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“What a happy world this would be if every one was accomplished as George Herman Ruth.” – Copeland C. Burg, September 29, 19301   On September 20, 1919, at Boston’s Fenway Park, Babe Ruth started on the mound for the Red Sox in the first game of a doubleheader against the Chicago White Sox. Staked […]

In The Science of Hitting, Ted Williams wrote, “I had a higher percentage of game-winning home runs than Babe Ruth.”1 Research shows that Ted Williams had 110 game-deciding home runs, among the 521 he hit (21.11 percent). Ruth hit 126 game-winners of his own total of 714 (17.65 percent). A “game-winning home run” is defined […]

When Game One of the 1972 American League Championship Series between the Oakland Athletics and Detroit Tigers went into extra innings, A’s rookie Gonzalo Márquez turned to teammate Dagoberto “Bert” Campaneris and made a bold prediction. “If I get to pinch-hit,” Márquez said in Spanish, “I’ll win the game.”1 Márquez got his chance in the […]

On July 9, 1930, the New York Yankees defeated the Philadelphia Athletics by a 12-6 score at Yankee Stadium. The loss dropped the reigning World Series champions into second place in the American League. Connie Mack’s club trailed the Washington Senators by a scant half-game. The Mackmen won their next eight games, from July 10 […]

The fireworks arrived a few days before the Fourth of July. On Wednesday, July 2, 1947, the Brooklyn Dodgers blasted the New York Giants, 11-3, in the first of a four-game series at Ebbets Field to gain sole possession of first place in the National League. The next day, the Giants exploded with five home […]

Sandwiched between home doubleheaders on July 2 and Independence Day for the Boston Red Sox in 1940 was a Wednesday afternoon game against the Philadelphia Athletics. The 37-28 Red Sox were in third place in the American League but only three games behind the league-leading Detroit Tigers. Philadelphia (26-39) was in seventh place, already far […]

On the eve of Independence Day 1922, the New York Yankees exploded with 17 hits in a fireworks hitting display against the Philadelphia Athletics. Bob Meusel hit for the cycle, and Babe Ruth and Everett Scott each homered as well, leading the Bronx Bombers to a 12-1 victory at Philadelphia’s Shibe Park. Harry Newman of […]

The fans at Griffith Stadium were in for a treat in the first game of the September 9, 1916, doubleheader between the Boston Red Sox and the Washington Senators. The game featured a dream pitching matchup between the veteran Walter Johnson and 21-year-old Red Sox phenom Babe Ruth. It was the fifth time the two […]

Opening Day 1910 was quite a day for both of Boston’s major-league teams. The city’s National League team (known as the Doves at the time) was at home, the South End Grounds, against the New York Giants. After being held hitless by Red Ames through seven innings and trailing, 2-0, the Doves forced extra innings […]

The Polo Grounds was an odd name for an odd series of stadiums in different parts of New York. The final Polo Grounds opened on June 28, 1911, less than three months after the previous one was destroyed by fire. The first Polo Grounds was aptly named, as it was a polo field, extending from […]

He enjoyed a 15-year career in the major leagues and today is well into his sixth decade working in baseball, but Jesús Alou is destined to be remembered as the third brother in an extraordinary baseball family. He might have accomplished less as a player than his two All-Star siblings, but those comparisons are unfair. […]

It is a sports cliché that records are made to be broken. But in baseball, changing times and modern playing strategies seem to have put certain major-league bests permanently out of reach. The holders of unapproachable all-time records include immortals like Cy Young, Cal Ripken, Nolan Ryan, Zip Zabel, … Zip Zabel? Indeed, just as […]

Loyd Christopher hit a home run on the first pitch he ever saw in professional baseball. He was playing for the Akron Yankees in 1938. New York Yankees scout Bob Coltrin had signed him the year before, and the team had assigned him to the Class-C Middle Atlantic League Akron team to start his career.1 […]

On August 31, 1956, President Dwight D. Eisenhower traveled approximately two miles from the White House to Griffith Stadium take in an afternoon of baseball featuring the Washington Senators and New York Yankees, whose star, Mickey Mantle, was in pursuit of Babe Ruth’s home-run record. Mantle walloped his 47th round-tripper in the Yankees’ 6-4 victory, […]

Selected by the Baltimore Orioles in the second round of the 1983 MLB amateur draft, Bob Milacki garnered little attention with a pedestrian record of 16-21, 3.79 in his first 290 innings in the minor leagues. “I’d been in the organization [three] years and never impressed anybody,” the right-hander later acknowledged.1 In 1988, as the […]

Robert Taylor Walker was born on August 20, 1914, in Arboa, Florida. For many years, the legend was that his mother had named him after the actor Robert Taylor, but as the motion-picture star was born just three years before Walker and did not make his movie debut until 1934, that particular tale seems implausible. […]

For many years, “Hartford” Jack Farrell’s baseball record showed him making three appearances as an 18-year-old for his hometown club in the National Association in 1874. Eventually it emerged that the remainder of his big-league career consisted of two games in 1882. And when one looks under the surface, one finds that Farrell enjoyed 15-plus […]

The Mike Ivie story is so illogical it was once called the strangest in baseball history.1 A young catcher picked first in the 1970 MLB draft and hailed as “the next Johnny Bench” failed to realize his potential because he wouldn’t try. Consequently, neither Ivie nor anyone else would ever know whether he truly had […]

Elburt Fletcher was an 18-year-old minor leaguer when he shared a spring training dugout with Babe Ruth. “He still had that marvelous swing, and what a follow-through, just beautiful, like a great golfer. But he was forty years old. He couldn’t run, he could hardly bend down for a ball, and of course he couldn’t […]

Starting in 1970, John Curtis played in the major leagues for 15 years. He was a respectable left-handed pitcher — 89 wins and 97 losses, with a lifetime ERA of 3.96 — praised as much for his eloquence as his fastball. John Duffield Curtis II was born March 9, 1948 in Newton, Massachusetts, the second […]

Who was the fastest man ever to step on a major league diamond?  This question would surely provoke a heated debate among diehard baseball fans, with many names surfacing.  It is a safe assumption that Billy Stage’s name would not come up, yet he is almost certainly the only man to hold world records in […]

Al Blanche pitched only 33 1/3 innings in the major leagues, all in relief for the woeful Boston Braves/Bees of 1935-36. A star at Providence College who attracted no major league scouts, the tall, slender Italian right-hander pitched batting practice for the Braves until given his own opportunity. While having a short baseball career, Blanche […]

The huge Brooklyn Dodgers farm system grew infield prospects like weeds after World War II. With Jackie Robinson, Pee Wee Reese, and Jim Gilliam impossible to dislodge, most of the prospects wound up on other teams: Chico Carrasquel, Bobby Morgan, Chico Fernandez, Bob Lillis, and Billy Hunter, among others. Charlie Neal was a keeper. But […]

Everyone has their proverbial fifteen minutes of fame. For Mickey Stanley they came during two weeks in the fall of 1968 when he was cast under the intense spotlight of the baseball world. The shift of a career outfielder to the unfamiliar position of shortstop during the 1968 World Series has been called one of […]