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From 1883 to 1892, third baseman Joe Mulvey contributed offensively and defensively to Philadelphia teams. According to sportswriter Tim Murnane, Mulvey was one of the seven greatest third basemen of the 19th century, along with Billy Nash, Ezra Sutton, Bob Ferguson, Jerry Denny, Tom Burns, and Art Whitney.1 It takes courage to play at the hot corner in any era, but it […]

In Philadelphia early in 1938, manager Joe Cronin of the Boston Red Sox threw four rookie pitchers into an April 24 game against the Philadelphia Athletics. Emerson Dickman started, and was relieved by Charlie Wagner, Dick Midkiff, and Byron William Humphrey. Dickman took the loss. The 6-foot, right-handed Humphrey closed the game, taking over after […]

In groups of twos and threes at first and then, little by little, in larger groups, the fans rose and cheered for their hometown team. It spread throughout Fenway Park until virtually every one of the 35,000 fans had joined in the spontaneous standing ovation. The top of the ninth inning on October 12, 1967, […]

Any pitcher who strikes out more than 450 batters in a single season is going to attract attention. Left-hander Bill Kennedy is credited as having struck out 456 in 280 innings of work for the Rocky Mount Rocks in 1946.1 Yes, it was Class-D baseball, but it was still quite an accomplishment. He was the […]

Tall right-handed pitcher Ralph Brickner had an enviable first year in major-league baseball, with a .750 winning percentage and a career 2.18 earned run average. Unfortunately, his time in the minor leagues was not as productive and his career was a relatively short one. A Cincinnatian – born, raised, and buried there, Ralph Harold Brickner […]

Silvio García was a shortstop and pitcher who played in Mexico, Venezuela, the Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico, Canada, and his native Cuba, as well as the American Negro League and organized minor leagues, from 1931 to 1954. Known for his powerful right-handed line-drive swing and rifle arm, he won two batting championships in the Cuban […]

When 20-year-old right-hander Lee Meadows took the mound on April 19, 1915, for the St. Louis Cardinals, he became the first big-league ballplayer to wear spectacles since pitcher Will White of the Cincinnati Red Stockings in the American Association retired in 1886. The thought of a professional baseball player with “cheaters” was preposterous to most […]

Johnny Murphy was an ace relief pitcher for the 1930s New York Yankees who spent 18 years playing professional baseball. Murphy spent even longer in the front office, first with New England’s obsession—the Boston Red Sox—serving as a scout and then ran the team’s minor league operations. Moving onto New York’s National League expansion franchise, […]

Allan Montreuil was the true definition of a baseball “phenom.” Unlike most amateur players who acquire the label when they are in high school or college, Montreuil first got attention as a two-year-old. He went on become one of the most celebrated amateur players in New Orleans baseball history as a result of his athletic […]

The Black Sox Scandal shocked the sporting public and led to fundamental changes in the governance of professional baseball. Central to this astonishing fix were eight Chicago White Sox ballplayers, including star center-fielder Oscar “Happy” Felsch. An unpretentious Milwaukee native, the “Pride of Teutonia Avenue” only left his hometown to play ball. Felsch, one of […]

Bob Broeg (rhymes with “egg”) was a titan of sports writing and knowledge in St. Louis for six decades. He was a local boy through and through, growing up in south city, attending the University of Missouri, and working in St. Louis (aside from a very brief time early in his career in Boston), from […]

Longtime Los Angeles Times columnist Jim Murray once wrote that Ralph Garr was as hard to get out as an impacted tooth.1 Getting “The Road Runner” out was an especially difficult task in his signature year, 1974, in which he won the National League batting title, hitting .353. This came after finishing second to Joe […]

A hard-throwing, spectacularly talented left-hander who posted the best single-season earned run average in American League history in 1914, Dutch Leonard was also one of the Deadball Era’s most controversial figures. At nearly every stop along his journey in professional baseball, Leonard feuded with management over his salary, and at one point was even suspended […]

Described as “an idealist, a dreamer, and a lover of solitude and nature,” Harry Pulliam was an eccentric dresser (one reporter wrote that “all the colors of the rainbow were utilized by him in the color scheme of his fancy waistcoats”) and fabled storyteller who put all around him at ease, rising to high places […]

In September 1927, the Cincinnati Reds brought up a 23-year old right-handed pitching prospect named Pete Jablonowski for a late-season look-see. Although he made a good first impression, going 2-1 with a 1.82 ERA and a shutout victory, Jablonowski struggled the following year in 31 games. In 1930-1931, however, he saw considerable service with the […]

Although he hurled but a single game in the major leagues, Lefty Clarke achieved a measure of fame for his many successful years in the Blue Ridge League, both before and after World War I, and later for his career as a horse breeder and trainer in his native Maryland. Clarke was born Allen Thomas […]

As of 2022, it’s been nearly 60 years since a 17-year-old took part in a major-league game.1 That was lefty pitcher Jay Dahl, on September 27, 1963, as the Houston Colt .45s fielded a starting lineup consisting entirely of rookies. Less than two years after his cup of coffee, Dahl died in a car crash, […]

Best known today as the first active major leaguer to enlist for service in World War I, Hank Gowdy was a “fair-haired skyscraper” (he stood 6’2″ and weighed 180 pounds) who caught more than 100 games in only three of his 17 seasons in the majors.1 Gowdy had what we would now call a Zelig-like […]

It would have been a great story, a former minor-league hurler and Army veteran who signs on as a batting practice pitcher with his hometown team. Then he gets put on the active roster due to injuries and gets a chance to live his dream and pitch in the major leagues. While it all sounds […]

“This is a great feeling,” Lenny Dykstra said after the game. “The last time I hit a home run in the bottom of the ninth to win a game, I was playing my Strat-O-Matic baseball game, rolling dice against my brother Kevin.”1 During the 1986 regular season, Dykstra was the most frequent leadoff hitter for […]

The 1998 Houston Astros strode into the postseason with the confidence due the franchise’s best team ever. They had won 102 games in the regular season, the only time as of 2015 that the Astros produced more than 100 wins in a season, and most prognosticators and pundits favored them to make the World Series […]

The under-achieving Rockford Peaches were for all intents and purposes playing out the string on the 1947 season. Heading into their August 18 doubleheader against the Racine Belles, they were 13½ games out of the final playoff spot with two weeks remaining on the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League (AAGPBL) schedule.1 The Peaches were left […]

The Cleveland Indians and the Chicago White Sox were both optimistic clubs heading into the 1953 season. Cleveland had finished in second place in the American League in 1952, just two games behind the pennant-winning New York Yankees. Chicago had finished in third place, 14 games off the pace. The White Sox’ biggest acquisition in […]

This article appears in SABR’s “The Base Ball Palace of the World: Comiskey Park” (2019), edited by Gregory H. Wolf. “It makes no difference if the nation is in the midst of a major depression or riding the wave of prosperity, the East-West game is always a rousing success. It is the biggest sporting event […]