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Timothy Dean Birtsas, a pitcher whose only major-league hit was a home run, spent five years pitching for Oakland and Cincinnati. He was born on September 5, 1960, in Pontiac, Michigan, a Detroit suburb. He grew up in nearby Clarkston, where, outside of his baseball career, he has spent most of his life. He attended […]

The only image of John Brown we could find is this cartoon from the July 10, 1942 St. Louis Argus.   John Wesley Brown came by his nicknames of “Lean Man” and “Slim Man” quite honestly. He stood 6-feet-1-inch tall and tipped the scales at less than 160 pounds. He was a right-handed pitcher who, […]

Dale Alexander, the hard-hitting first baseman who was Boston’s first American League batting champion, began and ended his playing career in his hometown of Greeneville, Tennessee. David Dale Alexander was born and raised on a 117-acre farm in Greene County on April 26, 1903. He had four brothers and four sisters. His two sons, Don […]

Harold Wolfe is among the several baseball players from northern Ohio to make it to the big leagues via the minor-league Duluth (Minnesota) White Sox in the second decade of the 20th century. The White Sox player-manager from 1909 to 1916 was Cleveland native Thomas J. “Darby” (aka “Dook”) O’Brien (1876-1964). O’Brien recruited boys from […]

Taking on the writing of a biography of a man named John Smith seemed to be a daunting undertaking. It is perhaps still the prototypical generic male name in American society, though as the 2010 baseball season got underway the Boston Red Sox had two players named Ramon Ramirez on the 40-man roster and no […]

With his one major-league hit, Roger Hornsby McKee never came close to his namesake’s Hall of Fame total. He did, though, channel Rogers Hornsby with an Organized Baseball batting title.1 And while the namesake Hornsby was a player-manager for 12 seasons during an era when such skippers had a penchant for giving themselves a turn […]

Andy Coakley is remembered most as “Lou Gehrig’s coach” in his 37 years as head of Columbia University’s baseball program. But this overlooks his extensive influence on the game. Once a promising right-hander with Connie Mack’s Athletics in the early 20th century, Coakley was also a labor pioneer, a forward-thinking league organizer, a team owner, […]

Right-hander John Samuel Wilson worked parts of the 1927 season and a few innings in two early 1928 games for the Boston Red Sox. His record was 0-2 –both decisions coming in 1927 – with a career earned run average of 4.45. He went on to play minor-league ball all the way into the 1945 […]

In mid-September of 1931, the Philadelphia Athletics were running away with their third straight American League pennant. On the morning of Saturday, September 12, the Athletics had a 13-game lead over the second-place Washington Nationals with just 15 games to play. The Boston Red Sox were dead last of eight AL clubs, 44½ games behind […]

The Philadelphia Athletics and Boston Red Sox were heading in different directions as September arrived. The 90-45 Athletics were leading the American League by 6½ games, while the Red Sox were struggling in the basement with a 44-86 record. The Athletics had won the 1929 AL pennant by a whopping 18 games over the New […]

Over the first four games of the 2020 National League Championship Series, the Dodgers had scored 25 runs and the Braves had scored 26. Without further information, a fan might think the series would be tied at two games apiece. It was not: The Braves led, 3-1. The overall scoring was close because the Dodgers’ […]

On July 12, 1938, approximately 10,000 fans entered Griffith Stadium to see their Washington Senators take on the league-leading Cleveland Indians. Just six days earlier, the 1938 All-Star Game had been held at Cincinnati’s Crosley Field. Washington’s third baseman Buddy Lewis and Cleveland’s center fielder Earl Averill had started in the midsummer classic for the […]

Plant Field was part of an athletic facility constructed in the 1890s on the grounds of the Tampa Bay Hotel and named after Henry Plant, the hotel’s owner. The City of Tampa purchased the facility in 1899 (after Plant died), and incorporated Plant Field into the newly created Florida State Fairgrounds, surrounded by a horse […]

In 1931 the United States was two years into the Great Depression, with an unemployment rate of 15.8 percent, nearly double the previous year. Jobs were hard to find, and what jobs there were generally came with lower salaries than before. Breadlines, soup kitchens, and the number of homeless persons were on the rise. Baseball […]

In pursuit of their first postseason berth in 26 years, the Milwaukee Brewers traded for reigning American League Cy Young Award winner CC Sabathia in July 2008. Sabathia made an immediate impact in Milwaukee, winning his first nine decisions as a Brewer. Win number nine came in the most dominant start of his 19-season Hall […]

Jack Kramer – who started 1947 with wins in his first three decisions, even though his St. Louis Browns were well under .500 already – was pounded for eight runs in four innings by the Indians on May 11, dealing him his first loss of the season. But the Browns followed that loss by splitting […]

The 1951 National League season is usually remembered most for the legendary “Shot Heard ’Round the World” capping the New York Giants’ September pursuit that plucked the pennant from the Brooklyn Dodgers. But a May game in Boston matching the Braves, then in pennant contention, with the visiting Pittsburgh Pirates featured an odd pitching performance […]

On a cold September 7, 1911, a gathering of 5,523 Boston National League fans witnessed a pitching duel between two future Hall of Famers.1 Phillies rookie Grover Cleveland (“Pete”) Alexander allowed just one hit and beat 44-year old Cy Young, 1-0. A Boston Post headline caught the moment perfectly: “Old Cy Twirls Great Game, but […]

The Chicago Cubs defeated the Detroit Tigers in the 1907 and 1908 World Series, but lost to the Tigers in 1935. The teams met again in the 1945 World Series and were tied three games apiece heading into the deciding Game Seven on Wednesday, October 10, 1945, at Wrigley Field in Chicago. World War II […]

A modest crowd of 8,693 passed the turnstiles at Briggs Stadium to see a matchup between the first-place Detroit Tigers and the Boston Red Sox, who entered the day 6½ games back. The fans were treated to a slugfest that also had made a bit of history, as Boston’s player-manager Joe Cronin hit for the […]

They ended up being called Team Streak. For 13 games to start the 1987 season, the Milwaukee Brewers were unbeatable. The streak almost ended at 11 games, when the Brewers fell behind the Texas Rangers on Easter Sunday, April 19, by a 4-1 score. But behind clutch home runs by Rob Deer and Dale Sveum, […]

In the early part of 1927, the Midwest was bursting with anticipation as the baseball season segued from projections to facts delivered by daily sports accounts. By mid-April, pitching matchups, game summaries, and season standings would replace the “dreary box-scoreless winter” to provide “something in the newspapers.” Even an umpire might expect applause for one […]

The second-place St. Louis Browns traveled to Beantown for a four-game midweek series against the seventh-place Red Sox. It was still relatively early in the 1944 season. (Boston had played 21 games but had lost nine of their last 12, while the Browns had played 24 and had lost eight of 12 recently.) The Browns […]

In over a century of existence, through 2016 the New York Yankees have been run by only five different ownership groups.1 To their great fortune and that of their fans, the three longest tenured were well-capitalized and committed to winning. They also had a terrific knack for finding great baseball men to work for them. […]