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The Philadelphia Phillies opened a two-game weekend series at Wrigley Field on Saturday, April 17, 1976, in a bit of a slump. Their record four games into the new season was an uninspiring 1-3, putting a damper on the enthusiasm surrounding a team that had been picked by many to win the National League East. […]

It was hot and humid in Washington when the Detroit Tigers took the field against the Senators for a doubleheader on Sunday, August 27, 1961. They were hoping to make ground on the New York Yankees as they prepared to play a doubleheader. (The second game was a makeup of a rainout on June 21.) […]

By the seventh-inning stretch, a feeling of doom pervaded Denver. The Rockies’ miraculous “Rocktober” run — winning 21 of their last 22 games, including sweeps of the Division Series and LCS — had been brought to an abrupt halt by the Red Sox winning the first three games of the World Series. And the Sox […]

On June 19, 1955, Ted Williams homered off both Herb Score and Bob Feller in the same game. It was a Sunday afternoon Father’s Day game at Fenway Park between Williams’s Boston Red Sox and Score and Feller’s Cleveland Indians. Score, 22, was 7-4 with a 2.94 ERA before the game. By season’s end, he […]

It was Ladies’ Day at Kansas City’s Gordon and Koppel Field on July 17, 1914, as the hometown Packers hosted the Chicago Federals and, according to the press, the crowd of 3,000 fans consisted of “mostly women.”1 Both the ladies and gentlemen who were present were no doubt pleased as “the battle probably was the […]

Lonnie Chisenhall’s 2008 season at Pitt Community College in Winterville, North Carolina—a .408 batting average, with 24 doubles and 61 RBIs1—made him the first-round selection, 29th overall, of the Cleveland Indians in that June’s draft.    The North Carolina native ascended through Cleveland’s minor-league chain, demonstrating that he was a fair hitter and a developing […]

It began just after 3:00 in the afternoon when Cincinnati’s ace, Eppa Rixey, served one up to Cubs second baseman Sparky Adams. Sixteen innings later it ended after Charley Dressen scored on a single by Wally Pipp. Between those two pitches, the Cincinnati Reds and the Chicago Cubs battled through the longest and one of […]

At the start of Game Three, Brooklyn fans draped a large banner from the railing of the center-field bleachers that read, “We waited 21 years, don’t fail us now.” The sheet proclaimed its message proudly throughout Games Three and Four. But by late in Game Five, the banner was sagging and unreadable, an apt metaphor […]

The second-place New York Yankees hosted the last-place Chicago White Sox in the second game of a four-game series on Monday, June 25, 1934, at Yankee Stadium. Before a sparse crowd of about 4,000,1 New York put together an 18-hit attack, won 13-2, and moved into first place by .004 over the Detroit Tigers. Led […]

Brooklyn fans could barely believe what they were seeing. After losing the first two games of the 1947 World Series, their team rebounded to win the next two games at Ebbets Field. The fifth game, the last one to be played in Flatbush for the Series, was packed with fans hoping to see the Dodgers […]

Román Mejías spent only one season with the Houston Colt .45s, but he made the most of it. In 1962, the Colts’ first season in the National League, right fielder Mejías – an expansion-draft pickup from the Pittsburgh Pirates1 – led the team in many offensive categories, including hits, home runs, and runs batted in.2 […]

The St. Louis Cardinals were back in Busch Stadium, back home after losing the first two games of the 2004 World Series to the Boston Red Sox. They were hoping that the proverbial “home cooking” might help even things up. Their home and away splits hadn’t been appreciably different; they’d won 53 regular-season games at […]

With a little more than two weeks left in the 1985 regular season, Boston’s battery of Al Nipper and Rich Gedman paced the Red Sox as they pounded the first-place Toronto Blue Jays, 13-1. The game was a combination of precision pitching and timely hitting by the Red Sox and what the Boston Globe described […]

Ralph Kiner’s 301 home runs, the product of an unparalleled slugging spree in the late 1940s and early 1950s, ranked first in Pittsburgh Pirates franchise history when Willie Stargell made his big-league debut in 1962. Blossoming into a prodigious, consistent power threat over the next decade, Stargell overtook Kiner in 1973 with his 302nd career […]

Brian Giles emerged as one of the National League’s top hitters after a 1998 trade to the Pittsburgh Pirates freed him from the Cleveland Indians’ talent-heavy roster. An early-season game in 1999 demonstrated his immediate impact. Upstaging San Francisco Giants slugger Jeff Kent’s five-hit cycle and teammate Jason Kendall’s five hits and two runners caught […]

Scott Cooper was born the day after the St. Louis Cardinals beat the Boston Red Sox in Game Seven of the 1967 World Series. In 1986 he was drafted by the Red Sox and was a two-time All-Star for them. Prior to the 1995 season he was traded to the Cardinals where he played for […]

Sportswriters treated pitcher Monte Weaver as a curiosity during his nine seasons with the Washington Senators and Boston Red Sox. He was a college professor, a mathematician, a hypochondriac and – most radically – a vegetarian, according to the sports pages. Montie Morton Weaver was born on June 15, 1906, in Helton, North Carolina, a […]

In 1957, Valmy Thomas became the first man from the U.S. Virgin Islands to play in what were then classified as the major leagues. Since Thomas was born in Santurce, Puerto Rico, some gave Joe Christopher this honor, but it really belonged to Thomas — until December 2020, when the Negro Leagues were recognized as […]

Originally signed by the White Sox as a shortstop, Tom Hurd finally made the majors as a Red Sox right-handed relief specialist some nine years later. He played for Boston for three years in the mid-1950s, appearing in 99 games, all in relief. His lifetime record was 13-10 with 11 saves. In 1955, he led […]

“Do what you love. Know your own bone; gnaw at it, bury it, unearth it, and gnaw it still” – Thoreau George Adrian Witt was not born, as most sources will cite, on November 9, 1933. In a bit of historical foreshadowing, the big (6-feet-3, 200-pound) right-hander known as Red (for his red hair) opted […]

Heralded as the second coming of Whitey Ford, the New York Yankees inestimable ace of the time when he broke into organized baseball, Walter Gary “Rip” Coleman eventually became one of baseball’s many might-have-been stories. A fast-balling left-handed pitcher, Coleman was born on July 31, 1931, in Troy, New York, to Walter Donald and Martha […]

“He knows more about baseball than I’ll ever know,” Hall of Fame manager Sparky Anderson once said of George Scherger.1 Pete Rose, answering skeptics about his own ascension to player-manager in August 1984, told the press not to worry. “I have George Scherger [as bench coach], who just happens to be the smartest baseball man […]

Dale Alexander, the hard-hitting first baseman who was Boston’s first American League batting champion, began and ended his playing career in his hometown of Greeneville, Tennessee. David Dale Alexander was born and raised on a 117-acre farm in Greene County on April 26, 1903. He had four brothers and four sisters. His two sons, Don […]

George Lee “Sparky” Anderson was one of the great baseball men of all time in terms of success, integrity, and personality. He led the Cincinnati Reds to back-to-back championships in 1975 and 1976, and the Detroit Tigers to a World Series title in 1984, becoming the first manager to win the World Series in both […]