit Tigers, starting on July 10, 1979, through the 1988 season, followed by one-year stints with the New York Yankees and Cleveland Indians. His last major-league game was on September 30, 1990. […]

The Los Angeles Dodgers had a pair of antique dueling pistols in the late ’70s. Yet despite their age, Vic Davalillo and Manny Mota were in great condition – and the fire of these small arms was often deadly. Davalillo’s big-league career had seemingly ended in 1974, but after more than three years in the […]

Baseball on the radio is an important part of the lives of countless people. The radio play-by-play announcer serves as the narrator of the game. The personal connections developed between fans and their favorite announcers can last for decades. The radio talent becomes the “voice of baseball” and the inside, personal connection that fans have […]

During Michael Cuddyer’s 15-year major league career, he was an All-Star in both leagues, helped lead the Mets to the World Series, won a batting championship for the Rockies, and was the longtime heart and soul of the Minnesota Twins. Marked for stardom at a young age, Cuddyer battled to establish himself in the big […]

For most people, spending a decade as a reliable major leaguer with a .290 career batting average would stand as the achievement of a lifetime. But the argument could be made that Frank Baumholtz’s baseball accomplishments ranked third behind a standout basketball career and an impressive record of service in World War II. However you […]

Perfect execution usually equals success in baseball. For Jim Burton, one slider that dipped low and away sent him into the pantheon of World Series goats. Jim Scott Burton was born to Hubert and Alyce Burton on October 27, 1949, in Royal Oak, Michigan, a suburb 15 miles north of Detroit. Hubert Burton was a […]

In late season 1910, buoyed by an impressive batting performance in his first 18 games in the major leagues, it appeared that the Cleveland Naps had found a long-term answer to their search for a first baseman to replace longtime incumbent George Stovall in the person of 25-year-old Eddie Hohnhorst. Unfortunately for Hohnhorst, and for […]

Thanks to Giacomo Girolamo’s lecherous lifestyle, “Casanova” has become shorthand for a lothario prone to incorrigible womanizing. The term, however, literally translates “new house” or “new home” in Italian. This meaning is much more adequate for Raúl Casanova, whose 21-year professional career included stints with nearly 30 teams in the major, minor, Puerto Rican, Dominican, […]

Born in Cincinnati on October 5, 1858, John Good Reilly would spend most of his life and nearly all of his baseball career in his native city. He passed his earliest years at his family’s home in the city’s East End, within walking distance of the Ohio River. The family’s circumstances were probably fairly comfortable, […]

Exactly 90 minutes after Chicago White Sox left-hander Dickey1 Kerr fired a strike past Cincinnati’s Morrie Rath to start Game Three of the 1919 World Series, he coaxed the dangerous Heinie Groh to tap an 0-1 pitch harmlessly to third base. Buck Weaver, the White Sox third baseman, fielded the ball effortlessly and threw over […]

During the 1890s southpaw Bert Inks pitched for six different major league clubs – but posted a winning record for only one of them. More than a century later, that performance prompted a 19 th century baseball scholar to declare, “Bert Inks exemplified the lengths to which teams often go to give a left-handed pitcher […]

Mel McGaha’s life was part Frank Merriwell, part Greek tragedy. Like Merriwell, the fictional athlete popularized in dime novels, McGaha (pronounced mŭ-GAY-hay) was a clean-cut, handsome figure who excelled in multiple sports as a collegian. A University of Arkansas graduate, he was a basketballer drafted by the New York Knickerbockers, a two-way football player signed […]

Chroniclers of the game have rarely been kind to Andrew Freedman, principal owner of the New York Giants from January 1895 to September 1902. According to one team historian, Freedman was “naturally arrogant (with) a bad temper at the end of a very short fuse.”1   In much the same vein, Bill James memorably described him […]

Federal League Park in Indianapolis, looking in from the right-field fence. (Indianapolis News, January 27, 1917)   Specifically constructed in 1914 to serve as the home field for the Indianapolis Hoosiers, Federal League Park was a state-of-the-art steel and concrete stadium with a seating capacity in excess of 20,000. Only three years later, the handsome […]

Fans cheer on their favorite team on June 29, 2021, at Dodger Stadium. (Copyright: Steven Cukrov / dreamstime.com)   On October 8, 1957, the stockholders and directors of the Brooklyn Baseball Club announced that the franchise would move to Los Angeles for the 1958 season.1 A welcoming parade jammed downtown LA streets.2 On the steps […]