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The St. Louis Cardinals’ chances of making the 2011 postseason looked bleak in late August. They were 10½ games behind the first-place Milwaukee Brewers in the National League Central Division and 9½ games off the wild-card pace on August 28. But the Cardinals went 20-8 down the stretch to edge out the Atlanta Braves for […]

Twins manager Sam Mele was not happy. His team had lost four of its last five games. The night before, fielding lapses, particularly a botched rundown, turned a 2-2 game into a 7-2 defeat at the hands of the last-place Washington Senators. So before the game on July 17, 1964, Mele held a drill to […]

“Oh, I’m not really great. I’m just good, darn good.” – Terris “Elmer the Great” McDuffie, August 14, 1935.1   Night baseball came to Ebbets Field for the first time on September 11, 1935, when the Brooklyn Eagles of the Negro National League took on the House of David in an exhibition. Pitching for the […]

“For a moment, Watts had spilled over to the National Pastime.”1 The intensity of a rivalry that began decades earlier on the East Coast heated up once again as the Giants and Dodgers contested yet another National League pennant in 1965. Going into action on August 22, the Dodgers led the league and were being […]

When Willie Randolph hoisted back-to-back World Series trophies with the 1977 and ’78 New York Yankees, or Omar Moreno toasted the World Series title won by his Pittsburgh Pirates in 1979, one wonders if they took a moment to think how far they had come since the day they played for a crowd of 69 […]

In front of a crowd of over 24,000, the New York Mets stole a game from the Houston Astros that they desperately needed to win in order to keep their hopes of earning a wild-card berth alive. The game, which took just over four hours to complete and saw the Mets take three of four […]

Former major leaguer Ralph Edward “Hap” Myers faced a possible death sentence for armed robbery in El Paso the year after he left the game, but later went on to serve as the director of a number of companies and retired as vice president of Laurentide Finance Corp. He was acquitted of the alleged crime […]

While professional baseball played a prominent role in the life story of pitcher-umpire-policeman George Bausewine, his impact upon the game was negligible. A one-game winner for the 1889 Philadelphia Athletics of the major-league American Association, Bausewine later spent a single season as a National League umpire. His life, however, was hardly without incident. A talent […]

When manager John McGraw needed a clutch win for his New York Giants during their four-year run as National League champions (1921-1924), he often relied on ace southpaw Art Nehf, winner of 184 games for four teams in his 15-year career (1915-1929). Described as a “money pitcher” by sportswriter Frederick G. Lieb, Nehf won the […]

At spring training in 1921, Branch Rickey, vice president of the St. Louis Cardinals as well as the club’s field manager, was looking over the rookies in camp at Orange, Texas. Turning to veteran shortstop Doc Lavan, he said, “Tell that bat boy to get out of the infield.” Advised that the “bat boy” was […]

Despite having an impressive minor-league record, left-handed-hitting Jim Marshall never could crack the starting lineup on a regular basis for five major-league clubs. As a result, he served mostly as a backup first baseman/outfielder and pinch-hitter during a major-league career that started in 1958 and ended in 1962. After his playing days he became a […]

As of 2013, there had been more than 18,000 members in the major league baseball fraternity. Many of those were outstanding overall athletes who excelled at more than one sport. Some, such as Jim Thorpe and Bo Jackson, attained a mythic status for their athleticism. Others performed in the national limelight such as Dave DeBusschere, […]

“Willie Foster was the greatest left hander that I ever played with and he was a gentleman on and off the field.” — Ted “Double Duty” Radcliffe If there was a signature moment for a baseball player, Willie Foster’s complete-game victories in both ends of the doubleheader for the Chicago American Giants to decide the […]

Five major league teams, four NLCS home runs, three 20-home-run seasons, two All-Star Game appearances, one Flap-Down = No. 00, Jeffrey Leonard. In the scope of baseball history, Jeffrey Leonard’s career was a brief candle, a poorly understood player whose home-run strut fretted the baseball universe in a brief but spectacular hour upon a national […]

Todd Hundley had a 14-season career (1990-2003) as a catcher for the New York Mets, Los Angeles Dodgers and Chicago Cubs. He was known for his defense early in his career but the switch-hitter became one of the best offensive catchers of the mid-1990s, setting the (then) single season home run record for that position […]

Team captain Sal Bando was the glue that held the volatile Oakland A’s together during their three-year run as World Series champions (1972-1974). Respected by teammates, peers, and his managers, Bando was Oakland’s unequivocal leader, a durable, rough-and-tumble third baseman who averaged 23 home runs and 90 runs batted in over an eight-year span in […]

In a 1968 interview, former pitcher Bob Logan said this of his friend and one-time teammate, Frank Sigafoos: “He was a swell guy, one of the best, quiet and unassuming . . . he never bragged about himself and he had great talent.”1 Indeed, Sigafoos had a standout career as a skilled infielder at the […]

After World War II, Frank Jobe followed the proverbial American dream: college, medical school, marriage, and a family. Even though he said he never planned it that way, he pursued a career that helped make the world a better place — particularly the world of baseball, as the developer of the procedure known as Tommy […]

Most people who have become baseball fans since 1990 have never heard of Cot Deal. If they look hard, they will find his major league career summarized in six lines of print in the baseball encyclopedias. If they look harder, they will find something about him as a minor league manager or major league coach […]

“Good field, no hit” is an assessment of an athlete with lopsided skills on the baseball diamond. In essence, his contributions are far greater on defense than offense. Many of these men were catchers. In fact, of the ten major-league players with the worst career batting averages (minimum 1,000 at-bats), six were backstops. Barney Gilligan […]

It would have been fun to see Gene Brabender wrestle with Frank Howard: “a polar bear versus a grizzly,” suggested his old teammate, Jim Bouton. At 6 feet, 5 1/2 inches and 225 to 240 pounds, “Bender” gave away roughly two inches and 30-40 pounds to “Hondo.” Yet the big man from Black Earth, Wisconsin, […]

Ray Moore was the long reliever and an occasional starter for the pennant-winning 1959 Chicago White Sox. Control problems that plagued Moore, especially early in his career as a highly-regarded Dodger prospect, resurfaced in 1959, limiting the big right-hander’s effectiveness. Raymond Leroy Moore, the ninth of 10 children of Clarence and Mary “Maggie” Moore, was born […]

When George Brett incurred some nuisance back problems in the late stages of his career with the [Kansas City] Royals, he sought relief from a chiropractor in Overland Park[, Kansas]. On one of his first visits, perhaps the first, Brett lay face down on the table — vulnerable, as he recalls — waiting for treatment, […]

East Field as pictured in 2021.   Over the course of a month and a half in March and April 1980, East Field in Glens Falls, New York, went from an unremarkable city-owned baseball field notable mainly for its swampiness to a showcase for some of the Chicago White Sox’ top prospects.1 It happened this […]