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At the start of spring training in 1974, longtime Detroit sportswriter Joe Falls had a problem. He could not decide which Tiger player was his favorite. He called it a “tossup” between veteran Ike Brown and second-year outfielder Dick Sharon. Falls wrote presciently that Brown, who would play the final two games of his major-league career […]

Like Babe Ruth, he was a savior for the major leagues when the game was at risk of losing fans. Like Jackie Robinson, he was a courageous pioneer who blazed a trail and opened new doors of opportunity for others to follow. Like Fernando Valenzuela, he was the pride of a specific ethnic community, yet […]

Steve Palermo thought about becoming a French interpreter at the United Nations. But he got into umpiring instead, paid $2 per game in his first professional job as a baseball umpire at age 13. Oxford, Massachusetts was a small town of around 11,000 people, not that far from Worcester, where Palermo had been born on […]

Cuban outfielder Carlos Paula parlayed an all-star tour in the United States into a full-time minor-league role in the early 1950s. With his chiseled frame and stylish flair, he became the man who integrated the Washington Senators on September 6, 1954, making the Senators the 12th of the original 16 major-league teams to do so. […]

Burleigh Arland Grimes, who pitched in four games for the St. Louis Cardinals at the beginning of the 1934 season, was born on August 18, 1893, on his parents’ dairy farm about halfway between the towns of Emerald and Clear Lake in northwestern Wisconsin. (Wisconsin records indicate he was born in Emerald, but he always […]

Clad in the uniform of his hometown team, Paul Molitor stood on third base after he collected the 3,000th hit of his major-league career. The first player ever to reach the milestone with a triple, Molitor enjoyed a number of memorable moments in a Minnesota Twins uniform through the final three seasons of his 21-year […]

Ronald Michael Diorio was born in St. Mary’s hospital in Waterbury, Connecticut, on July 15, 1946. His parents, Charles and Gilda (Follachio) Diorio, were first generation Americans, with roots in the Calabria and Abruzzi regions of Italy. Charles, a Waterbury native born in 1906, worked as a plumber. Gilda worked in the shop as well. […]

When Jess Barnes was at the top of his game, the right-handed pitcher from Circleville, Kansas, held his own with the elite of his day. Named to Baseball Magazine’s All-American team following the 1919 season, Barnes shared the honor with such luminaries as Walter Johnson, Rogers Hornsby, Ty Cobb, Babe Ruth, George Sisler, and Joe […]

If “What’s past is prologue,” as Shakespeare wrote,1 Ruppert Stadium’s in Newark began with Charles A. Davids, a Bayside, New York, promoter.2 To most of the public, though, it begins with the baseball original for whom the park was named, ultimately housing two teams so good that to some they seemed better than several teams in […]

The Minnesota Twins have called Target Field home since 2010. (COURTESY OF STEW THORNLEY)   The Twin Cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul have long been a baseball mecca. The Minneapolis Millers and St. Paul Saints were Triple-A mainstays, and each had a long and distinguished history, being the two teams with the most wins […]

The baseball team known as the Braves makes its home in Atlanta, but traces its diamond ancestry back through Milwaukee and to Boston, where it began in 1871. In fact, the Atlanta Braves are the only baseball team that has played every season consecutively since 1871, outdating even the National League itself. While forgotten by […]

From its beginnings in the 1880s, the franchise now known as the Los Angeles Dodgers has provided a parade of well-known players and managers, 23 pennant winners, and six World Series victories. Off the field, it has been associated with some of the most recognized front-office talent in the game’s history. Names such as Charles […]