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At first glance, Adrian Beltré’s path seems predictable. Sought after at a young age, he instantly became a highly touted prospect who plowed through the minor leagues and reached the majors before he turned 20. Over the course of 21 seasons (1998-2018), he earned more than $200 million through multiple multi-year contracts. In 2018, The […]

In 1957, Valmy Thomas became the first man from the U.S. Virgin Islands to play in what were then classified as the major leagues. Since Thomas was born in Santurce, Puerto Rico, some gave Joe Christopher this honor, but it really belonged to Thomas — until December 2020, when the Negro Leagues were recognized as […]

Ask casual baseball fans which Tigers player drove in the run that clinched the 1984 World Series, and you can’t blame them if they answer Kirk Gibson. After all, Gibson’s blast off Goose Gossage gets replayed time and again and is perhaps the most memorable hit in Tigers history. But the game-winning RBI, an official […]

By the time he retired from the National League’s New York Mets after the 1962 season, Eugene Richard “Gene” Woodling had accumulated a number of honors, including batting over .300 five times in his seventeen seasons. Although averaging .284 lifetime, he was best known as a dangerous hitter with runners in scoring position during the […]

For every 30-home-run hitter and 20-game winner, there is often a role player who, though contributing less, is embraced by the fans and given nearly unconditional support in return for those elusive attributes scrappiness and hustle. For the pennant-winning White Sox of 1959, that player was Sammy Esposito. Despite spending the majority of his career watching […]

It was as much a psychological move as a baseball one. Game Five of the 2004 American League Championship Series at Fenway Park was tied, 4-4, heading into the bottom of the ninth. Red Sox pitchers Curt Schilling, Derek Lowe, and Tim Wakefield, gloves in hand, began walking from the team’s first-base dugout out to […]

John Young carried an impressive 6-foot-3, 210-pound frame during his baseball playing days. Even more impressive than his physical stature on the field, however, was the stature he later gained as a baseball ambassador for the underprivileged. In founding the Reviving Baseball in Inner Cities program, Young left an indelible mark on the game that […]

Gaylord Perry, one of the premier pitchers of his generation, won 314 games and struck out 3,534 batters, but his place in baseball history rests mainly with his notorious use of the spitball, or greaseball, which defied batters, humiliated umpires, and infuriated opposing managers for two decades. But make no mistake: he was also a […]

The Chicago White Sox won its only two championships of the 20th century in 1906 and 1917. In between those two glorious seasons, the team fell back to the middle of the pack in the American League, but were always competitive, due in large part to the unheralded and hard luck hurling of a burly […]

James Henry “Jimmy” Bannon was born on May 5, 1871, in Amesbury, Massachusetts. He grew up in Saugus, Massachusetts, where he played ball with his brothers Tom, George, and William. Tom Bannon also became a professional ballplayer and played two seasons with the New York Giants (1895, 1896). George and William never made it out […]

Lou Berberet was a very solid defensive catcher. With a fielding percentage of 1.000 as a catcher in 1957, he joined an elite group as only the third catcher in major-league history with zero errors in more than 350 chances. Since that time, eight other catchers have had error-free seasons with that number of chances.1 […]

The holders of major-league baseball’s longest consecutive-game hitting streaks are members of the game’s elite — Hall of Famers such as Ty Cobb, Willie Keeler, and, of course, Joe DiMaggio. But if the survey field is expanded to encompass the entirety of professional baseball, an unfamiliar name joins the ranks: Jack Ness. During the 1915 […]

Becoming the third woman to own a major-league baseball club, Joan Whitney Payson marked history by heavily investing in the expansion New York Mets of 1962. The club’s first majority stockholder, she was also the first of her gender to purchase such an enterprise with her own funds. Born into considerable wealth, she used much […]

He was the first amateur player selected by his expansion franchise and became its first home-run champion, alas, when the parent team was in a different city. In his major-league debut, he dropped the first ball hit to him for an error and got his first hit, a triple, in his second at-bat. Nine days […]

Arnold Carl Earley wound up in the same field of work his father had pursued — a policeman. His father, Walter Earley, was a city policeman in Lincoln Park, Michigan, at the time of the 1940 United States census. Born in Lincoln Park on June 4, 1933, to Walter and Edna (Tiedeman) Earley, Arnold was […]

Don Gile was a catcher and first baseman for the Boston Red Sox who, almost exactly two years to the day after Ted Williams did it, hit a home run in his final at-bat in the major leagues. Unlike Williams’ home run, Gile’s won the game in a walkoff. The date was September 30, 1962, […]

When young Jim Owens first came up with the Philadelphia Phillies in the mid-1950s, the predictions were that he would be Philadelphia’s “next Robin Roberts.”1 He had dominated hitters in the minor leagues, was voted the best pitcher in the International League for 1954, and possessed what Phillies general manager Roy Hamey called, “the best […]

In the 1930s and 1940s famed New York City restaurateur Toots Shor hosted many of the greats of sports and show business. But in the winter of 1947 Shor’s attention focused on a baseball prospect little known outside the environs of New York – Larry Miggins. Informed that the St. Louis Cardinals had snatched the […]

As the manpower needs of World War II drained the baseball talent pool, major league ball clubs resorted to stocking their rosters with those available: veteran players overage for military service, the physically unfit, and others unlikely to be conscripted, including a handful of high school students. One of these was Ralph Kraus, a 17-year-old […]

Nate Colbert wasn’t supposed to play on August 1, 1972. The San Diego slugger had injured his knee in a collision at home plate the night before and was listed as doubtful against the Atlanta Braves. Looking forward to hitting in Atlanta Stadium, known as the Launching Pad, Colbert decided to tough out the pain. […]

From 1902 through 1911, Walter Schlichter owned the Philadelphia Giants, the finest African American team of the era. Schlichter was white, the Philadelphia Item’s sporting editor, and had previously managed boxers, not ballplayers. Yet with Sol White he formed a persevering, successful partnership. Competition, alignment with more powerful forces, an ill-advised secondary baseball venture, and finally a break […]

Bill White spent 51 years in a game he didn’t love. The eight-time All-Star became the first Black play-by-play broadcaster for a major-league team and the first Black president of a major sports league. He railed against racism in baseball, though he acknowledged that, even as National League president, he couldn’t do much about it. […]

On the first day of November 1968, minor-league baseball fans in Florida awoke to news of a new team affiliation. The expansion Montreal Expos of the National League, preparing to make their debut in 1969, were announced as the new parent club of West Palm Beach’s entry in the Class A Florida State League. The […]

Ulysses S. Grant said, “I know of no method to secure the repeal of bad or obnoxious laws so effective as their stringent execution.”1 His sentiment rang true in major-league baseball after the American Association and National League repealed rules that limited pitching motions in the midst of the 1885 season. The change unleashed pitch […]