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“You automatically go all out, regardless of pain or what.”1 This was the guiding principle of New York Yankees pitcher Bill Stafford’s baseball career. Never had his philosophy been more tested than on the afternoon of October 7, 1962. After a screaming liner off the bat of San Francisco Giants outfielder Felipe Alou smashed into […]

In a brief trial with the 1909 Cincinnati Reds, Clare Patterson compiled the entirety of his major league record: four games, eight at-bats, one hit, one RBI, four put-outs. A quick washout—or so it would seem. In truth, Major League Baseball did not finish its evaluation of the outfielder’s talents. Patterson would later earn a […]

During a fifteen-year major-league career that spanned the Deadball and Lively Ball Eras, Jack Fournier was one of the premier power hitters in baseball. His batting accomplishments were impressive: While compiling a lifetime .313 batting average, he led the National League in home runs once; led the American League in slugging percentage once; hit three […]

Between the two of them, the baseball-playing Bender brothers embodied much of the popular turn-of-the-century American Indian stereotype, both positive and negative. Tall, dignified, and stoic, Charles “Chief” Bender epitomized the Noble Savage. He was also one of the finest pitchers of the Deadball Era. Never the staff workhorse, Chief Bender was manager Connie Mack’s […]

Long before the term “multitasker” made its way into our language, Paul Des Jardien epitomized the word. While a student at the University of Chicago, his goal was to win twelve letters in varsity competition.i In the fall he was an All-American football player, student, and line coach for his alma mater’s football team. Come […]

“As wild as Ishi”1 Trilingual gold and gravel miner Luke Glavenich’s major-league pitching career lasted but one erratic inning on April 12, 1913. It started with eight straight balls and got much worse from there. Small wonder that he’d drawn prior comparisons to a minor celebrity of the day: the “wild Indian” Ishi, the last […]

An often overlooked pitcher on successful Chicago Cubs teams of his era, Guy Bush was among the National League’s winningest pitchers from 1928 to 1934 and finished with 176 victories in his 17-year career. Success was far from foretold when the 21-year-old Mississippi Mudcat made an unlikely debut for the North Siders in September 1923. […]

Josh Gibson has often been called “the black Babe Ruth” since he, like the Sultan of Swat, was his league’s most-feared home run hitter, but Wilmer Fields – Gibson’s teammate during four of his seasons with the Homestead Grays – had much more in common with the Babe than Gibson did. On the surface, this […]

Al Sothoron was a spitball pitcher and a master of trick deliveries. When the moist pitch was outlawed, Sothoron was one of 17 practitioners of the art who were exempted from the ban under a grandfather clause. Whether he continued to use other trick pitches, some of which were now illegal, is a matter of […]

These were heady days for the Houston Astros. In 1979 the franchise had mastered just two winning campaigns in its 17-year existence yet found itself in first place through a majority of the season. Manager Bill Virdon accurately predicted this success in a preseason interview with columnist Harry Shattuck. Emphasizing a needed reliance on its […]

Kansas City designated hitter Mike Sweeney strode to the plate with two men on base and two outs in the bottom of the ninth on Father’s Day in 2003. Reliever Tim Worrell stood on the mound for San Francisco, on its way to a 100-win season and its third playoff appearance in four years. By […]

As a big leaguer, Ed Charles was perhaps the most accomplished player in the brief history of the ill-fated Kansas City Athletics, and he achieved fame as a baseball poet, reciting his poetry on television a few times per year and mailing verse to young fans with requested autographs. But he is best remembered today […]

Bobby Hofman spent a lifetime in baseball. Over a career roughly divided into three distinct phases, he played major-league baseball for parts of seven seasons, and then managed and coached at various levels, including Oakland, for the next 20. He transitioned from there into a career as a big-league executive until his retirement in 1989 […]

For Larry Colton, one night in June 1968 seemingly devastated everything he had worked for. Just a few weeks after making his big-league pitching debut with the Philadelphia Phillies, a bar fight led to Colton’s shoulder separation, ending his time in The Show. During his one outing at the top level, he allowed one run […]

Gil Coan was heralded as a speed merchant who could hit for average with some power after two spectacular minor-league seasons as World War II wound down. But beyond baseball, his life was and always remained rooted in his family and his community. An unusual skin allergy significantly hampered his rookie season. Injuries bedeviled him […]

He wasn’t flamboyant like his contemporary Dizzy Dean and didn’t have a signature pitch like Carl Hubbell’s screwball, but stout right-hander Bill Lee of the Chicago Cubs had a five-year run in the 1930s when he could lay a legitimate claim to be the best pitcher, or at least one of them, in baseball. From […]

“Some people say he was the greatest African American player ever. That may be so — I don’t know — but what seems clear is that he was the best black player of his time.” — Monte Irvin   The story of John Henry “Pop” Lloyd has many facets. It is a story of communities […]

By the time Carl Scheib pitched his final major-league game in 1954, the big righthander from Gratz, Pennsylvania, had risen from the youngest player in American League history in 1943 to a solid performer who won 45 times and fashioned a lifetime 4.88 ERA. During his 11 major league seasons, he played all but two […]

Aspects of the life story of obscure mid-1880s pitcher Fleury Sullivan have doubtless been lost to time. But the surviving historical record militates that any profile of the brawny Sullivan focus on his relatively brief ballplaying career; his involvement in the political affairs of East St. Louis, Illinois; and his proclivity for resolving differences via […]

An Indianapolis native and prosperous city hotelier with no previous connection to baseball, J. Edward Krause served as club president and principal public spokesman for the Indianapolis Hoosiers, the premier franchise of the Federal League for the first two of the circuit’s three-season existence. On the field, the Hoosiers were sterling, capturing the flag in […]

Cy Block was never shy about speaking up for himself. When he thought he had been wronged, which was often, he went straight to the top. At different times he confronted Commissioner Kenesaw Mountain Landis, National League President Ford Frick, and Dodgers President Larry MacPhail over his disputes with baseball management. His voice carried as […]

Dusty Cooke’s father fought in the Confederate Army at Chancellorsville, which may partially explain why Cooke himself joined with the Phillies’ Ben Chapman in some of the most vicious racist taunting of Jackie Robinson in April 1947. Cooke was first-base coach for the Phillies at the time. He had also been a good ballplayer, though […]

“Caldwell could be as great as Matty or Walter Johnson, but instead of choosing their careers, he is evidently going to be another Rube Waddell.” — Grantland Rice, 1914 “Caldwell might have been the Mathewson of the Yankees, but he turned out to be the Bugs Raymond of the local Americans. …His irregular habits destroyed […]