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It wasn’t one of the storied Bill Veeck’s most creative promotions, but a “basketball-baseball doubleheader” featuring the Harlem Globetrotters put nearly 14,000 fans in the seats on Monday night, August 31, 1953, as Veeck’s moribund St. Louis Browns met the visiting Washington Senators.1 The eighth-place Browns were 46-85 and 41 games out of first, though […]

On Friday, August 14, 1998, before a nighttime crowd of 43,169 fans at Cleveland’s Jacob Field, the Baltimore Orioles squared off against the Cleveland Indians. Mike Mussina and Charles Nagy took the mound for their respective clubs, each seeking his eleventh victory of the season. Though both American League teams had similar won-loss records, Baltimore, […]

The Minneapolis Millers produced a rich history in the American Association and in 1955 won their ninth pennant, tying them with the St. Paul Saints for the most first-place finishes since the league was formed in 1902. However, the Millers had only one appearance in the Junior World Series, the postseason matchup between the champions […]

It is the bottom of the eighth inning of Game Two, and the Boston Red Sox are squarely facing the prospect of heading to Detroit having lost the first two games of the 2013 ALCS at home. The score is 5-1 Tigers, but the Red Sox have a glimmer of hope. The bases are loaded […]

The Hubert H. Humphrey Metrodome in downtown Minneapolis became the home for the Minnesota Twins in 1982. The multipurpose stadium, whose main professional tenants were the Twins and the National Football League’s Minnesota Vikings, replaced Metropolitan Stadium in suburban Bloomington, where both teams had played since 1961. The first Metrodome event was an exhibition game […]

Coming off a last-place finish in 2012, the 2013 Boston Red Sox held first place for the first three dozen games of the 2013 season. They lost a few games and dropped in the standings but reclaimed the top spot on May 26 and held it for the next two months before falling a half-game […]

Baseballs were flying out of major-league ballparks in 1953. At the end of play on this Sabbath Day, the National League had smashed 1,008 home runs on the season. Batters needed to hit only 92 more to break the single-season mark, set in 1950.1 The Milwaukee Braves, who had moved from Boston in the offseason, […]

Coming into the final day of scheduled games in the Jalisco pool of the 2017 World Baseball Classic (WBC), Puerto Rico already knew it could move on with a win.1 The top two teams in each pool were advancing to the second round. By winning its first two games against Venezuela and Mexico, Puerto Rico […]

New Hampshire native Bernie Friberg was one of the better utility players in the 1920s. He was born in Manchester on August 18, 1899, and raised in another manufacturing city, Lynn, Massachusetts, just north of Boston. His parents were immigrants from Sweden, Gustav and Jennie Roslin Friberg. Gustav worked as a McKay stitcher in a […]

“Crooked Arm” Cremins faced 24 batters in the major leagues and four of them scored. The lefty pitcher from just outside New York had already met Albert Einstein when he was taken under the wing of Hall of Fame pitcher Iron Man Joe McGinnity. He faced Babe Ruth, had a long career connected with boxing, […]

At age 22, crafty left-hander Jerry Nops was a budding star, a 20-game winner for the 1897 Temple Cup champion Baltimore Orioles. By age 26, his major league career was behind him, a sterling .637 winning percentage notwithstanding. Undone by alcohol abuse and behavioral issues, Nops – whom Cooperstown-bound manager Ned Hanlon once described as […]

Many major leaguers are more remembered for their accomplishments in the minors. Ron Necciai’s 27 strikeouts in a minor-league game outshone his lackluster performance with the Pittsburgh Pirates. Ox Eckhardt’s lifetime minor-league average of .367 overshadowed two brief trials in the majors. And Leo Kiely’s achievement of winning 20 games in relief during a season […]

For many people, Steve Rogers is the guy who gave up the game-winning home run to Rick Monday in the 1981 National League Championship Series. However, to think of him for just that one pitch does a disservice to a player who was a five-time All-Star, an ERA leader, and the ace of the excellent […]

Ron Necciai is the real-life Sidd Finch, the greatest pitcher who never was.1 The right-hander struck out 27 batters in a nine-inning game when he was 19. The National Association of Professional Baseball Leagues, the governing body of the minors, called it “the greatest individual performance in the history of baseball.”2 Instead of walking away […]

So slender he often swam in his uniform, Lino Donoso was a popular southpaw with a durability that belied his appearance. He pitched year-round for much of a two-decade career that began on the island of his birth, Cuba, included one season in the Negro National League and parts of two with the Pittsburgh Pirates. […]

In 1972 Hank Morgenweck achieved a long-held dream—a full-time umpiring job in the major leagues. Four seasons later, in bitter and disputed circumstances, he lost it. An experienced minor-league ump with a National League playoff game on his résumé, Morgenweck was named to the American League’s umpiring staff in spring 1972. But his contract was […]

In 1971 The Sporting News contributor Wayne Minshew submitted a report on the Atlanta Braves’ “bona-fide future ace . . . the pitcher visiting scouts like most when they visit Atlanta Stadium.”1 Minshew was not referring to Phil Niekro, who at the time was just one-third of the way along his path to Hall of […]

“I think I was playing third base at the time, and he hit a ground ball by me…. It dug a hole about a foot deep on its way to left eld. … In those days Torriente was a hell of a ballplayer. Christ, I’d like to whitewash him and bring him up.” — Frankie […]

“He’s a heck of a guy. He’s enthusiastic and great for the (University of Hartford) program. He’s the reason why a lot of us are here. He is a man with big dreams. His dreams became our dreams. We believed in him.” — University of Hartford player Brian Crowley in the aftermath of Bill Denehy’s […]

Early in his career on the baseball diamond he was a man without a position. Luckily for him, the power emanating from his bat allowed him to hang around the major leagues long enough to settle into the only position he could play reasonably well. He came from Native American – or, in the common […]

Charles Radbourn’s pitching achievements were hailed by contemporaries and sportswriters for decades as some of the greatest feats of nineteenth century baseball. Little known today, many considered an 18-inning game in 1882 as the finest athletic contest ever seen on a baseball diamond. That game was won, not by the pitcher Radbourn, but by the […]

Charlie Hartman was the first “cup of coffee” player – a one-game wonder – for the Boston Red Sox, playing in just one big-league game, on June 24, 1908. Hartman is enough of a mystery that before this author began researching him for Red Sox Threads, most standard sources didn’t indicate whether he batted left […]

New Orleans’ first professional baseball team was the Pelicans, which began participating in Organized Baseball in 1887 in the Southern League.1 The team played at Sportsman’s Park and Athletic Park before moving to its namesake, Pelican Park, in 1908. That park was ultimately dismantled and relocated to its final destination in 1915, where it became […]

“People don’t know how good the Pacific Coast League is,” a onetime miner named H.V. “Hardrock Bill” Lane said in 1935. “There’s Oakland, or San Francisco.”1 A year later he moved the then-Double-A Hollywood Stars to San Diego, renamed them Padres for a nearby mission, opened single-tier 9,100-seat Lane Field, and began to fill a […]