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If the NBA was as big in the 1940s as it is today, Ernie Andres might have been a star basketball player. He was a guard for Indianapolis in the National Basketball League, a forerunner of the NBA, and in 1974 was inducted into the Indiana Basketball Hall of Fame.1 And in 1942, he played […]

In 2019 Justin Verlander led the major leagues with 223 innings pitched. His workload was less than half of the post-1900 major league record 464 innings by Ed Walsh in 1908. And it was less than one-third of the all-time mark — 680 innings by Will White in 1879. It is hard to imagine a […]

Gustave “Gus” Getz was perhaps the personification of the “good field, no hit” player. Typical of the Deadball Era, Getz relied on his glove, his ability to make contact with the bat, and his speed on the base paths to make it in professional baseball. Though he never achieved outstanding baseball success, he possessed a […]

Mickey Haefner was a decent lefty pitcher for an up-and-down Washington team from 1943 into 1949. He won 10 or more games five seasons in a row, topping out at 16 in 1945. No taller than 5-foot-7 (not 5-foot-8, as he himself confirmed in 19431), his nickname was “Itsy-Bitsy.” Haefner featured a knuckleball, although he […]

Through the 2012 season the Cy Young Award has been bestowed to relief pitchers on only nine occasions, the first time in 1974. Eleven years before, three relievers were cited as potential candidates for the prestigious honor – “Dick Radatz of the Red Sox, Ron Perranoski of the Dodgers and, perhaps the most surprisingly improved […]

“My big idol was Larry Kopf, who played with the Cincinnati Reds in the 1919 World Series. They’re still my team. That’s a big thing for a town our size to have a guy in the big leagues.” So said Abraham A. “Abe” Ribicoff, Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare, and a former Governor of […]

To the casual observer, George Frazier is no more than a heartbreaking footnote to baseball history: the only pitcher to lose three games in a best-of-seven World Series. After all, as a relief pitcher who never started a game in the major leagues, pitched to a career record below .500 and earned only 29 career […]

LEE ELIA SPENT 47 years in baseball. He played in the minor leagues and in the major leagues. He coached and managed in the minors. He coached and managed in the majors. While his volatile temper often got the better of him, he cared about his players, and he taught and utilized his knowledge and […]

From the predicted goat to the arguable hero of the 1931 World Series was quite an accomplishment for a somewhat stoic Dib Williams. Dr. Earl Williams, an Arkansas country doctor, really enjoyed baseball, and a couple of the players he helped develop made it to the major leagues: Otis Brannan, an infielder for a couple […]

In 1922, pitcher Karl Schnell became the first graduate of Palo Alto High – a school with several notable alumni in athletics1 – to make it to the majors in baseball. The son of German immigrants had starred in college for the Saint Mary’s Phoenix ball club. Playing with and against future Hall of Famers, […]

The Saskatoon Quakers welcomed a new catcher in 1913, 20-year-old Roxy Walters. He was never a large man; his listed playing height when he reached the majors was 5-feet-8 and he weighed 160 pounds, a stature at which he might have proved a target for a baserunner who confronted him blocking the plate. But he […]

Reggie Smith was a rookie in 1967 when the Boston Red Sox came back from a ninth-place finish to craft an extraordinary pennant-winning season. The All-Star caliber major-league career he completed in 1982 was a great success that has been muddied by other people’s expectations (too high) and Smith’s media profile (too low). Smith batted […]

Art Shires arrived on the major league scene in 1928 with much fanfare, almost all of it of his own making.  The Italy, Texas native nicknamed himself “Art The Great,” once boasted that, next to Babe Ruth, he was the biggest drawing card in the American League, and frequently stopped passersby on the sidewalk to […]

In June 1947, three months before his husky right-handed hurler delivered the fifth no-hitter in franchise history, Philadelphia Athletics manager Connie Mack forecast the expected stardom of 26-year-old Bill McCahan. “[Y]ou will see another great pitcher in this boy,” Mack said. “Let me make a prediction. He will be another [Spud] Chandler.”1 Being compared to […]

Four cutouts of larger-than-life baseballs adorned the royal blue outfield wall at Cleveland Stadium. Each baseball sported a player’s name and the corresponding jersey number that had been retired by the Indians. Even the most casual of Cleveland fans would be familiar with Bob Feller’s number 19 and Lou Boudreau’s number 5. They may have […]

Righthander Ray Burris spent parts of 15 seasons (1973-1987) with seven major-league teams and won 108 games with his sinker/slider repertoire. Twice the Opening Day pitcher during the first half of his career with the Chicago Cubs, he nearly pitched the Montreal Expos to a pennant in 1981 with two outstanding National League Championship Series […]

As the 1980 MLB season was winding down, the Houston Astros paid a visit to Dodger Stadium in hopes of accomplishing the one feat that eluded the franchise since its inception in 1962: clinching a playoff berth. By winning six of their last seven games, the Astros extended their lead in the NL West by […]

On the night of June 14, 1949, Philadelphia Phillies first baseman Eddie Waitkus was shot in the chest by a deranged admirer, Ruth Ann Steinhagen, in a Chicago hotel.1 Hours earlier, at Wrigley Field, Waitkus – a Chicago Cub until a December 1948 trade brought him to Philadelphia – had a hit, a walk, and […]

The New York Mets were trying to return to relevance in the National League East after finishing no higher than third in their division over the previous three years. Willie Randolph had been hired as their manager in the offseason in the hopes that he would bring some energy to the club. After finishing the […]

Mop-up duty and long relief. They are two of the most thankless and unenviable tasks for a pitcher. For Cincinnati Reds 30-year-old journeyman Tom Sheehan, it was another chance to prove that he belonged in the major leagues. He had broken in with the Philadelphia Athletics in 1915, but after compiling an unsightly 5-25 record […]

It was the 101st game of the 1933 season for the Philadelphia Athletics. They were consistently average, having spent much of the first four months of the season around the .500 mark.1 Manager Connie Mack’s dynasty was beginning to end. From 1925, when Mack added future Hall of Famers Al Simmons, Jimmie Foxx, Mickey Cochrane, and Lefty Grove […]

Oakland’s Reggie Jackson entered the 1969 season as one of the game’s more promising young players. The 22-year-old hit 29 home runs (fourth in the AL) in 1968 and finished in the top 10 in several other offensive categories, while also leading the league with 171 strikeouts. In the A’s first year in Oakland, they […]

Hurling baseballs back after opponents’ home runs, flinging caps onto the rink after a hat trick in hockey, and tossing flowers onto the ice in honor of a figure skater’s performance are three traditions where throwing things onto the field of play is acceptable behavior at sporting events. However, take an unlikely baseball power hitter, […]

If “What’s past is prologue,” as Shakespeare wrote,1 Ruppert Stadium’s in Newark began with Charles A. Davids, a Bayside, New York, promoter.2 To most of the public, though, it begins with the baseball original for whom the park was named, ultimately housing two teams so good that to some they seemed better than several teams in […]