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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 […]

The first World Series game on the South Side since 1959. Attendance 41,206. (Courtesy of Ron Vesely / Chicago White Sox) Game One of the 2005 World Series featured a matchup between two strong right-handers: José Contreras of the host Chicago White Sox and Roger Clemens of the Houston Astros. Contreras finished the regular season […]

Smoky Joe Wood had quite a season in 1912, his fourth full year with the Boston Red Sox. Coming off a strong 23-17 campaign in 1911 with a 2.02 earned-run average, the 22-year-old right-hander did even better by going 34-5 with a 1.91 ERA in 1912. He pitched 35 complete games, 10 of them shutouts. […]

On August 22, 1959, Cincinnati manager Fred Hutchinson finished writing out his lineup card for the Saturday afternoon tilt versus St. Louis. Hutch was familiar with the Cardinals’ personnel since he had piloted them for nearly all of the previous three seasons. Now, as the relatively new skipper of the Redlegs, he felt that his […]

In 1911, their 11th year in the American League, the Nationals had yet to have a winning season.  The team had been so lackluster in its years in Washington that its ownership solicited fan suggestions and changed its name from the Senators to the Nationals in 1905 in hopes of inspiring a change in fortunes.1 […]

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 […]

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 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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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), […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

Ovid Nicholson’s chief baseball skills were bunting and speedy base running. In 1912, he stole 111 bases in 123 games, vaulting from Class-D ball to a six-game stint in the majors. A contributor to the SABR/Baseball-Reference Encyclopedia quite reasonably posed the question as to what else Nicholson could have done to win a job with […]

He could be considered one of the most reluctant, or perhaps contradictory, players to have ever walked on to a ball field. In July 1942 Buddy Rosar wore out his welcome with the New York Yankees after bolting the team to sit for a police department entrance exam (anticipating postcareer employment) and to visit his […]

Boston fans who liked the way Jason Varitek handles the Red Sox pitching staff would have loved Sammy White. Sammy, who was selected as an American League All-Star catcher in 1953, was the team’s number one catcher from 1952 to 1959. White was a credible hitter, averaging .264 during his eight full seasons with the […]

Major League Baseball’’s revenue generating power exploded during the 1950s and 1960s due in large part to franchise relocations and expansion, though in truth it had to be dragged into the lucrative expansion era. William Shea drummed up support, at least on paper, for a third major league to be called the Continental League in […]

The baseball team known as the Braves makes its home in Atlanta, but traces its diamond ancestry back through Milwaukee and to Boston, where it began in 1871. In fact, the Atlanta Braves are the only baseball team that has played every season consecutively since 1871, outdating even the National League itself. While forgotten by […]