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Darrin Jackson has spent more than 40 years in professional baseball, first as a highly respected (and well-traveled) outfielder (1981-99) who overcame cancer and serious illnesses to have a productive career, and then as the longtime analyst for Chicago White Sox television (2000-08) and radio (2009- ) broadcasts. In 2024 Jackson completed his 25th season […]

On August 6, 1890, Cy Young made his major-league debut with the Cleveland Spiders and hurled a three-hitter as the Spiders defeated Cap Anson’s Chicago Colts, 8-1. Young’s batterymate was Chief Zimmer. Young was accustomed to minor-league backstops who struggled to catch his blazing fastballs. When Zimmer had no trouble catching them, Young worried that […]

Shortstop Humberto “Chico” Fernández played the game with flair. It was a flair that endeared him to fans and fellow players, but often saw him at odds with his many managers. He was a daring, some would say reckless, baserunner. Playing for the Detroit Tigers, he showed that special flair in the second game of […]

Rick Kreuger grew up in a blue-collar suburb of Grand Rapids named Wyoming, Michigan.  He was born – the youngest of four children – on November 3, 1948, to Leona Kreuger, a homemaker, and her husband, Bernard, an electrician at the General Motors assembly plant in Grand Rapids.  Bernie Kreuger, in Rick’s words, knew “enough […]

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 […]

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, […]

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 […]

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, […]

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 […]

The warmth of early summer welcomed the Ladies Day crowd of 13,643 who gathered at Ebbets Field to watch the Redlegs play the Dodgers, each trying to gain ground on the league-leading Braves.1 Bonus baby Sandy Koufax took the ball for the defending World Champions, and faced off against Cincinnati’s Hal Jeffcoat. A dramatic comeback […]

“[He] was tough in the clutch and deserved a shutout,” opined Los Angeles sportswriter Frank Finch about 22-year-old Sandy Koufax’s six-hitter on May 28, 1958, which extended his streak to a then career-best 19 innings without an earned run.1 “[He] could work when the chips were riding,” observed Pittsburgh Pirates beat reporter Jack Hernon about […]

On the team flight to Atlanta after the Padres’ 3-2 loss at Houston on July 31, manager Don Zimmer sat down next to first baseman Nate Colbert and asked how he felt. Atlanta was the third stop on a five-city, 16-game road trip and Zimmer was concerned about his big slugger, who had recently twisted […]

George Scott. Fred Lynn. Butch Hobson. Bernie Carbo. Lynn again. Jim Rice. Carl Yastrzemski. Scott again. Every one of these Red Sox players hit a home run in the July 4, 1977, game at Fenway Park against the Toronto Blue Jays. The Red Sox came into the game having lost nine in a row. They […]

Willie Mays (#24, leaping at right) celebrates as Roberto Clemente (#21, at far left) and other Santurce Crabbers teammates look on. (Courtesy of Jorge Colón Delgado.)   Herman Franks had managed the 1953-54 Magallanes Navigators to a 39-37 record in the Venezuelan four-team Winter League and led the Santurce Crabbers to the Caribbean Series the […]

“The Cubs had 25 base runners, and (the public-address) announcer grew hoarse saying, ‘Next batter …’” 1 The league-leading Cincinnati Reds completed a four-game series at Wrigley Field with a doubleheader on June 28, 1961, and found that the seventh place Cubs were not without life. Despite their lowly station, the Cubs (25-41) had won […]

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 […]