Search Results

On Opening Day in 1981, the Los Angeles Dodgers found themselves in the peculiar position of needing a starting pitcher. Normally, they would have gone with a veteran who would – they hoped – mow down opposing batters while Dodgers fans looked on in awe, cheering their team to victory. This day was different. Jerry […]

“I was surprised (manager Herman Franks) called on me, but I would do it again, if needed. My best pitch was the home run ball.” – Cubs first baseman-outfielder Larry Biittner after yielding three homers in his major-league pitching debut.1   In the first game of a Fourth of July doubleheader at Wrigley Field that […]

Enthusiasm reigned among Washington’s baseball fans after the Senators beat the New York Americans to kick off the 1903 season at American League Park in the nation’s capital. It diminished with the second game, played a day later, which New York won 7-2 for the first victory in franchise history. Three of the visiting squad’s […]

The 1944 Brooklyn Dodgers were struggling. They played .167 baseball in July, winning just five of 30 games. They had completed a 20-game road trip from August 9 to 27. After winning the first three games against the Chicago Cubs, they went 3-14, including losing both ends of three doubleheaders, and they dropped into last […]

Dave Morehead was sometimes stingy with hits. A graduate of San Diego’s Hoover High School—the same school that Ted Williams had attended—he broke into the majors with the Boston Red Sox at the age of 19 in 1963. His first game was a five-hit shutout of the Washington Senators on April 13. He threw a […]

After a 2-1 loss at Cincinnati May 29, Boston’s record dropped to 17-12, a good mark but one that left the team in fourth place, five games out of first. The defeat concluded a 17-game road trip after which the Beaneaters returned home for 16 games. Home cooking helped; the Bostonians’ big bats boomed as […]

Under the leadership of manager George Stallings, the Buffalo Bisons won the Eastern League championship in 1904 but fell to fifth place in the eight-team league in 1905. Entering the 1906 season, fans were enthused about the Bisons’ chances after Stallings procured new talent for the team. Among his acquisitions were William Thomas, a pitcher […]

A crowd of 69,865 packed Yankee Stadium for the second game of the 1947 World Series. The New York Yankees had won Game One with five runs on only four hits. The Brooklyn Dodgers aimed to even the Series when the two teams took the field on a chilly October afternoon. Allie Reynolds was given […]

Ask a Tigers fan of recent vintage to associate “Blue Jays” and “extra innings” and the memories will not be positive. On August 10, 2014, Detroit squandered a 5-0 victory, eventually losing when Jose Bautista sliced a game-winning single in the 19th inning. Thirty years before, the Tigers and Blue Jays faced off in an […]

George Kihm learned to play ball on the diamonds of the Ohio Institute for the Education of the Deaf and Dumb in Columbus. The school sent more than a handful of men into professional baseball. By looking at Kihm it was hard to see any physical imperfections. He was gentlemanly, good looking and tall with […]

“Combining a career since 1947 in professional baseball with an interest in stamps since age ten has brought a lifetime of enjoyment. To be able to combine these two childhood interests into business and pleasure in adulthood has been my good fortune.”1 Those were Elten Schiller’s words penned in a 1982 book he authored about […]

The 21st-century epithet “ump show,” coined to describe umpires who make themselves the center of attention, could have been created 100 years earlier to describe Charles Van Sickle. Brawls, riots, ejections, and suspensions followed Van Sickle throughout his 20-year career, which included 67 games in the 1914 Federal League and stints in more than a […]

Pitcher Chuck McElroy was drafted out of high school in 1986 at the age of 18 and debuted at 21 for the Philadelphia Phillies in 1989. He made 647 relief appearances plus seven starts over 13 major-league seasons for nine teams. He was also picked up by two other teams but was traded or released […]

Colorful Dick Cooley crossed paths in his lifetime with personalities as diverse as saloon-smasher Carrie Nation and Broadway star George M. Cohan. For 13 years in the big leagues (1893-1905), Cooley also held his own with the greatest baseball players of his day. In 1,317 games in the majors, he batted .294.  Duff Gordon Cooley […]

Frankie Frisch may have been playing possum, or just being coy. But after the St. Louis Cardinals won Game Six of the 1934 World Series, the big question was which pitcher manager Frisch would send to the hill for the seventh and deciding game. His star pitcher, Dizzy Dean, was coming off a loss in […]

Bob Bolin did not have the decorated career Bob Gibson had, but in 1968, their paths crossed. Gibson’s St. Louis Cardinals were World Series champions in 1967 and would eventually make it back to Game Seven of the Fall Classic. Bolin’s San Francisco Giants would finish in second place in the National League every year […]

Like many New York Yankees from their late 1960s and early 1970s nadir, Jerry Kenney suffered from the curse of expectations that media and fans had for the once dominant franchise. Winning 29 pennants and 20 World Series in 44 years, from 1921 to 1964 inclusive, was proof to many fans that winning was an […]

Pitcher Brian Kingman compiled an 8-20 record with the 1980 Oakland Athletics. Prior to 1980, instances of pitchers losing 20 games in a season occurred with great regularity. After Kingman’s 20-loss season, however, his place in baseball lore was cemented for 23 long years until it finally happened again. The stinging effects of Kingman’s 20-loss […]

Clara Díaz Chacón was a little girl who lived on a street in the fishing village of Puerto Caimito in Panama. A few houses up the road was an elementary school classmate. That boy’s studies ended in the ninth grade, but their paths crossed again when they were teenagers. They became boyfriend and girlfriend, and […]

The 1967 season marked the return of Al “Moose” Lakeman to the major league coaching ranks for a final three years with the Boston Red Sox. He coached for Boston throughout the Dick Williams years, from 1967-1969. It was his second stint with the Sox. Lakeman had also coached under manager Johnny Pesky in 1963 […]

During his five full seasons with the Boston Red Sox, Babe Ruth established himself as one of the premier left-handed pitchers in the game, began his historic transformation from moundsman to slugging outfielder, and was part of three World Series championship teams. After he was sold to the New York Yankees in December 1919, his […]

Frank M. Schulte was the slugging right fielder for the great Chicago Cubs teams of 1906-10. After his first start on September 21, 1904, “Wildfire” remained with the Windy City club until 1916, and outlasted the likes of Mordecai Brown, Frank Chance, Johnny Evers, and Joe Tinker, who by the end of Schulte’s days in […]

An often overlooked pitcher on successful Chicago Cubs teams of his era, Guy Bush was among the National League’s winningest pitchers from 1928 to 1934 and finished with 176 victories in his 17-year career. Success was far from foretold when the 21-year-old Mississippi Mudcat made an unlikely debut for the North Siders in September 1923. […]

As a rookie in 1898, Vic Willis won 25 games as a key member of the pennant-winning Boston Beaneaters, one of the top teams of the nineteenth century. Eleven years later in his penultimate season, Willis again won over 20 games as a member of the world champion Pittsburgh Pirates, one of the top teams […]