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“Peace in our time” dominated international headlines everywhere on September 21, 1938. The words were spoken by British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain after he signed a pact with Hitler giving Nazi Germany control over the German-speaking Sudetenland section of Czechoslovakia. In the Northeastern United States, a more immediate disaster was headed its way – the […]

The 1966 Binghamton (New York) Triplets of the Class A New York-Penn League played most of their home games at Johnson Field, a tired old facility that defined the phrase “dead ballpark standing.” New York State had taken title to the park in September 1965 as a first step toward tearing it down and building […]

  The old saying “timing is everything” has been proved true in most everybody’s life at one point or another. For Cleveland Indians owner Bill Veeck, this adage came to fruition when he moved his club’s home games from League Park to Cleveland Stadium on a permanent basis in 1947. The lakefront stadium, with its capacity of over 70,000 and […]

The Chicago Cubs’ 29-year-old right-handed ace Jake Arrieta was on a roll of historic proportions. “It’s just incredible what he’s done in the second half. He’s Bob Gibson-esque,” said skipper Joe Maddon, making a bold comparison to the former St. Louis Cardinals Hall of Famer.1 Madden was not entirely correct in his assessment – Arrieta […]

Considered one of the best defensive shortstops of his era, Hall of Famer and 10-time All-Star Pee Wee Reese was the quiet yet forceful captain of the postwar Dodgers. (Photo: SABR-Rucker Archive)   Brooklyn’s Ebbets Field was hosting the All-Star Game for the first time, the last of the major league locations in existence in […]

When a rookie pitcher for the Detroit Tigers named Mark Fidrych made his major-league debut in an April 1976 road contest against the Oakland Athletics, it attracted little attention. In front of a tiny crowd (3,080) at the Oakland-Alameda County Coliseum, Fidrych entered a tie game in the bottom of the ninth inning and promptly […]

After winning the World Series in 1946, the St. Louis Cardinals had two straight second-place finishes and in 1949 were trying to capture the National League pennant once again.1 With five games to play in the season, the first-place Cardinals held a 1½-game lead over the second-place Brooklyn Dodgers. The Cardinals had just swept a […]

The 1975 season was a dreadful one for the Detroit Tigers, who went 57-102 and finished 37½ games out of first. At one point, they lost 19 games in a row, and volatile manager Ralph Houk faced assault charges for allegedly slapping a reporter in the clubhouse before a game against the Baltimore Orioles — […]

In 1928, right-hander Ed Carroll’s six losses did more to win him a major-league berth than the six games he won that same year. He went on to an undefeated rookie year, pitching for a last-place team. Edgar Fleischer Carroll came from Baltimore, where he was born on July 27, 1907, the son of William […]

Baseball is a game in which one or two numbers can become burned into collective memory, ultimately defining a player’s career. In the case of Babe Ruth, the numbers are 60 and 714. In the case of Ty Cobb, they are 4,191 and .367 (even though those numbers were shown to be inaccurate more than […]

Billy Moran joined the Los Angeles Angels midway during the team’s inaugural season in 1961, but it was 1962 in which both Moran and his club broke out in a major way. The infielder, who would spend seven seasons in the major leagues, posted career numbers across the board that season. In 160 games he […]

“I wish I had my own baseball card,” Chris Singleton remembers Keith Foulke saying to him during a road trip in El Paso while they were playing together in the Giants’ minor-league system. “He wasn’t a guy who was highly touted, but I said, ‘You’re good, man. It’s just a matter of time.’ Now, here […]

A native of Eau Claire, Wisconsin (born on May 4, 1888, according to both the 1900 Census and his World War I draft registration), Ralph Benjamin Pond became a star  baseball player for the University of Maine, and seems to have joined the Boston Red Sox on the road in Chicago in 1910 right after […]

Tuesday, October 8, 1929, should have been the peak day of 68-year-old William Wrigley, Jr.’s life. His Chicago Cubs had throttled the rest of the National League, winning the pennant by 10½ games after leading by as many as 14½ in mid-September. The thunder in the lineup, led by prize acquisition Rogers Hornsby’s .380 average […]

After being stuck in the New York Yankees minor-league system for seven seasons, Lee Thomas spent 1961 through 1968 as a big-league player. The first baseman/outfielder was an All-Star in his best year, 1962 – but his finest day came in the final month of his rookie season. On September 5, 1961, Thomas (then with […]

George Boehler is “the ace of the minor leagues.”1 — Nathan E. Jacobs, Omaha News, 1923   Pitcher George “Rube” Boehler had a blazing fastball and a sweeping curve.2 In the minors from 1911 to 1930, he won 249 games3 and was a seven-time 20-game winner. For the 1922 Tulsa Oilers, he won 38 games, […]

Harvey Smith was born on July 14, 1871, in Union Deposit, Pennsylvania, the son of Elizabeth Fetterhoff Smith and Dr. John K. Smith, who had been born in Union Deposit 27 years earlier and worked as a physician there until 1873 when he relocated with his family in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, where he remained in practice […]

In 1979 Pittsburgh Pirates rookie catcher Steve Nicosia watched the 6’1”, 220 lb. right-handed power hitter crowd the batter’s box and wondered, “How are we ever going to get a pitch by him?”1 Nicosia was hardly alone in these thoughts. For much of his 15-year major-league career Greg Luzinski – whose large bat appeared toothpick-like […]

One thing about Eddie Joost — he learned how to work a walk. A lifetime .239 hitter over the course of 17 major-league seasons, Joost drew more than 1,000 bases on balls—enough to give him a very good on-base percentage of .361. He hit safely 1,339 times, but reached base via the walk or hit-by-pitch […]

Among potentially awkward encounters between semipro baseball teammates off the field, one player having to arrest another must rank very high. Carl “Sailor” Howard, who participated in spring training with the Pittsburgh Crawfords in 1935 and pitched in a couple of midseason exhibition games for the team, was on the receiving end of such an […]

He pitched only 267⅓ innings in parts of three major league seasons, but Cletus Elwood “Boots” Poffenberger was the character in all of baseball in his day—and his day included such notable characters as Dizzy Dean and Van Lingle Mungo. While amassing a modest 16-12 career record, the right-hander holds the lifetime mark for funny […]

Over a 50-year career in baseball, a man is likely to pick up a few nicknames, and for Jack Onslow this was no exception. He liked to call himself “The Travelling Man,” and the logic to that will become obvious. He also was referred to as “Happy Jack” and “Honest John,” names that could have […]

Perhaps unfairly, Charlie Root’s name and legacy are indelibly intertwined with one of baseball’s most enduring and intriguing legends: Babe Ruth’s “called shot” in Game Three of the 1932 World Series.  Overlooked is Root’s reputation as one of the most dependable, durable, and hardest-throwing pitchers of his generation. With the most victories in Chicago Cubs […]

The title of a Shakespearean play, All’s Well That Ends Well, seems to fit the life of George Provens. In the midst of some tough years in his 20s fell a genuine bright spot, a brief stint with the Cleveland Buckeyes of the Negro American League in 1945. Though that achievement didn’t turn his life […]