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When the San Francisco Giants took the field at Candlestick Park on Friday, October 1, 1965, their season was hanging in the balance, and precariously so. The Giants trailed the first-place Los Angeles Dodgers by two games with only three games left in the season. Just a week and a half before, on September 20, the Giants had enjoyed […]

The bleachers at Ebbets Field were filled two hours before the first pitch. The game was a sellout by noon, and many of the estimated 10,000 fans who were turned away continued to line the streets around the park. Young boys tumbled over a gate near the corner of McKeever Place and Montgomery; most were […]

Major League Baseball announced on April 11, 2009, that the 2011 All-Star Game would be played at Phoenix’s Chase Field. In most cases, the 27 months between announcement and first pitch involve press conferences and news releases in a buildup of excitement for the midsummer classic. But in this instance, sports and politics intertwined. On […]

The St. Louis Cardinals entered July 1944 with an eight-game lead over the second-place Pittsburgh Pirates. The reigning NL champions compiled a 42-19 record through June 30, the best record in the majors. Manager Billy Southworth guided the Cardinals to successive World Series appearances in 1942-43 and a 17-5 record during June 1944. Their success […]

Baseball magic was happening in Chicago during the summer of 1977. It was late June and both of the city’s teams were atop their divisions. The White Sox – who had not won the World Series since 1917 – were tied for first in the American League West Division at the end of the day […]

In the final scene of the Marvel movie Captain America: The First Avenger, Steve Rogers wakes up to find himself in a basic 1940s-style hospital room, with a white metal bed frame, a ceiling fan turning slowly above, and the sound of a baseball game wafting from a wooden console radio. As the camera holds a close-up […]

Harold Baines first attracted the attention of the Chicago White Sox as a 12-year-old, when then-team owner Bill Veeck saw him hit a 400-foot home run in a little league game.1 Six years later, in 1977, the White Sox made Baines, a high-school senior in St. Michael’s, Maryland, the number-one overall pick in the June […]

The Cincinnati Reds’ Fred Toney was a big, 6-foot-2, rugged 200-pound pitcher, but even he didn’t expect to take the mound twice on a hot summer day in the Queen City. The Reds were in the midst of a grueling stretch of games when they prepared for a Sunday- afternoon twin bill with the Pittsburgh […]

“When you win that kind, you’ve got to win the pennant. You appreciate that kind of game. The fellows really pulled me through today. It’s been a long time since I’ve won that kind of game.” — Vernon Law after the Pirates had scored three 10th-inning runs to come from behind and defeat the Giants 8-7.1 […]

Jimmie Wilson was a two-time All-Star catcher whose major league career spanned 23 years (1923-46) as a player, manager, and coach with four different National League teams. He played on four pennant winners, was a coach on a fifth, and was a member of two World Series championship teams. He is best remembered for his […]

Don Hopkins, an outfielder by trade, got into 85 big-league ballgames in 1975 and 1976. He made just eight plate appearances and played 10 innings in the field. Yet he scored 25 runs and stole 21 bases. How did he compile such bizarre statistics? He was the third of Charlie Finley’s “designated runners” with the […]

Half of the most famous version of the “Pretzel Battery,” catcher Heinie Peitz was a noted “coacher”—more of a bench jockey in modern parlance—whose mouth gained him nearly as much attention as his play. For nine years of his 16-season (1892–1906, 1913) career, he was a Cincinnati Reds mainstay. When he retired, Peitz ranked 12th […]

Dee Moore’s major-league career consisted of less than 100 games with three teams, spread over four seasons spanning 11 years. A career .232 hitter, he was characterized not by his ability but by his versatility. During his 98 major-league games, Moore pinch-hit, played left field, first base, and third base, and pitched and caught. Other […]

In June 1950 Jimmy Bloodworth, one of the oldest players on the Philadelphia Phillies youthful roster, quipped, “It took me 34 years to become a Whiz Kid.”1 In truth, Jimmy was soon to turn only 33 but that didn’t prevent him from another of the many wisecracks that endeared him to fans and teammates alike. […]

It marked the pinnacle moment in Luke Sewell’s managerial career. According to author David Alan Heller in As Good as It Got: The 1944 St. Louis Browns, the club’s skipper intended to bench left fielder Chet Laabs during their last series of the 1944 season, only changing his mind at the last minute after watching […]

One of the most popular players ever to play for the Boston Red Sox, Rico Petrocelli will always be remembered for his familiar “Fenway Stroke” that sent many an opposing hurler’s offerings into the net atop the left field wall. Although he was not physically imposing at 6-feet and 175 pounds, he hit 210 home […]

Red Thisted never saw a professional baseball game until he was 20 years old. He made up for lost time, though. Over the course of four decades, he attended every home game played my Milwaukee’s ballclub, plus all of the away games when not prevented by wartime travel restrictions. From the start of the 1926 […]

Cito Gaston had seen enough of Duane Ward. The Toronto Blue Jays manager had replaced starter John Cerutti with Ward to open the seventh inning with the visitors nursing a 4-2 lead over the Milwaukee Brewers at County Stadium. Four singles, two sacrifice flies, and an intentional walk later, Toronto was trailing 5-4. The Brewers […]

Excepting some otherwise brief ventures as a young man, this 14-year-old runaway spent nearly 60 years in professional baseball as player, manager, owner, innovator and groundskeeper. In this latter capacity, Henry Fabian was considered “one of the great masters of his craft.”1 St. Louis Browns owner Bob Hedges tried to entice him from the Texas […]

“If somebody came up and hit .450, stole 100 bases, and performed a miracle in the field every day, I’d still look you right in the eye and tell you that Willie was better. He could do the five things you have to do to be a superstar: hit, hit with power, run, throw and […]

Allan Lewis was baseball’s first “designated runner.” Owner Charles O. Finley, on one of his many whims, put “The Panamanian Express” on his Kansas City and Oakland rosters for parts of six seasons from 1967 to 1973. “Mr. Finley’s called me up every time,” said Lewis in 1973. “No reports, no scouts, no managers —just […]

Fresco Thompson, the jester in Walter O’Malley’s court, ran baseball’s most productive scouting and player development factory during the 1950s and 1960s. With O’Malley providing the money, Thompson and his scouts providing the players, and vice president Buzzie Bavasi molding the roster, the Dodgers won eight pennants and four World Series between 1952 and 1966, […]

Following his death in February 1945, long-forgotten turn-of-the-century pitcher Ham Iburg was accorded a singular accolade by The Sporting News. “Iburg is credited with having the slowest ball ever hurled in the majors or higher minors,” declared the Bible of Baseball. “He had three speeds – slow, slower and slowest.”1 Some 40-plus years earlier, it […]

There are fewer third basemen in the Hall of Fame than players from any other position. One who hasn’t made it is Stan Hack, who held down the post for 16 years with the Chicago Cubs, from 1932 through 1947. Yet Bill James ranks him the ninth best all time at the position, well ahead […]