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Romer “Reddy” Grey made his major-league debut on May 28, 1903 at Boston, wearing the uniform of the Pittsburgh Pirates. The 5’-11’, 175-pounder played left field for a club that included future Hall of Famers Honus Wagner and Fred Clarke. Veteran Beaneater southpaw Wiley Piatt faced the Pirates that day, and Pittsburgh was victorious, 7-6. A left-hand batter […]

Jerry Coleman was a true American war hero who played a little baseball for the New York Yankees during the times the Marines did not demand his services. He was the only major-league ballplayer to see combat in both World War II and the Korean Conflict.1 And he saw more than just a little combat […]

Ken Burns’s documentary Baseball opens with a line that characterizes the hard-driving spirit of Irish-blooded players like Jimmy Esmond, who came up in the early twentieth century. “The game’s greatest figures have come from everywhere: coal mines and college campuses, city slums and country crossroads. A brawling Irish immigrant’s son [John McGraw] who for more […]

“Brother Al” Helfer was the everyday voice of baseball in small-town America and around the globe. As the lead announcer on the Mutual radio network’s Game of the Day from 1950 through 1954, he covered more miles than any scout. His pioneering work earned him recognition in 2019 as the Ford C. Frick Award recipient […]

On March 1, 2012, a businessman named Andrew W. Schmidt III died in Baltimore, Maryland, the city of his birth. He was 80 years old. For 38 years, until the company closed in 1991, Schmidt had operated A.W. Schmidt and Son, a wholesale meatpacking house on Harford Road in Baltimore. The company had been in […]

At first blush, it might appear that a kid growing up in the western Massachusetts area known as the Pioneer Valley wouldn’t be playing baseball in a hotbed of the national pastime. But for those who excel at an early age and persist, there are rewards to be reaped, and this was exactly the case […]

With almost a century having passed since the end of his fitful professional career, right-handed pitcher Hi Jasper is an elusive subject, a hard man to pin down. But two Jasper characteristics are unmistakable. He had ability — such astute talent evaluators as Jimmy Callahan, Frank Chance, and Pants Rowland recognized his merits. Yet Jasper’s […]

In 1986, the New York Mets were the best team in baseball. The Pittsburgh Pirates were the worst. Yet after the Pirates finished their season series against the Mets, losing 17 out of 18 games, their feisty manager, Jim Leyland, issued a challenge. “If they were that good, how did they lose that one game […]

In major-league baseball if a player has a very short career, with a relatively few number of games played, it is said that he was up for a cup of coffee. For Hugh Shelley, his cup of coffee lasted three months, though he had a long time on the bench to savor it. The outfielder […]

He was a baseball man in the purest and most complimentary sense of the term, at various times in his professional career playing as a pitcher and an outfielder, along with a few occasions at second base, and finally working as a manager over a 26-year professional span. “He was a good contact hitter, had […]

Charley Pride, the son of a Mississippi sharecropper, dreamed of becoming a Hall of Famer. “Years from now,” he once said, “when they ask who hit the most home runs, I don’t want the answer to be Babe Ruth, I want it to be Charley Pride. When they ask who was the last player to […]

There have been few shorter major league careers, but minor league lifers would surrender a fortune to have had Walt Kellner’s cup-of-coffee experience. Kellner’s short stay in the majors was preceded by boundless expectations appended to the hard-throwing right-handed hurler. Most of those forecasts were rose-colored projections based on the 1949 rookie success of Walt’s […]

Curtis Pride’s first big-league hit came on September 17, 1993, when he was a member of the Montreal Expos. It was a pinch-hit, two-run double in the seventh inning of a win over the Philadelphia Phillies, whom the Expos were battling for first place in the National League East. As he stood on second base, […]

Tris Speaker of the world champion 1915 Boston Red Sox declared Carl Weilman of the St. Louis Browns to be one of the six best pitchers he ever faced.1 “If you ask the Detroit Tigers,” said sportswriter L.C. Davis, “the six best pitchers in the American League are Carl Weilman.”2 The Tigers were the best […]

“I never wanted to be a superstar, or the highest paid player,” Don Sutton said. “[A]ll I wanted was to be appreciated for the fact that I was consistent, dependable, and you could count on me.”1 By that measure, Sutton achieved his goal and more, as few pitchers in baseball history were as reliable, and […]

“Good field, no hit” has been a tag line for many ballplayers over the decades. George Dunlop certainly deserved that label. Shag Shaughnessy, his manager in 1916, said he was “one of the greatest fielding shortstops in the minor leagues and if he could only hit, he would be in the big show.”1 Dunlop batted […]

“Yes sir, it’s great to be a Yankee,” Fred Sanford said.1 Making it even greater, he was traded from the nearly bankrupt St. Louis Browns to the pinstriped promised land. Presented with the opportunity of a lifetime, Sanford flopped. After the right-hander had lost 21 games for the Browns in 1948, the Yankees paid $100,000 […]

San Francisco’s Mike Finn was a pioneer professional as a California baseball player and manager. A versatile performer, he was an adept infielder, outfielder, and catcher, but was, in the Oakland Tribune’s opinion, “a pitching star of magnitude.” His managerial legacy was five championships during the California League’s formative years (1886-1893), more than any other pilot. An established […]

Nearly everyone knows of a person who is a natural. The classmate who barely cracks open a book and yet gets straight A’s. The popular student whom everyone emulates. The athlete who succeeds in any sport they attempt. The phrase “He’s a natural” has been used again and again to describe those with innate ability. […]

If ever there were a battery that was bound together in life and in death, it was probably pitcher Rube Waddell and catcher Osee Schrecongost. They were both born in small communities in western Pennsylvania, on opposite sides of the Allegheny National Forest, and a little less than 100 miles from each other. They both […]

Don Cooper, the pitching coach of the 2005 World Series champion White Sox, had exactly one win as a major-league pitcher. His sole victory came September 2, 1981, in his rookie season with the Minnesota Twins. Over the course of four years in the big leagues, Cooper would win one, lose six, and put in […]

The stage was the fifth game of the World Series, on October 15, 1970. The Baltimore Orioles had taken a three games to one Series lead over the Cincinnati Reds. Brooks Robinson had already delivered a game-winning home run in the opener, robbed Tony Perez and Johnny Bench of base hits with a pair of […]

In 1911, Angie Tullar, a prominent resident of Wellsville, New York, gave her community the use of a parcel of land for public recreation. Over time, this generous donation provided the residents of her small village with a front-row seat to watch baseball players ranging from Ty Cobb to Tony Conigliaro. Tullar Field, a ballpark […]

This article appears in SABR’s “When the Monarchs Reigned: Kansas City’s 1942 Negro League Champions” (2021), edited by Frederick C. Bush and Bill Nowlin.   By the fall of 1938 Kansas City Monarchs owner J.L. Wilkinson was well aware of the marketing potential of Leroy “Satchel” Paige. The Monarchs had seen the talented pitcher on […]