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“Ray Mack’s Lunging Play Ends Classic” read the sub-headline in the Cleveland Plain Dealer on April 17, 1940. The “Classic” was Bob Feller’s no-hit mastery of the Chicago White Sox on a cold, raw Opening Day at Comiskey Park. Through 2019, it was still the only Major League no-hitter pitched on Opening Day. Although Feller […]

A towering Southern farm boy with the mind of an engineer, pitcher Ernie Shore is forever linked with Babe Ruth. Teammates on three clubs and in two World Series, they together tossed what many fans and some historians long considered a perfect game—albeit an odd one in which the Babe faced the first batter and […]

Before the 1915 Army-Navy baseball game, 24-year-old Dwight “Ike” Eisenhower led his fellow Army cadets in the “Long Corps” yell: “Rah, Rah, Ray! Rah, Rah, Ray! West Point, West Point, AR-MAY!”1 Playing left field for the Army team was 22-year-old Omar Bradley. By a score of 6-5, Army defeated Navy for the seventh consecutive year […]

From 1913 to 1976 there were only three seasons when Tom Sheehan didn’t earn a paycheck from a professional baseball team. “Every time I ever looked around, somebody wanted to hire me,” he told The Sporting News.1 But wrestling with teammate Rube Bressler in a hotel room nearly ended Sheehan’s career in 1917. “Something snapped,” […]

An infielder, outfielder, pitcher, coach, manager, scout, farm director and baseball executive, Melvin Douglas Queen, had been all of them.  He has the distinction of having entered the major leagues as an outfielder and finishing as a pitcher.  The son of a former major leaguer, Mel was born on March 26, 1942, in Johnson City, […]

Dick Pole was a 6-foot-3, 200-pound right-handed pitcher who broke in with the Red Sox in 1973.  Born on October 13, 1950, in Trout Creek in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, one of the few Yoopers who worked a major-league mound. Richard Henry Pole was signed as a free agent by the Boston Red Sox in 1969.  […]

One might think a pitcher with a 29-45 career record had been something of a bust, but Ken Sanders had the misfortune to often play for losing teams. His best season is indicative of the situation: with the last-place A.L. West 1971 Milwaukee Brewers, he was 7-12 despite a major-league-leading 31 saves and an ERA […]

Rich Garcés – beloved as “El Guapo” during his time as a relief pitcher for the Boston Red Sox – enjoyed a professional baseball career that saw him play minor-league ball, Venezuelan Winter League ball, independent baseball, and 10 seasons of major-league baseball. Richard Aron Garcés Mendoza was born in Maracay, Venezuela, on May 18, […]

The date was May 27, 1944, and as left-handed starter Stan Partenheimer toed the mound and prepared to deliver his first major-league pitch, he might have paused for a moment to consider his surroundings.  Only 1,408 fans dotted the stands of St. Louis’s Sportsman’s Park that Saturday afternoon, as Partenheimer’s fifth-place Red Sox faced the […]

Mel Ott’s life is a classic rags-to-riches story of a naive, unheralded, teenager from a small Southern town who rose to great heights in New York, the country’s largest and most forbidding city at the time. His baseball career could not happen today; no team could carry an inexperienced 17-year-old on a major league roster […]

Mickey Haefner was a decent lefty pitcher for an up-and-down Washington team from 1943 into 1949. He won 10 or more games five seasons in a row, topping out at 16 in 1945. No taller than 5-foot-7 (not 5-foot-8, as he himself confirmed in 19431), his nickname was “Itsy-Bitsy.” Haefner featured a knuckleball, although he […]

Corner outfielder Phil Plantier spent most of the 1990s playing major-league baseball, for five different teams. He played 383 games in left field and 126 in right; he was also deployed occasionally as a designated hitter and pinch-hitter. Plantier’s best year by far was in 1993, when he homered 34 times and drove in 100 […]

Mark Clear was a hard-throwing righty pitcher who was released by the Phillies after one year in the minors but became a durable two-time All-Star after converting to a reliever. He played from 1979 through 1990 for the Angels, Red Sox, and Brewers. The 6-foot-4 inch, 200-pound hurler, earned nicknames “The Elongated Man” and “Horse,” […]

José Luis Meléndez García was born on September 2, 1965, in Naguabo, a small town on the eastern coast of Puerto Rico. The municipality is famous for its empanadillas de chapín, a tasty fried turnover stuffed with cowfish. Blessed with a powerful right arm, Meléndez was destined to toil not as a fisherman, but rather […]

            “Starving for run making power, the Phillies’ Labor Day attendance found in their lap a brand new outfielder.             He hit a homer with the bases full. Also a triple, double, and two singles. He batted in six runs in the first game; 2 more in the nightcap….             Dangerous Dan Litwhiler is […]

It is rare for a single moment to pivot a career. Dick Stockton is an exception, not rule. Before 1975, Stockton moved from Syracuse University via KDKA Pittsburgh’s revolutionary news to pro basketball’s Boston Celtics. After 1975 he aired a Klondike of more national sports, including the Red Sox, A’s, and network baseball postseason and […]

Left-hander Dean Stone spent parts of eight seasons in the major leagues, pitching for six different teams and compiling a career record of 29-39 with a 4.47 earned run average in 686 innings. His most celebrated moment was almost certainly his being the winning pitcher of the 1954 All-Star Game without officially facing even one […]

The start of the second game of a four-game series between the Boston Red Sox and Seattle Mariners on July 8, 1994, was delayed by rain for just over an hour, but for the 33,355 fans at Fenway Park that night, it was worth the wait. Their patience was rewarded with a memorable 4-3 Red […]

The Minnesota Twins’ defeat of the Baltimore Orioles on September 1, 1979, didn’t make much difference to either team in the long run. The Orioles, leading the American League East Division by eight games, ended the season with the same lead and went to the World Series. The Twins, two games out of first place […]

It was the top of the ninth inning with a runner on first and one out. The date was September 15, 1979, and the visiting Boston Red Sox had a comfortable 5-2 lead over the Baltimore Orioles. The batter hit a ground ball to the shortstop, but instead of turning two to end the inning, […]

In the days leading up to one of Yankee Stadium’s most surprising comebacks, it was the visitors’ ballpark that was making headlines. The previous week, the New York Yankees dropped a two-game series to the Minnesota Twins, and placed the blame on the Hubert H. Humphrey Metrodome’s roof. After New York fielders lost some routine […]

Struggling at third base during the first two months of the 1998 season, the Pittsburgh Pirates summoned their top-rated prospect, 19-year-old Aramis Ramírez, from Triple A. Ramírez, who had just 40 games of professional experience above Class A, went hitless in his first 24 big-league at-bats before breaking through with a game-clinching two-run double on […]

The 1967 season remains a magic year in Boston baseball history. The Red Sox, ninth-place finishers in 1965 and ’66 and owners of a combined 499-624 record since 1960,1 won the American League pennant under new manager Dick Williams and took the World Series to seven games before falling to the St. Louis Cardinals. Their […]

  Baseball only decrees 90 feet between bases and 60 feet 6 inches from home plate to the mound. Elsewhere, look backward, angel.“Thanks to Alexander Cartwright,” said former Commissioner Bowie Kuhn, “the outfield distance, fence height, and space between the seats and lines vary. Parks could do as they liked.”1 Some have been liked better. […]