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A baseball lifer, Wayne Terwilliger found himself with more notoriety at age 80 than he had garnered in his previous 56 seasons in Organized Baseball combined when he agreed to return for the 2005 season as manager of the Fort Worth Cats in the independent Central League.1 In doing so, he joined the legendary Connie […]

Ellie Rodriguez loved to catch. The catching position put him in the center of the action of a baseball game, from his sandlot days in the Bronx Federation League and a Spanish league in New York City to a nine-year major-league career with five teams. In 1969, Rodriguez was the Kansas City Royals’ only selection […]

Pat Crawford was a reluctant professional baseball player. A devout Christian with a passion for baseball, Crawford objected to playing on Sundays. When he graduated from college in 1923 and accepted a position as teacher and coach at a high school in North Carolina, he anticipated that a career in baseball would be impossible to […]

Reaching the major leagues takes so much hard work and talent that it’s always interesting to read about players who get there and then turn their backs on the game. Examples include Jack Shepard, the promising Pittsburgh Pirates catcher of the 1950s, who abruptly left baseball for an attractive job opportunity;1 Bruce Bochte of the […]

Lennie Pearson was one of the mainstays of the Newark Eagles for more than a decade, but it wasn’t until the 1946 Negro World Series that Pearson came out of the shadows. The first baseman batted an astounding .393 in the Series against the Kansas City Monarchs to help the Eagles put their stamp on […]

Third baseman Ty LaForest had one of the best home debuts in Boston Red Sox history. Just 21 months later, he was dead. LaForest was a local kid, called up to the big leagues after a superlative season in Double-A (then the top minor-league classification). Playing his first game on the road in Washington on […]

In the late 1930s, Malden (Massachusetts) Catholic High School principal Brother Gilbert, the same Christian servant who had recommended George Herman Ruth to Baltimore Orioles manager Jack Dunn two decades earlier, believed he had hit pay dirt again. He arranged a meeting between righthanded phenom hurler Joe Coleman and his former protégé. “Pleased to meet […]

“Amazing,” said Ray Crone when asked by the author to describe fan support in Milwaukee in the 1950s.[1] A tall, lanky right-handed pitching prodigy signed by the Braves in 1949, Crone debuted in 1954 and pitched a ten-inning complete game in his first start in the major leagues. However, after four inconsistent seasons and a […]

An aggressive right-hander who threw mostly fastballs, Roger Erickson pitched six years in the majors (1978-1983) for the Twins and Yankees. One of the top rookies of 1978, he bounced back from elbow surgery to enjoy another fine season, but threw his last big-league pitch at age 26 because of shoulder woes. Roger Farrell Erickson […]

Tony Gwynn is clearly Mr. Padre. Perhaps Kevin Towers should be called Top Friar. Towers bled brown and orange. He was drafted by the San Diego Padres as a pitcher, pitched in their minor-league system for eight years, became a scout and minor-league pitching coach for the club, was promoted to director of scouting, and […]

It may have been happenstance that made Ron Blomberg own a piece of history as baseball’s first designated hitter. After he overcame anti-Semitism in his hometown of Atlanta to become the number one overall pick by the New York Yankees in the free agent draft in 1967, his dream of playing in New York City, […]

If anyone knew the definition of pain, it was right-hander Al Nipper, who toiled for parts of seven seasons in the big leagues (1983-1988, 1990), most notably for the Boston Red Sox. His list of injuries and maladies seems hard to fathom: nerve problems in his neck and elbow, chronic elbow inflammation, a blood disorder […]

Like a multitude of others, right-handed pitcher John Fitzgerald owed his ascension to the major leagues to the turmoil of the 1890 season. Among the consequences of the arrival on scene of the upstart Players League was the enlistment of previously minor league clubs into the major league American Association. Among those so elevated was […]

Babe Ruth was irreplaceable. So when the end finally came for Ruth during the first game of a doubleheader on May 30, 1935, Boston Braves manager Bill McKechnie sent in outfielder Hal Lee to replace the irreplaceable. Lee was accustomed to playing in the shadows of other stars of the 1930s, including Chuck Klein and […]

Frank “Lefty” Hoerst was one of Philadelphia’s best high-school and college basketball players of the 1930s at a time when there was no viable national basketball league. Upon graduating from LaSalle in 1939 he turned to his second best sport, baseball, and signed with the local Phillies. A year later, he debuted with the lowly […]

Cleveland manager Kerby Farrell rushed to the mound after pitcher Herb Score was struck in the face by a line drive off the bat of the Yankees’ Gil McDougald on May 7, 1957. “He was bleeding from his eyes, nose, mouth and ears. All we could think of doing was trying to save his life,” […]

“The best birthday present I ever got.” – Ralph Mauriello, September 6, 19581 Ralph Mauriello had been born on August 25, 1934, in Brooklyn, New York, and less than two weeks after his 24th birthday, after six minor-league seasons, he joined the Los Angeles Dodgers. Within two weeks of joining the club, he had his […]

On September 28, 1903, the New York Highlanders auditioned a 21-year-old right-hander. The surname of this youngster had much in common with the duration of his tenure as a major leaguer — and indeed, his life. All were quick. More particularly, the entire big-league career of Eddie Quick consisted of one game appearance and 12 […]

Patrick J. “Paddy” Bolan was probably born in 1869. The first I could find of Bolan was in a March 26, 1890, article in the Sporting Life about baseball in Toledo: “Amateur ball in this city has struck a snag. Price, a promising first base player, has signed with an Indiana club, and Picord and […]

Mike Rochford pitched in eight games over parts of three very good seasons — 1988-1990 — for the Boston Red Sox. The team finished in first place in 1988 and again in 1990, and in third place in the year in between. It was a tough time for the left-handed native New Englander to try […]

In the 2001 Baseball Prospectus annual, this comment was penned for a White Sox prospect: “He’s credited with a strong arm and the athleticism to play center field and has been compared to Larry Walker and Dale Murphy.”1 Joe Borchard didn’t have a career on the level of those greats, but still managed to put […]

He owned and operated the Kansas City and Oakland Athletics for 20 years. Nearly everyone, including fellow owners, players, the fans of his teams, the media, and the baseball commissioner, disliked or even despised him. When his team lost, he blamed everyone but himself. When they won, he was apt to call the radio booth […]

After his playing days, Cecil Cole watched a lot of baseball games in his hometown of Connellsville, Pennsylvania, with local sportswriter Jim Kriek. “A brief chat with him could make the day brighter,” Kriek recalled. “We had a lot of good conversations and laughs, not only about baseball, but everything in general.” Kriek was well […]

Baseball traveled through rough waters beginning in the late 1960s, as it navigated increasing player unrest and the growing power of their union. Court cases, strikes, hearings, lawsuits—it was challenging to follow baseball in this period without a law degree. The off-field headliners—Curt Flood, Bowie Kuhn, Marvin Miller, Andy Messersmith, Charlie Finley—are as famous as […]