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Smoky Joe Wood was truly beginning to blossom as a Boston Red Sox pitcher in 1911. After reaching double-digits in wins in both 1909 (11-7) and 1910 (12-13, but with a 1.69 ERA), the 21-year-old right-hander came into his July 29 start in the first game of a doubleheader against the St. Louis Browns with […]

Both the Philadelphia Phillies and New York Giants had disappointing 1948 seasons. The Phillies won 66 games and lost 88 while finishing sixth in the National League. This was the 16th consecutive losing season for the Phillies, a streak that began in 1933. The Giants did better, finishing fifth with a 78-76 record. Still, both […]

The American League home-run leader with 47 in 1926, Babe Ruth had hit only four in his first 25 World Series games. Then he gave “the greatest exhibition of batting a World’s Series ever saw”1 and become the first player to hit a trio of homers in a postseason game as the Yankees evened the 1926 World Series […]

Emerging as one of the American League’s top young pitching talents in his first full major-league season, 20-year-old Boston Red Sox left-hander George Herman “Babe” Ruth matched up against one of the greatest pitchers in baseball, Walter “The Big Train” Johnson of the Washington Senators, for the first time in August 1915. Ruth, who had […]

There was a lot of change after the 1891 season. The National League had grown from eight to 12 teams with the acceptance of four American Association teams as the Association folded as a major league. One thing didn’t change for the expanded National League – the Boston Beaneaters remained the best team in the […]

The second game of a Sunday doubleheader on June 3, 1951, at Ebbets Field, began shortly after Brooklyn Dodgers starter Don Newcombe beat the Chicago Cubs 8-3 in the opener. Gil Hodges and Billy Cox, helped out by hitting home runs, while Duke Snider drove in three.1 Amid a career year, Preacher Roe, of spitball […]

The Milwaukee Brewers were playing .500 baseball through the first 60 games of the 1988 season (30-30). On June 12 the American League East fourth-place Brewers played the final game of a three-game series against the AL West’s fifth-place Chicago White Sox (26-32). Chicago had won the first two games, holding Milwaukee to a total […]

It was a short day’s work for Hector “Heity” Cruz on April 27, 1977, but he got a lot done as one of the offensive stars for the St. Louis Cardinals in their 21-3 rout of the Chicago Cubs. Cruz’s accomplishments in only six innings included three hits and two walks in five plate appearances, […]

Diminutive Texan outfielder Joe “Goobers” Bratcher had only one big-league at-bat in four games with the St. Louis Cardinals in late August 1924. Yet that was just one small facet of a baseball career spanning three decades. The happy-go-lucky outfielder played on seven pennant-winning minor-league teams in a five-year period. And no one could ever […]

There are many ways to leave a mark on baseball history. Home–run records, ERA, RBIs, AVG – records that can be bested at any time. There are other ways too, some subtle and serendipitous, intentional or accidental, fleeting moments of bravado and incidents that changed the course of baseball history culminating with names emblazoned on […]

World Series, 1965. Fetal position, 1989. Alcohol along the way.”1 The words seemingly capture the heights climbed and depths plunged in the life and career of Nick Willhite. Addiction not only ruined the budding baseball career of the once-promising left-handed hurler in the Los Angeles Dodgers pipeline, but everything in its wake as Willhite was […]

When Charles A. Stoneham came home one night in October 1918 and told his teenage son Horace, “Horrie, I bought you a ballclub,” he set in motion a family commitment.1 For the next 58 years the Stoneham family name was synonymous with the New York and San Francisco Giants, one of the most storied franchises […]

Willy Miranda epitomized the “good field, no hit” shortstop. He was a lot more than good in the field, though—Tom Lasorda, to name just one, thought the flashy little Cuban was the best he ever saw at short.1 Wielding the same battered, patched, and secretly doctored glove for nearly his entire pro career, Miranda was […]

On June 24, 1945, seven weeks after the German Wehrmacht surrendered to the Allied armies and on the e day more than 40,000 Russian troops paraded through Moscow’s Red Square to celebrate their victory over the Nazi invaders, a son was born to Mary and Ralph Zeigler in Greencastle, Pennsylvania, on June 24, 1945. William […]

Although two-and-a-half months with the 1935 Philadelphia Phillies were Fred “Fritz” Lucas’s only major-league opportunity, the 20 games he appeared in as an outfielder/pinch-hitter were but a small part of a larger legacy that earned him induction into the [Maryland] Eastern Shore Baseball Hall of Fame.1 “[Lucas] is one of the few men to complete […]

An accepted piece of conventional wisdom in baseball says that if you can pitch a baseball with your left hand you can pitch for a long time regardless of how well you do so. The rarity of left-handers in general and pitchers in particular make the combination one of the sport’s most coveted assets. One […]

Whenever American League President Joe Cronin was asked to rank big-league third basemen, he always gave the same answer: “Well, you start with Bluege.”1 Of course shortstop Cronin was referring to his old partner on the right side of the Washington Senators teams of the 1920s and ’30s, Ossie Bluege. At the 1970 World Series, […]

Ralph Houk was the first manager to have two World Series championships in his first two seasons, piloting the 1961 and 1962 New York Yankees to triumphs over the Cincinnati Reds and San Francisco Giants. His Yankees won a third consecutive pennant in 1963, but lost the World Series to the Los Angeles Dodgers. A […]

In 1951 The Sporting News encapsulated the career of Frank Hiller stating, “This is the human story of the man who stands outside looking in … with desperation, pathos, perseverance as its theme … [Once] one of the ‘anointed,’ a hand-picked [New York] Yankee prospect from the start … And then, as the Fates snipped […]

The Charleroi, Pennsylvania Cemetery isn’t easy to find. The only access point is a steep, deteriorating road which transitions from asphalt to dirt ruts before its terminus. During inclement weather or even days after, the cemetery is inaccessible. However, if conditions are right and the road is clear, one will find the final resting places […]

A flashy dresser and world-class trash talker, Benny Kauff was the Deion Sanders of the Deadball Era. “I’ll make them all forget that a guy named Ty Cobb ever pulled on a baseball shoe,” the brash 26-year-old told reporters on his arrival with the New York Giants in 1916. Kauff’s boastfulness was not without some […]

In the summer of 1919, the year the Black Sox threw the World Series, 30-year-old sportswriter Irving Vaughan joined the staff of the Chicago Tribune. It wasn’t his first newspaper job, but it would be his last. When he retired 38 years later, having covered more than 7,000 baseball games during a career that spanned […]

“Nobody has ever called Shea Stadium a cathedral,” wrote George Vecsey of the New York Times after the last major-league baseball game was played there on September 28, 2008.1 Even so, for many it inspired love and loyalty that its handsome but dull replacement, Citi Field, could not. When New York City Mayor Robert F. […]

  THE FEDERAL LEAGUE OF PROFESSIONAL BASEBALL CLUBS vs. THE NATIONAL LEAGUE OF PROFESSIONAL BASEBALL CLUBS, et al. DIGITAL ARCHIVE Prepared by Tom Pardo, with generous assistance from Eve Mangurten, Kyle McCafferty, Glenn Longacre, and Scott Forsyth. SOURCE NOTE All of the files of the Federal League court case digital archive, with the exception of […]