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John Buzhardt pitched in both major leagues from 1958 through 1968, primarily as a starter for the Philadelphia Phillies and Chicago White Sox. He compiled a 71-96 won-lost record, and dominated the New York Yankees while with the White Sox, where he was in a rotation that ranked with the best in the American League. […]

Tommy Barrett hit for some very good averages and stole a lot of bases in the minor leagues. Originally a New York Yankees farmhand, he broke into major league baseball with the Philadelphia Phillies in 1988, making 36 of his 54 big league appearances. He got into 14 more games for the Phillies in 1989 […]

Myles Thomas was the winning pitcher in seven of the New York Yankees’ 110 victories in 1927. He also has the distinction of owning the fifth-highest batting average (.333) on a team known as Murderers’ Row. But there’s more. In real life, Myles Thomas was a Pennsylvania farmer’s son, a baseball star for Penn State, […]

Jimmie Wilson was a two-time All-Star catcher whose major league career spanned 23 years (1923-46) as a player, manager, and coach with four different National League teams. He played on four pennant winners, was a coach on a fifth, and was a member of two World Series championship teams. He is best remembered for his […]

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 […]

Richard John McAuliffe was born in Hartford, Connecticut, on November 29, 1939. He grew up in the tiny town of Unionville, a burg “not exactly a breeding spot for major league athletes,” according to Los Angeles Times columnist Jim Murray, another Connecticut native. “Chickens are more along its line. … Unionville has about nine months […]

Mike McCormick was a $50,000 bonus baby at 17, a sore-armed castoff at 25, and a Cy Young Award winner at 29. Michael Francis McCormick was born in Pasadena, California, on September 29, 1938. His father, Kenneth, a semipro pitcher, built a mound in the backyard, placed home plate 15 feet away, and set out […]

Bert Blyleven’s career statistics speak for themselves: 287 victories, 4,970 innings pitched, 3,701 strikeouts, and 60 shutouts accumulated over the course of 22 seasons in the big leagues (1970-1990, 1992). However, some sportswriters questioned whether the Dutch-born right-hander, whose curveball was regarded as the era’s finest, was Hall of Fame material when he retired. In […]

A journeyman outfielder during his 12 major-league seasons, Dave May was called by The Sporting News “a good man to have on a team.”1 The stocky 5-foot-10½, 186-pound left-handed hitter played in 1,252 games for Baltimore, Milwaukee, Atlanta, Texas, and Pittsburgh, posting a .251 average with 96 home runs and 422 runs batted in. Best […]

Joe Hietpas caught the last half-inning of the season’s finale for the New York Mets in 2004. That was his entire major-league experience. He never came to the plate in The Show, an oddity for a position player. “At the time, you don’t look at it as your one missed opportunity for an at-bat. It’s […]

Bill Renna was a journeyman outfielder who played in 370 games over six seasons for four American League teams. He batted over .300 for the Yankees, served as a backup for Boston’s Ted Williams, and in 1954 led the league in turning double plays as a right-fielder. His career, Rich Marazzi once wrote, was “a […]

Joseph J. Lannin owned the Boston Red Sox for less than four full years, but in that short span, the team won two world championships in the back-to-back years 1915 and 1916. A native of the Province of Quebec, he came to the United States at a very young age – the story says he […]

Dave Machemer was in his seventh minor-league season when he got the call. After 2,521 career at-bats in the “bushes,” the Benton Harbor, Michigan, native was going to the big leagues. On Monday, June 12, 1978, the parent California Angels summoned the infielder from the Triple-A Salt Lake Gulls to replace the injured Carney Lansford. […]

The California Angels’ best player of 1979, Don Baylor, came to Toronto in a bad mood. In an interview for the Orange County Register, Baylor criticized the Angels front office for not acquiring enough pitching help for the team.1 By the end of this game at Exhibition Stadium, Baylor had a 3-for-7 day with 8 […]

After winning the first two games of their July 1976 series at Fenway Park against the Chicago White Sox and climbing over .500 for the first time all season, the defending American League champion Boston Red Sox couldn’t complete the sweep on July 7. They lost the final game in 10 innings, 6-3, after several […]

During the last week of June 1982, the Detroit Tigers slumped into Baltimore with a 10-game losing streak. They had been swept in consecutive series by the Cleveland Indians, Milwaukee Brewers, and Boston Red Sox, and that dropped them from first place in the American League East Division to third.1 Their offense was struggling, averaging […]

Before Yogi Berra came up with his now famous quip, “It looks like déjà vu all over again,” Chicago Cubs outfielder Hank Sauer could very well have originated that witticism, after he scorched Philadelphia Phillies pitcher Curt Simmons with three home runs for a second time on June 11, 1952. Sauer’s three solo homers were […]

James Barton “Mickey” Vernon’s SABR biography notes that he was widely regarded as “the premier first baseman in the American League” in the 1940s and 1950s.1 His breakthrough season was 1946, when the 28-year-old Washington National won his first of two batting titles and was named to his first of seven AL All-Star teams.2 Vernon’s […]

A forgettable year for the Minnesota Twins, 1981, stands out in that it was the final season of Metropolitan Stadium. Even a finale couldn’t be properly planned for the ballpark, which opened in 1956 and was used by the minor-league Minneapolis Millers until the Washington Senators moved to Minnesota. A game on June 11 drew […]

The Philadelphia Phillies could not have picked a better day for a batting-helmet giveaway than Sunday, August 3, 1969. The 13,181 in attendance at Connie Mack Stadium witnessed one of the highest-scoring games in the ballpark’s fabled history and, unbeknownst to them, the birth of the Cincinnati Reds’ fabled Big Red Machine. The 1968 season […]

Despite a balmy 81-degree game-time temperature and a promotion in which the Twins gave away a car at the game, the Tuesday evening game between the Chicago White Sox and Minnesota Twins drew a sparse turnout of 3,630. Those who decided not to come to the ballpark not only missed out on an opportunity to […]

It sounds like the kind of far-fetched scenario you might hear in a barroom bet: “True or false? Two baseball teams once played a game where the pitchers threw seven shutout innings, but the score was 21-17.” If anyone ever offers you that brainteaser, pick “true,” because it really happened to two teams in the […]

When baseball’s 1994 calendar flipped from July to August, the clock was ticking towards the beginning of the infamous strike that ended what may have been the Montreal Expos’ finest season and destroyed their last and best chance at glory. When play began on August 1, the Expos had the best record in baseball at […]

Last Saturday, November 8, was a great meeting for the East Tennessee Chapter of SABR. Lots of good baseball talk, a bit of business, two authors talking about their books (Gerald C. Wood on Smoky Joe Wood and Bryan Steverson on Baseball: A Special Gift from God). It was our highest attended chapter meeting, including […]