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“Cupcake,” a euphemism for a should-be-easy-to-beat opponent, entered the sports lexicon in the 1970s.1 Forty-some years earlier, the New York Yankees would’ve agreed it applied to their September 23, 1932, opponent: the cellar-dwelling, 63 games back2 Boston Red Sox. The hapless 1899 Cleveland Spiders were the last major-league team to face an opponent 60 or […]

As the 1917 season reached its next-to-last day on October 3, the Boston Red Sox, winners of the American League pennant and World Series in the two previous seasons, were in second place, eight games behind the Chicago White Sox, who had dethroned the Red Sox and wrapped up the pennant a week earlier. The […]

On May 30 — Decoration Day — the Boston Red Sox were playing the reigning world champion Philadelphia Athletics, a team that by the end of the 1931 season won 107 games. The Red Sox were not even a good team. In the preceding nine years, they had finished in last place (eighth place) every […]

Game Five of the 1918 World Series was an elimination game for the Chicago Cubs. The Boston Red Sox held a three-games-to-one lead. Should the Red Sox win Game Five, they would win the World Series. There was, though, the possibility that the players would decline to play. The players were looking to ensure, among […]

As the Boston Red Sox came to the plate in the top of ninth inning at League Park on June 8, 1937, first place was within sight for the Indians. Since the team’s World Series win in 1920, the Indians had been largely mediocre, but there was cause for optimism in 1937. The pitching staff […]

The New York Giants had defeated the New York Yankees in the 1921 and 1922 World Series. The Giants won nine games, lost three, and tied one in those two Series. When the teams met again in the 1923 World Series, the Yankees were expected to fare much better. Game One of the 1923 World […]

On September 25, 1934, the Boston Red Sox – appearing at Fenway Park for the first time since August 28 – hosted the Washington Senators in a doubleheader. While away, Boston had visited all seven American League rivals, compiling an 8-13 record (with one tie). Despite the losing road trip, by the time the Red […]

“The record books recognize only those no-hitters that go nine innings or longer,” wrote The Sporting News, “but [this] feat nevertheless deserves high recommendation.”1 Less than two months after tossing a no-hitter against the Brooklyn Dodgers, Boston Braves knuckleballer Jim Tobin held the Philadelphia Phillies hitless in the second game of a doubleheader that was […]

On June 10, 1924, the New York Yankees and Detroit Tigers stood only a game apart in the standings, the Yankees tied for first place with the surprising Boston Red Sox, the Tigers in third place only a game back. The Tigers were eight games into a 21-game homestand when they hosted the Yankees for […]

The 1920 Boston College-Holy Cross football game was an important milestone in New England sports history. Sometimes the most intense rivalries are between family members. The annual game, which began in 1896, always attracted enormous interest among Catholics. Cardinal William O’Connell, the leader of the Archdiocese of Boston, took a personal interest in the annual […]

Griffith Stadium was the home of the Washington Senators from 1911 until the club relocated to Minneapolis-St. Paul after the 1960 season, and then for the inaugural campaign of the expansion Senators in 1961; but only one Senators hurler ever fired in a no-hitter in that mammoth steel and concrete structure. The author of that […]

With his brothers and sisters, Al Van Camp could almost have fielded two baseball teams. Edward Victor Van Camp, born in Lille, France, in 1871, came to America in 1884. There he met Alice Rose Van DePutte from Altre, Belgium. The two married in Moline, Illinois, in August 1892. And became a quite productive couple; […]

Ponchatoula, Louisiana, in the 1930s was a small town that had suffered a number of lumber mills closing in the previous decade. By the 1930s, it was known primarily as a strawberry farming region. It was into this area that on October 2, 1934, Earl Lawrence Wilson was born. He later changed his name to […]

Ford Garrison “came into the big leagues on a postage stamp and rode to Philadelphia on a waiver list.” He was “a Paul Revere of baseball.”1 So wrote former major-league pitcher Stan Baumgartner, who later became a sportswriter for the Philadelphia Inquirer. The postage stamp was affixed to a letter which Scoops Latimer, sports editor […]

If you were drafting players in a fantasy baseball league, you would probably rely heavily on statistics to make your decisions. But if you were choosing players for a real team for an actual 154-game season, your choices might be very different. The rigors of travel, game pressures, team chemistry and other intangibles might cause […]

Because he was born on an Indian reservation, Roy Johnson was considered a ward of the government. He and his younger brother Bob Johnson, who joined the Red Sox in 1944, were both born in Pryor, Oklahoma (some 35 miles east of Tulsa) – before Oklahoma became a state. Roy was the eldest of the […]

Ewell Gross was tall for a shortstop in his day (6 feet even), a native and high-school graduate of Mesquite, Texas, who spent almost his entire career in Texas – even the 1924 spring-training season in San Antonio when he first worked out for the Boston Red Sox, the one major-league team for which he […]

\Baseball aficionados know that trades, sales, and waivers are a part of the game. The general manager of the 1951 Chicago White Sox was Frank Lane, who earned the nickname Trader Lane for his propensity to exchange players. His attitude must have filtered down through the organization because minor-league director John Rigney engineered a trade […]

“He came back from the war, raised seven kids, practiced law and life moves on.”1 So said Madison (Wisconsin) attorney John Gerlach in a 2012 interview about his late father and law associate, Johnny Glen “Henna” Gerlach, who captained the 1937 and 1938 University of Wisconsin baseball teams (a .415 hitter his senior season of […]

The opening lines of Grantland Rice’s poem “Red Lucas, Ball Player,” say it all: “Just a ball player, that’s all- He can field, he can pitch, he can hit …” During his National League pitching career, Charles Frederick “Red” Lucas finished 204 of 302 starts; was one of the all-time best control pitchers, walking just […]

Rube Foster was the star of the 1915 World Series, pitching two complete-game wins for the Boston Red Sox in a five-game series against the Philadelphia Phillies and going 4-for-8 at the plate. His ninth-inning single won Game Two. Foster played pro ball for just one team in the big leagues, the Red Sox, with […]

Blaine Durbin had a meteoric rise through the bush leagues in the first decade of the 20th century. It brought the lefty pitcher to the attention of several big-league teams, including Frank Chance’s legendary Chicago Cubs dynasty. Yet Durbin’s story mirrors countless others: a phenom whose career fizzled out, promise left unfulfilled. He pitched in […]

During the early years of baseball, it wasn’t uncommon for players who had a brief appearance in the majors to have played in all corners of the U.S. on their way up to the big leagues, and on their way back down. Frank Thompson determined that over the course of his professional career, he had […]

What came to be known as the Yankees Dynasty began under the twenty-four-year stewardship of Jacob Ruppert. Known as “Colonel” because of his prior service in the National Guard, Ruppert owned and operated a profitable brewery, served four terms in the United States Congress, and in 1915 purchased half of the New York Yankees. His […]