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In October 1919 Joe Jenkins found himself embroiled in the Black Sox Scandal, the fixing of that year’s World Series by eight of his Chicago White Sox teammates. It was the biggest black eye in baseball’s history. Yet Jenkins, who didn’t make an appearance in the World Series, couldn’t even claim bragging rights within his […]

Well, what difference does it make what name you play under so long as you get your money? “Bell” is a good baseball name and an easy one for the sporting writers to remember. 1 — New York Highlanders manager Clark Griffith (1907)   Contract jumper, manager, umpire, scoreboard operator, and weekly fungo wielder baseball […]

Name the winningest right-hander of the mid-1970s to early ’80s and most might guess Tom Seaver, Jim Palmer, Nolan Ryan, or Phil Niekro, but they’d be wrong. Over a seven-year stretch, from 1975 through the strike-shortened 1981 season, the Kansas City Royals’ Dennis Leonard led all right-handers with 120 victories, a figure that only southpaw […]

By some standards, Ed Swartwood toiled in relative obscurity, playing nearly his entire career in the American Association, an under-appreciated major league in the 19th century. Even the teams he played on weren’t impressive. During the league’s inaugural season, 1882, he came up with the Pittsburg Alleghenys, a poor club during his three summers there. […]

Kurt Bevacqua played in 15 major league seasons with the Cleveland Indians, Kansas City Royals, Pittsburgh Pirates, Milwaukee Brewers, Texas Rangers, and San Diego Padres from 1971 to 1985. Bevacqua crafted a career as a pinch hitter and utility player at a time when that role was needed on a major league roster and for […]

In the locker room celebration after the New York Mets won the 1969 National League pennant, he was quoted by the New York Daily News as saying, “I’ll walk down the street in New York now and people will say, ‘There’s Art Shamsky of the Mets.’ People used to laugh. They won’t anymore.’”1 Indeed, after his performance […]

A star athlete in high school and at the University of Michigan, Elmer Gedeon played a handful of games for the Washington Senators in 1939. He died while flying a bombing mission over France in 1944, less than a week after his 27th birthday. James T. Taaffe, a fellow officer in the U.S. Army Air […]

Phil Morrison’s baseball career is indelibly connected to that of his older brother Johnny, known as Jughandle because of his quick-dropping curveball. Johnny’s glowing recommendation led directly to the professional baseball career of Phil, who was three years younger. Just as Johnny started out with the Pittsburgh Pirates in 1920, Phil began pitching for his […]

Bud Byerly grew up and pitched for his hometown St. Louis Cardinals during the World War II years of 1943-45. They were the first of 11 seasons in which he pitched major-league ball. He was undefeated in his first year of big-league pitching, and undefeated in his final two seasons as well, 1959 and 1960 […]

The last-place Detroit Tigers went to New York to meet the reigning World Series champion Yankees in August 1952. After Detroit lost the first game of the series, Virgil Trucks started Game Two. The veteran right-hander came in with a 4-15 record, but he had pitched a no-hitter and a one-hitter for two of his […]

Any conversation about the greatest hitter in baseball history must include Rogers Hornsby in the opening gambit.1 His .358 lifetime batting average in 23 big-league seasons is second all-time to Ty Cobb’s .367 and well ahead of such all-time greats as Tris Speaker (.345), Ted Williams (.344), Babe Ruth (.342), Lou Gehrig (.340), and Stan […]

He was accused of gambling on baseball early in his playing career. He was acknowledged to have a serious alcohol problem, one that may have contributed to his death at age 50. His professional pitching record, for six major-league seasons and four at the minor-league and independent levels, was 109-161. On first blush, and in […]

“In the morning he won a bride . . . and then proceeded to win the ball game, with a couple of home runs, much to the delight of the bride who sat in the stands and cheered his efforts.”1 On the morning of June 19, 1914, Vella Chloa Glasman, an accomplished 22-year-old singer living […]

Skeeter Newsome was a “mighty handy young man.” That’s how a Boston Herald headline writer described him in 1941. He was a shortstop (appearing in 12 seasons at the position, for a total of 902 games), second baseman (9 seasons, 149 games), and third baseman (8 seasons, 49 games). He even played a game in […]

Curt Flood, Gene Conley, and Danny Ainge had nothing on Baltimore native Peck Lerian, who challenged the reserve clause and earned fame on both the basketball court and the baseball diamond. Showing great promise as the leading member of the Philadelphia Phillies’ young receiving corps at the close of the 1920s, he also stood out […]

Fielder Jones was an exceptionally talented ballplayer and manager. He played while professional baseball was still in its infancy, from 1896 to 1908 and briefly in 1914 and 1915. He won pennants with Brooklyn of the NL in 1899 and 1900 and with the Chicago White Sox in 1901 and 1906. As the White Sox […]

When John Otten first stood behind the plate for the St. Louis Browns on July 5, 1895, he brought with him a reputation as a strong defensive catcher who, at age 24, was among baseball’s youngest catchers.1 The effects of a broken thumb four days later, however, brought an early end to Otten’s major-league career […]

Editor’s note: This article first appeared in the SABR Baseball Research Journal, Vol. 37, in 2008.   When the Boston Red Sox won the World Series in 1918, it was their fifth triumph in the fifteen years of the modern classic. The club had the best player in baseball, outfielder-pitcher Babe Ruth, another top hitter […]

In over a century of existence, through 2016 the New York Yankees have been run by only five different ownership groups.1 To their great fortune and that of their fans, the three longest tenured were well-capitalized and committed to winning. They also had a terrific knack for finding great baseball men to work for them. […]

Editor’s note: This article was selected as a winner of the 2014 McFarland-SABR Baseball Research Award.   The Montreal Expos played 36 seasons (1969-2004). For the last 28, their home was Olympic Stadium – a cavernous concrete edifice built for the 1976 Summer Olympic Games. From the outset, “The Big O” was notorious: hailed as […]

The first major-league baseball game this writer ever saw was at the Polo Grounds in New York City on May 24, 1946. Since then he has visited major-league and minor-league parks from Boston to San Diego and many places in between. But he has never seen games anywhere that rival the pageantry of those at […]

Although the home grounds of the Baltimore Orioles of the nineteenth century occupied several locations, the team found a permanent setting at Union Park between 1891 and 1899. Baseball in Baltimore began around 1855. In 1882, as a charter member of the American Association, they were known as the Lord Baltimores. They won only 19 […]

The 1969 Chicago White Sox didn’t fare well in other teams’ ballparks. En route to an American League-worst 27-54 road record, the team went 1-8 in Minnesota, 1-5 in Washington and New York, and 3-6 in Oakland, Seattle, and Kansas City.1 The White Sox did find one travel stop where they not only emerged undefeated […]

The measurement of Jackie Robinson’s success as the first major leaguer to break the color barrier was based less on statistics than on his courage, temper, and mental acuity. But the experiment conceived by Branch Rickey and performed by Robinson would have been a fruitless endeavor had Robinson not produced on the field.  In fact, […]