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Bill Lee was one of those rare ballplayers whose off-field persona overshadowed his significant on-field performance. In baseball parlance, Lee is known as a “flake,” a term that includes anyone who doesn’t give pat answers to pat questions or dares to admit to reading a book without pictures. He was an original in a sport […]

Baseball is a game of numbers, so it is fitting to begin this story with the number Four Thousand Two Hundred Seventy-Two. No one had ever taken longer to get to the World Series – 4,272 major-league games as player and manager before his first Series game in 1996. As Joe Torre stated in Chasing […]

A Pawtucket native, left-hander Henry John LaRose was first called on in relief against the Tigers, as the Red Sox and Yankees battled to the wire in September 1978. He’d been brought up to the big leagues to pitch for Boston just a few days earlier. With just 11 games on the schedule, and the […]

When he was in college, a reporter once dubbed him, “Hard-throwing Steve Comer.” But the right-hander’s upper 80-mile-per-hour fastball, which is notable for a college pitcher, never got much faster. This fact became a source of humor for some when Steve Comer reached the major leagues. Baseball columnist Peter Gammons once wrote of Comer, “A film crew […]

College baseball coach Bobby Sprowl’s teams have won more than 1,000 games in the course of a career that’s run 30 years and counting. He’s also run a successful baseball camp for the past 25 years. The left-handed pitcher was a second-round draft pick of the Boston Red Sox in 1977 and made it to […]

Sam Jones was an intimidating pitcher. He was big (6 feet 4 and 200 pounds), threw hard, had a massive sweeping curveball, and could be quite wild. Three times he led the National League in both strikeouts and walks (1955, 1956, and 1958). He narrowly missed this feat a fourth time in his finest season, […]

Outfielder Jim Dwyer played for seven major-league teams over parts of 18 seasons (1973-1990) without ever making 300 plate appearances in a single year. His 103 pinch hits tie him with Mike Lum for 17th all-time as of 2021. The streaky, left-handed pull hitter enjoyed his greatest success with the Orioles. During his eight seasons […]

Rick Wise won 188 major-league ballgames, was a two-time All-Star, threw a no-hitter (and barely missed three others), and was the winning pitcher in what many still say was the greatest baseball game ever played, Game Six of the 1975 World Series. He had a lot of support from his family growing up. Wise’s father, […]

The huge Brooklyn Dodgers farm system grew infield prospects like weeds after World War II. With Jackie Robinson, Pee Wee Reese, and Jim Gilliam impossible to dislodge, most of the prospects wound up on other teams: Chico Carrasquel, Bobby Morgan, Chico Fernandez, Bob Lillis, and Billy Hunter, among others. Charlie Neal was a keeper. But […]

When the Boston Red Sox broke camp in 1976 after winning the American League pennant the previous year, a young and relatively unknown left-hander claimed a spot on a roster that included future Hall of Famers Carlton Fisk, Fergie Jenkins, Jim Rice, and Carl Yastrzemski. The expectations weren’t high at such a young age, but […]

On June 26, 1960, Ernie Banks sat next to the recent call–up in the visitors’ dugout at Pittsburgh’s Forbes Field. “Are you nervous, kid?” Banks asked the rookie. The kid was making his major-league debut for Chicago against the first-place Pirates and facing their two best hurlers for the afternoon twin bill, Bob Friend and Vern Law. Was […]

When he took the mound on April 7, 1954, Chicago Cubs outfielder Hal Jeffcoat hadn’t pitched professionally since being hit hard in five games in the low minors eight years earlier. Yet, as spring training was ending, he held the Baltimore Orioles to two bloop singles and just one walk over five innings.1 This unexpected […]

Many people can go through an entire life without a lifelong friend and even if they have one, at some point they will be separated for many years. The friendship of Jim Frey and Don Zimmer not only has endured for many decades since childhood, but the two spent the bulk of their friendship in […]

When fireworks launched on America’s 196th birthday, the nighttime celebration was an afterthought for Mets fans. Earlier in the day, Tom Seaver gave them another reason to rejoice when he took a no-hitter into the ninth inning against the San Diego Padres; Leron Lee’s one-out, broken-bat single prevented the Mets ace from getting his first […]

Few Flatbushers made the effort to attend the game on a cloudy, warm afternoon.1 Just 3,874 – only 12 percent of Ebbets Field’s capacity in 1955 – bore witness to a record-breaking 10th straight win to start the season.2 Before the season, Dodgers President Walter O’Malley reminded Brooklyn that the Dodgers had won four pennants […]

Between April 21 and June 19, 1951, the city of Detroit was mired in a transit strike. Downtown businesses suffered. The work stoppage may have been part of the reason only 2,723 fans showed up at Briggs Stadium for the Tigers’ game against the visiting Philadelphia Athletics.1 The A’s came into Detroit to begin a […]

The magic number was one. A Minnesota win or Baltimore loss would assure the 1965 Twins of the American League pennant. Baltimore was in no mood to cooperate. They had swept a doubleheader on Saturday night and they were looking for their seventh consecutive win as they took the field on Sunday, September 26, against […]

Their 6-5 loss in Game One was disappointing for the Brooklyn Dodgers. Once again they let the Yankees grab the lead in a World Series, something that happened in all but one of the times the teams met in the fall classic. Now they would have to play catch-up in the second game against left-hander […]

19 hits, 11 runs. That’s the firepower provided by the Dodgers offense for Johnny Podres on June 11, 1959. But the lefty needed only a one-run cushion as he outmaneuvered the Phillies in a two-hit shutout at Connie Mack Stadium. A crowd of 15,819 inhabited the ballpark for this nighttime game. Philly’s rooters mourned the […]

The Texas Rangers found themselves in need of a third baseman. Late-season injuries, including Rangers utilityman Brad Miller going on the 10-day injured list, paved the way for Josh Jung to start at third base.1 The Texas Rangers called up Jung from the Round Rock Express of the Triple-A Pacific Coast League on September 7, […]

The Boston Beaneaters came to Cleveland, Ohio, for a two-game series, July 8-9, 1891, against the Cleveland Spiders. Boston’s John Clarkson pitched a gem in the first game, allowing only five hits in a 4-1 victory, which extended Boston’s winning streak to six games. Boston was in third place and Cleveland was in fifth place […]

The 1958 Chicago Cubs started spring training with relatively low expectations following their 62-92 record for the 1957 campaign, which tied them with the Pittsburgh Pirates for a last-place National League finish. The Cubs’ spring-training roster consisted of 33 players, seven below the major-league roster limit of 40 players. An unidentified source commented that “the […]

San Diego Padres hurler Steve Arlin could hardly be classified as a headhunter. Coming into his August 17, 1971, start against the Montreal Expos, he had hit only four batters in 197 big-league innings. That didn’t stop the pugnacious Ron Hunt, who was usually fine with reaching base on a hit-by-pitch, from grumbling when Arlin […]

On May 16, 1957, “a day after Sandy Koufax lost his bonus-baby status, meaning he could be farmed out by the Dodgers,”1 he and two Chicago Cubs pitchers, Moe Drabowsky and Turk Lown, combined to tie the record for the most strikeouts in a National League game: 23. The record lasted until the Philadelphia Phillies […]