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For over a century, the veterans service organization known as the American Legion has sponsored a nationwide amateur youth baseball program. Early Hall of Famers who participated in the program include Bob Feller, Ted Williams, Joe Medwick, Stan Musial, and Roy Campanella. However, the very first graduate of the Legion program to reach the major […]

Bob Anderson was the prototype pitching prospect – big, blond, and with a blazing fastball. He was called a “sure thing” and a “can’t miss” candidate for the majors. Injuries shortened a promising career that produced a 36-46 record over seven seasons (1957-63). Yet Anderson still fulfilled his dream of pitching in the major leagues […]

Right fielder Dick Porter played 5½ years with the Cleveland Indians, half a year with the Boston Red Sox, and 15 years in the minors – all but the very last one in the International League. That length of tenure in the I.L. helped him earn induction into the International League Hall of Fame. He […]

Glenn Beckert had a good-but-not-great career for the good-but-not-great Chicago Cubs teams of the late 1960s and early 1970s. Those teams starred a quartet of baseball immortals in Ernie Banks, Ferguson Jenkins, Ron Santo, and Billy Williams. Steadily and sometimes spectacularly manning the keystone sack and batting second, Beckert made four All-Star teams, received MVP […]

Chances are if one were to poll SABR members about the greatest left-hander in the history of the Dodgers franchise, the most frequent response would be, “Sandy Koufax.” But they would be incorrect. Without a doubt, the honor of greatest southpaw in organizational history belongs to Vincent E. Scully. Since the emergence of baseball broadcasts, […]

Many recognize Pop Dillon as merely a cousin of Hall of Famer Clark Griffith who happened to have a brief major league career. If he’s written about today, it’s usually in that context or in relation to his passing on a young fastballer named Walter Johnson. Dillon was in fact among the top names in […]

A local teenage pitching prodigy, Gene Schott signed with his hometown Cincinnati Reds and participated in spring training as an 18-year-old in 1932. He eventually went 28-41 in parts of five big-league seasons (1935-39). He etched his name in baseball and local Cincinnati lore amid the devastating Ohio River flood in January 1937. A widely […]

There have been a dozen individual offensive seasons by a full-time catcher in MLB history with 30 HR, a .300 average, and 150 OPS+. Half of them came from Mike Piazza and three were by Roy Campanella. Joe Torre and Javy Lopez also achieved the feat – as did Rick Wilkins in 1993. Combining his […]

“(Curt) Motton has been Baltimore’s best pinch-hitter ever since I’ve been managing this club. He was an automatic choice in this spot.” — Orioles manager Earl Weaver after Motton’s game-tying double helped Baltimore come from behind to beat Oakland’s Vida Blue in the 1971 American League Championship Series1   Curt Motton grew up in the […]

He grew up in a small Nebraska town with a high school that did not field a baseball team. He signed professionally with an organization that notoriously signed hundreds of prospects with the expectation that such quantity would yield quality. Yet Johnny Hopp diligently overcame these obstacles to carve out a successful 14-year career in […]

Drafted out of high school as a 17-year-old left-handed pitcher, Andy Hassler enjoyed a 14-year career in the major leagues for the California Angels and five other big-league clubs. The Palo Verde High School (Tucson, Arizona) graduate, selected in the 25th round of the June 1979 draft, was scouted and signed by Jack Paepke and […]

On the surface, it’s difficult to imagine a major-league ballplayer with more disappointing statistics — a pitcher with a career winning percentage of .000, a batting average of .000, and a fielding percentage of .500. But Pete Magrini had six very good seasons in minor-league baseball and, after all, attained a goal that most professional […]

It was one of the most famous trades in baseball history. On December 11, 1959, the Kansas City Athletics sent Joe DeMaestri, Kent Hadley, and Roger Maris to the New York Yankees for Hank Bauer, Don Larsen, Norm Siebern, and Marv Throneberry. For Hadley, the trade effectively ended his major-league career. Kent William Hadley was […]

Suppose they started a baseball season and nobody came? That was indeed the situation at the beginning of the 1972 season when a players’ strike, the first in baseball history, delayed the start of the campaign. Fans and media everywhere were disappointed, of course. Nowhere was this truer than in Dallas-Fort Worth, where major-league baseball […]

Tommy Thevenow earned a place in the record books for the home runs he didn’t hit. He never cleared the fences in 15 big league seasons. He hit three inside-the-park homers in 17 days in 1926 — two in September and one in the World Series — then didn’t manage another for his last 3,614 […]

“They say I’m a good pinch-hitter, but maybe if I ever came to the plate 500 times, they might learn I’m a good hitter, period.” — Jim Henneman, The Sporting News1   Terrence Michael Crowley was born on February 16, 1947, in Staten Island, New York, and grew up rooting for the Yankees. Despite his […]

In their long and storied history, the New York Yankees have sent many fine pitchers to the mound in the World Series. Hall-of-Famers like Lefty Gomez, Whitey Ford, and Mariano Rivera have left their mark on the record books with their autumnal performances in pinstripes. Arguably, though, the Yankees’ top all-time Fall Classic hurler is […]

Eddie Gottlieb was primarily known as the organizer of the SPHAS basketball team, an acronym for the South Philadelphia Hebrew Association, where the team got its start. The SPHAS were among the premier semiprofessional basketball teams in the country in the 1920s to 1940s – competing with the top teams such as the Harlem Rens […]

Solid left fielder Joe Rudi was a core member of the Oakland A’s 1972-74 dynasty. He was the runner-up for the American League Most Valuable Player twice during this period, and he also won three straight Gold Gloves (1974 through 1976). Rudi’s numbers with the bat don’t look dazzling today, but he did lead the […]

After Travis Blackley won his last seven decisions for the Triple-A Tacoma Rainiers to improve his record to 7-2 with a 2.63 ERA in 14 starts,1 the 21-year-old Australian received a surprise late-night phone call on June 30, 2004, from Seattle Mariners manager Bob Melvin. “He said he had a proposition for me,” Blackley recalled. […]

“My club is not going to win the National League pennant,” admitted Brooklyn Robins manager Wilbert Robinson as the 1924 season began. “It is simply going to make every effort to considerably better its [sixth-place] showing of last season.”1 Few batted an eyelash at Robinson’s modest expectations. But the season went far better than predicted […]

The Los Angeles Dodgers had every reason to feel confident as they approached the 2021 National League Championship Series. Not only were they the defending World Series champions (albeit in the pandemic-shortened 2020 season), but they had also amassed an impressive 106-56 regular-season record, second only to their division rivals, the San Francisco Giants (107-55). […]

The Red Sox were still hopeful, even in the final days of August 1955. They were in fourth place, but the standings were tightly bunched and they were only five games behind the first-place New York Yankees. Before this day’s game, the Indians and White Sox were one and 1½ games back of New York, […]

Four months into another season of mashing American League pitching, Jimmie Foxx led the Philadelphia Athletics against the Cleveland Indians at Cleveland Stadium. The two clubs were close together in the league standings, with Philadelphia (53-53) 16 games behind the league-leading Washington Senators, one game ahead of Cleveland (55-57). In this Monday afternoon contest on […]