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As of 2021, Baseball-Reference reports that there have been over 232,000 professional baseball games played since the establishment of the National League in 1876. Therefore, it is a significant accomplishment to be the sole holder of any single-game record. Shawn Green is one of the few players with that distinction. Playing for the Los Angeles […]

Right-handed reliever Ken Tatum was off to a brilliant start in his baseball career, a candidate for American League Rookie of the Year honors with the California Angels in 1969. The award had never gone to a relief pitcher, but Tatum’s stats (7-2, with a 1.36 earned run average) helped give him a Wins Above […]

Known for his fielding prowess and head-first slides, Terry “Cotton Top” Turner is Cleveland’s all-time leader in games played with 1,619. The quintessential utility player, the 5’8″, 149-pound Turner was, in the words of sportswriter Gordon Cobbledick, “a little rabbit of a man with the guts of a commando.” He was also one of the […]

Dutch Leonard rode his knuckleball to a 20-year big league career, baffling batters, catchers, and umpires until he was 44 years old. As Jackie Robinson described Leonard’s knuckler, “It comes up, makes a face at you, then runs away.”1 Emil John Leonard was born on March 25, 1909, in Auburn, Illinois, the first of five children […]

Nate Colbert wasn’t supposed to play on August 1, 1972. The San Diego slugger had injured his knee in a collision at home plate the night before and was listed as doubtful against the Atlanta Braves. Looking forward to hitting in Atlanta Stadium, known as the Launching Pad, Colbert decided to tough out the pain. […]

Dennis “Oil Can” Boyd starts his autobiography recalling back in 1964 when he was 5 years old, and his uncle Frank Boyd brought three civil-rights workers by the family home. Later that same year, James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Schwerner were discovered murdered. Dennis believes they were killed just after they left the Boyd […]

The life of a ballplayer is a life on the road. Half of your season is spent traveling around the league, and even your “home” can be temporary, uprooted by a trade at any moment. Some players are lucky enough to stay in one place for more than a season or two, and it is […]

Best known as the president of the National Football League from 1921 to 1939, Joe Carr also worked many years in a variety of executive positions in minor-league baseball.1 He was an officer of the Ohio State League (1910-1916), president of the Columbus team in the American Association (1926-1931), and promotional director of minor-league baseball […]

Dick Drott may not have been a Cubs icon like Ryne Sandberg or Ernie Banks, but he earned a place in the annals of Chicago greatness on May 26, 1957. Against the Milwaukee Braves, the right-handed rookie set a Cubs record of 15 strikeouts; Burt Hooton matched it in 1971 and Kerry Wood broke it […]

From 1950 to 2008, the Philadelphia Phillies won five National League pennants and two World Series. Only one man was a part of the Phillies organization during each of those five pennant years — Maje McDonnell. McDonnell joined the team in 1947 as a batting-practice pitcher and, except for the period 1966-1973, was with the […]

Right-handed pitcher Sam Dodge (0-0 in his career) appeared for the Boston Red Sox in 1921 and 1922, but never took part in anything but losing efforts. The Red Sox themselves didn’t do too well in those years, finishing fifth in 1921 (23½ games out of first) and dead last in 1922.  The “crack pitcher” […]

Some baseball players evoke a position. Recall catcher Mickey Cochrane. Others define managing: Connie Mack comes to mind. Many broadcast as a color analyst or play-by-play man, like Bob Uecker and Bob Costas. Few have performed all of the above at one time or another as well as the Blue Jays’ John Albert “Buck” Martinez, […]

With four home runs, 11 extra-base hits, and an argument that delayed the game for 15 minutes, the June 3, 1955, matchup between the Class B York (Pennsylvania) White Roses and the Lynchburg (Virginia) Cardinals was packed with events to remember. The game’s real significance, though, didn’t become fully apparent until years later. In the […]

Ozzie Guillén understood Chicago’s baseball rivalry. “And so that the Venezuelans understand what this series means,” he wrote in his weekly column in El Universal, “imagine a Caracas-Magallanes game, and multiply the emotion by three.”1 Guillén knew, for decades, that fan bragging rights hung in the balance. Both Chicago baseball fan bases’ heightened emotions regarding […]

The Pittsburgh Federal League club (known in many newspapers as the Rebels or Pittfeds) was mired in last place as the calendar neared the waning days of July 1914. The promise exhibited by 20,000 fans showing up for the season opener back in April1 led to very little but a subpar record and a 15-game […]

The Cincinnati Reds had endured a rough winter. Confessions of game-fixing tarnished their long-coveted championship. Three key players were holdouts. A beloved team executive passed away. But the slings and arrows of baseball’s fortune could not diminish Cincinnati’s celebration of Opening Day. As a record crowd overflowed Redland Field, the Reds opened 1921 by surging […]

As areas of urban and suburban Baltimore simmered without electricity on the steamy afternoon and evening of Tuesday, September 22, 1970, the lights at Memorial Stadium shone brightly – and so did Earl Weaver’s Baltimore Orioles. Sweltering end-of-summer heat and a shortage of electrical capacity forced Baltimore Gas and Electric, along with other East Coast […]

When Ron Hunt, the rawboned 22-year-old Mets second baseman, strode to the plate in the bottom of the ninth inning on April 19, 1963, much was riding on the outcome. The Mets had once again opened the season with eight straight losses and were now within two outs of tying their record for season-opening futility, […]

“You pitch a little bit to the score in a tight game, but in a game like this, you try to keep trudging along with what you’re doing and not let anything affect you. If you can perfect that craft, it pays dividends for you as the season goes along.” – Gerrit Cole1   The […]

“The Buccaneers turned impending defeat into a glorious victory snatched from the very jaws of disaster” gushed the Pittsburgh Press about the Pirates’ six-run ninth inning to beat the Chicago Cubs, 8-7, in the Windy City.1 The Pittsburgh Post called the Deadball Era offensive explosion a “sensational slugfest,”2 while sportswriter J.J. Alcock of Chicago Tribune […]

On May 5, 1943, the Chicago Tribune was chock-full of news. For a cost of 3 cents, one could absorb 48 pages from the Trib, self-described as the “World’s Greatest Newspaper.” With the United States nearing its 17th month as a combatant in World War II, the bulk of the front page centered on military […]

Early in the fall of 1887, Brooklyn Grays pitcher Will Terry married, breaking the heart of many a female admirer.1 Recently dubbed “Adonis” by the New York Tribune,2 the tall, slender 23-year-old was popular among men and women alike for his handsome looks, temperate manner and “gentlemanly … conduct on and off the field.”3 On […]

A Sunday crowd of 30,000 fans1 came to the Polo Grounds2 on September 24, 1922, hoping to see their defending World Series champion New York Giants clinch another National League pennant. They might have been disappointed with that expectation, as the St. Louis Cardinals beat the Giants 10-6, but they were still witnesses to history: […]

Editor’s note: On September 23, 2008, SABR’s Deadball Era Committee commemorated the 100th anniversary of the “Merkle Game” by publishing a special centennial edition of “The Inside Game” newsletter focused entirely on the infamous incident that changed the fortunes of the 1908 National League pennant race. Click here to download the Deadball Era Committee’s Merkle […]