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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 — […]

A hit that wasn’t a hit turned an exciting, but hardly unique, pitchers’ duel into baseball history. The scene was Chicago’s South Side Park; the opponents were two Players League teams, the Chicago Pirates and Ward’s Wonders of Brooklyn. Played before a crowd estimated at between 4,000 and 4,500, the game was the first of […]

At a press conference on Monday, July 8 — the day before the 2002 All-Star Game in Milwaukee — National League manager Bob Brenly was asked about his decision to replace the injured Tom Glavine with another starting pitcher, Vicente Padilla. “This is my first go-round with these All-Star Games,” Brenly said, “but I have […]

“The Browns went all to pieces, and all in all a worse bluff at playing ball was never made,” reported the Pittsburgh Daily Post following the Pirates’ lopsided 25-2 victory in St. Louis.1 The St. Louis Post-Dispatch added that the shellacking of the hometown Browns was “most disgusting to the 4,500 spectators,” most of whom […]

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 […]

Known for his white-blond hair, Silver King emerged as a star in his rookie season, winning 32 games and helping the St. Louis Browns to the 1887 American Association pennant. He recorded at least 30 victories in his first four big-league seasons, including a league-best 45 in 1888, at a time when the pitching distance […]

Tony Lloyd at Birmingham’s Rickwood Field in 2023 (Courtesy of Jeb Stewart)   Tony Lloyd1 was a second baseman for the Birmingham Black Barons in 1959, which was his only season in professional baseball. He was a right-handed hitter and thrower who stood 5-feet-9 and weighed 150 pounds.2 Anthony Carl “Tony” Lloyd was born on […]

The 1914 home run leader in professional baseball wasn’t Gavvy Cravath or even Frank “Home Run” Baker, but an unassuming 21-year-old Georgia lumber farmer named Everett Bankston, who banged out 31 homers with Cordele in the Class D Georgia State League in his very first professional season. He never came close to matching that production […]

Virtually every book or article on the St. Louis Browns during World War II portrays a team made up of colorful individuals variously described as alcoholics, carousers, or players whose careers had been resuscitated because of the exigencies of the worldwide conflict.  One of the players on the Browns roster during this era who did […]

Howard Johnson was a solid major-league player for several years. He was probably best known for a combination of power and speed that made him the darling of fantasy baseball owners as that variant of the national pastime took off in the 1980s. He was a member of two World Series championship teams, the 1984 […]

In 1916 Stan Coveleski of the Cleveland Indians and Jack Nabors of the Philadelphia Athletics played their first full season in the major leagues, and each pitched more than 200 innings. They had similar ERAs — 3.41 for Coveleski and 3.47 for Nabors — but while Coveleski’s won-lost record was 15-13, Nabors’s record was abysmal: […]

Kenneth William Penner was a baseball lifer. From the time he broke into organized ball as a 17-year-old pitcher in 1913, until his final pitch, thrown at the age of 47, Penner spent parts of 28 seasons in the minor leagues, pitching for 17 teams in 11 leagues and four classifications. In between, the right-hander […]

Visiting Cincinnati hurler Elton Chamberlain was in Boston’s Congress Street Grounds pitcher’s box for the afternoon game of the May 30, 1894, Decoration Day doubleheader. “Icebox” had no-hit the champ Beaneaters the previous September in Porkopolis (in a game called due to darkness after seven innings) and he was about to face half the same […]

Phil Cooney1 signed contracts with two major-league teams, neither of which was the team he played for in his one and only major-league game. Born Philip Cohen, he changed his name to Cooney to insulate himself from the anti-Semitic prejudices that prevailed throughout professional baseball. Still, during his entire career, he was given many affectionate […]

On a summer afternoon in 1935, 17-year-old Ed Head was on a bus to Mer Rouge, Louisiana. Head, a left-handed pitcher for the semipro Pioneer (Louisiana) team, was on his way to play a game against the Mer Rouge team. He and his girlfriend were seated on the left side of the bus (facing forward), […]

The Cincinnati Reds of the 1930s were the National League’s weakest team, logging five last place finishes from 1931 to 1937. That futility ended when Bill McKechnie took over as the Reds’ manager in 1938. McKechnie led Cincinnati to back-to-back pennants in 1939 and 1940 and a world championship in 1940. Although several key players […]

The train pulled out of South Station in Boston on February 18, 1911, heading for Los Angeles and the new location for Red Sox spring training (Redondo Beach, California). Several stops were made along the way as the party picked up players from Western League teams as well as returning veteran players. Manager Patsy Donovan […]

After the lefty pitched three games for the 1888 Cleveland Blues, Syracuse-educated Doc Oberlander found his way out west as a federally appointed subagent and physician with the Crow (Apsáalooke) tribe in southeast Montana, and the superintendent of Pryor Creek Boarding School. Hartman Louis Oberlander was born May 12, 1864, along the western shore of […]