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An excellent receiver but a weak batsman, catcher Walter Van Grofski personified a now-vanished species: the career minor-league ballplayer. Apart from a handful of spring training exhibition games, Van Grofski never came close to playing in a big-league contest. In fact, he was never a serious prospect, only once rising as high as Class AA […]

To discuss Paul Derringer is to discuss two men-a pitcher with exceptional control of his pitches and general work on the mound and a man with little or no control of himself anywhere else. Derringer (called “Oom Paul” for his 6-foot-3.1/2-inch height and admitted 205 pounds) was a belligerent man who often used his fists […]

He was a high-school phenom who found himself pitching in the major leagues while barely out of his teens. Connie Mack had heard about him when he was just 16 years old.1 But for every Bob Feller there are countless Lafayette Henions. Unlike Feller’s long and successful career, Henion’s experience in the major leagues consisted […]

Ezra Sutton matured at the perfect time to join baseball as it morphed from a merely amateur endeavor played by people during the recreational hours to a sport that paid its players, allowing them to pursue their passion as a vocation. Sutton played for teams in the old National Association of Base Ball Players, the […]

Part of the story of Willard Eben Mains is typical of the era, but his achievements during his baseball career are not. Mains pitched in professional baseball for 20 years (1887-1906). He played briefly in the majors; the bulk of his career was spent in various minor leagues, where he was the first pitcher to […]

Jack Phillips spent almost a decade on Major League rosters and never got into more than seventy games in a season. But that less-than-stellar playing career was followed by an all-star second act: twenty-four seasons as a baseball coach and athletic administrator at his alma mater, Clarkson University. Jack Dorn Phillips, the second son of […]

At the turn of the 20th century, Emmet Heidrick was one of the best players in baseball. A .300 hitter, he could drop a “tantalizing bunt” or drive the ball to the fence.1 As a baserunner and basestealer, he was speedy and aggressive. And as an outfielder, “Snags” was considered “the best fly catcher in […]

Uninvited and unannounced, “Harold Emerich” traipsed into the 1920 Philadelphia Phillies training camp in Birmingham, Alabama, and made a credible showing before being shipped out to the minors. However, “Harold Emerich” was actually Michigan contract jumper Herrick “Spoke” Emery. Fast forward four years, and the speedy Emery actually donned a Philadelphia uniform in five July […]

An accomplished but often self-interested and combative man, Philadelphia Phillies co-owner John I. Rogers was regularly at odds with fellow 19th-century National League magnates. Yet for 20 years, he was a significant force in league executive conclaves. A hard-nosed Philadelphia lawyer, Rogers was intimately involved in league governance, serving on the playing rules, arbitration, and […]

Despite frequent citations over the years, it is not common knowledge that the Braves got their nickname and first Indian-head logo under James E. Gaffney. Then again, nearly a century and two franchise moves have gone by since the owner of yesteryear (December 1911 to January 1916) rechristened his team. The change celebrated his ties […]

Before committing suicide under mysterious circumstances in the spring of 1907, Chick Stahl forged a reputation as one of the best center fielders in the game over the course of a 10-year major-league career. A lifetime .305 batter, the left-handed Stahl could also hit with power, and often ranked among the league leaders in extra-base […]

The best curve ball that Babe Ruth ever saw came not from Walter Johnson, Dazzy Vance, or Firpo Marberry. It was from Walter Beall, a DC sandlot baseball legend who was a teammate and hunting buddy of Ruth’s — the pair used a West Virginia cabin owned by Beall’s paternal grandfather.1 “His curve broke down, […]

In Charles Dickens’ A Tale of Two Cities, two men lead such intertwined lives in London and revolution-torn Paris that it can simultaneously be the best and the worst of times. Bill Sweeney’s major league career was bookended by dramatic moves between two cities, but it was his unhappy fate to discover that, like Dickens’ […]

Mike McCormick was a $50,000 bonus baby at 17, a sore-armed castoff at 25, and a Cy Young Award winner at 29. Michael Francis McCormick was born in Pasadena, California, on September 29, 1938. His father, Kenneth, a semipro pitcher, built a mound in the backyard, placed home plate 15 feet away, and set out […]

Throughout his 12-year major-league career, Ted Sizemore was known for his versatility and competitiveness, as well as for his love of baseball. When he was playing youth sports, some skeptics told him he was too short to be a major leaguer (sources would later claim he was either 5-feet-9”1 or 5-feet-10”; but in high school, […]

Crank: a baseball fan in the late 19th century. “The real, simon-pure baseball crank … thinks baseball, talks baseball, dreams baseball and, does all but play it. It is generally a fact that the real baseball crank cannot play right-field in even a ‘scrub nine.’” — Milwaukee Sentinel, October 12, 1884   They were there […]

In 1962 the Los Angeles Times veteran sportswriter Braven Dyer offered in three short sentences an apt analysis of the brief career of Ron Moeller: “Moeller is something of a problem pitcher. At times, he seems to have everything. The next time out, he seems devoid of confidence.”1 Emerging on the major league stage in […]

The initial third baseman enshrined in the Baseball Hall of Fame, Jimmy Collins was an outstanding fielder and above-average hitter during his 14-year major-league career in the Deadball Era. As the first manager of the Boston franchise in the American League, Collins gained widespread acclaim when he led the team to consecutive pennants in 1903 […]

In conjunction with SABR’s Eight Myths Out project, here are specific examples of factual errors or misinformation that appear in Eight Men Out, both the 1963 best-selling book written by Eliot Asinof and the 1988 film directed by John Sayles. Certain entries on this list may seem like pedantic nitpicking: surnames misspelled, Abe Attell’s boxing […]

Editor’s note: This article first appeared in the Black Sox Scandal Committee’s April 2010 newsletter. Quietly nestled among the renowned sports names charged in the Black Sox Scandal is that of an obscure figure, one Rachael Brown.1 Based on surviving evidence, it appears that Brown was indicted by the Cook County grand jury almost entirely […]

It was a battle for the American Association pennant, but “not a good game from a scientific standpoint,” opined the St. Louis Globe-Democrat.1 The first-place Philadelphia Athletics (63-28) arrived in the Gateway City to kick off a pivotal three-game series with the second-place St. Louis Browns (61-31). On a season-ending 13-game road swing, the Athletics […]

Earmarked for greatness during his rapid rise through the Pirates’ farm system, Aramis Ramirez mixed promise with struggle for three seasons after reaching the major leagues as a teenager in 1998. On the first Sunday of the 2001 season, Ramirez’s career countdown hit liftoff with a three-home-run barrage at Houston’s Enron Field, igniting his breakthrough […]

In major-league history, 10 teams have lost their first 11 regular-season games.1 Of these slow starters, the National Association’s 1872 Eckfords of Brooklyn were the most severely outclassed during their season-opening skid. They bore the largest negative run differential (-185), suffered more double-digit losses (10) and absorbed as many losses by 20 runs or more […]

The iconic main entry of Ebbets Field was located at the intersection of Sullivan Place and Cedar Street (later renamed McKeever Place). (Photo: SABR-Rucker Archive)   On an October afternoon in the 1950s, while the Dodgers prepared for the first game of the World Series, an elderly man walked into Ebbets Field. On the surface […]