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George Webb Yantz was a bricklayer, journeyman catcher, and tough negotiator who reached the major leagues for one game and retired with a 1.000 career batting average. Yantz was born on July 27, 1886, in Louisville, Kentucky, the second oldest of five children born to Josephine and Charles Yantz. Charles worked as a bricklayer and […]

Few 20th-century politicians had a more impressive résumé than Albert Chandler. During the course of his political career he served as Senator, Lieutenant Governor, and two terms as Governor of his home state of Kentucky. It can also be argued that few non-players had a greater impact on baseball. His support of Branch Rickey‘s signing […]

A 1 1/3-inning stint with the 1938 Boston Bees was the only major-league action that pitcher Mike Balas achieved during a professional baseball career that spanned a dozen years, from 1929 through 1940. His greater legacy to baseball, though, was his conscientious objector status during World War II. Unlike the majority of his ballplaying brethren […]

Simon Rosenthal was one of only 16 Red Sox players who was actually born in the city of Boston and — joining Jack Slattery — one of only two to both live and die in Boston. He garnered more at-bats for the Red Sox than any other Boston native, 357 of them during the years […]

In 1949 Bantam Books published Joe DiMaggio’s autobiography Lucky To Be a Yankee.  It could be the title of Johnny Blanchard’s life story as well. “I was so lucky to have been a member of the best New York Yankee team ever,” Blanchard says, referring to the 1961 Bronx Bombers. “With any other organization, I […]

There was a National League franchise in Boston from 1876 until 1952. Future Hall of Famers such as Rogers Hornsby, Johnny Evers, and Rabbit Maranville were on some of those rosters in Beantown – but the only player on any of those Boston teams with at least 14 hits in a four-game span was Buck […]

The most coveted player in the September 1907 minor league player draft was 23-year-old Bill Lattimore. All 16 National and American League clubs placed the name of the Toledo Mud Hens lefthander on the player wish lists submitted to the National Commission. The winner of the Lattimore lottery was the AL Cleveland Naps, a stroke […]

How do you work through tragedy? Billy Gilbert, a man often praised for his work ethic,1 likely dealt with it by getting back to what he knew best: putting his nose to the grindstone in the familiar routine of baseball. On April 23, 1904, in front of one of the largest crowds at the Polo […]

When manager John McGraw needed a clutch win for his New York Giants during their four-year run as National League champions (1921-1924), he often relied on ace southpaw Art Nehf, winner of 184 games for four teams in his 15-year career (1915-1929). Described as a “money pitcher” by sportswriter Frederick G. Lieb, Nehf won the […]

Much like it had some 30 years earlier, the world of major league baseball was about to splinter yet again into three factions during the second decade of the 20th century. The Federal League, which began life as a minor league during the 1913 season playing outside of the National Agreement, declared itself a major […]

Baseball fans have always sought to quantify every aspect of their beloved game, no matter how picayune. Runs and outs came first, followed by individual marks like strikeouts, hits, and wins before technological advances allowed the proper measurement of pitch speed, much to the delight of aficionados eager to compare the exploits of Nolan Ryan […]

Of the thirteen World Series (1903-1917) covered by Philadelphia sportswriter Billy Weart, the most important was in 1908. Non-writers overcrowded the press box, causing the scribes to form the Base Ball Writers’ Association, with the goal of securing ballpark creature comforts in the press facilities, which were often congested with fans who were unwilling to […]

There have been many famous husband-wife teams who shared a career, each partner making contributions to their success. George Burns and Gracie Allen. Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt. Johnny Cash and June Carter. Ferdinand and Isabella of Spain. Isis and Osiris and the six wives of King Henry VIII to name a few. In a male-dominated […]

Ed Connolly was not a switch-hitter, but it appears he made a switch in his hitting. When he first signed with the Boston Red Sox in 1928, he was a left-handed batter but at some point he switched over to hit from the right side. Connolly, a catcher, was a Brooklyn native who’d previously played […]

Catcher Hal Wagner spent 12 years on major-league teams, but five of his stints were for five games or less. He did play in over 1,000 games, 672 of them at the big-league level, and amassed a .248 career batting average in the majors. A two-time All-Star, Wagner was something of a sure-handed catcher with […]

“He’s too young to throw a no-hitter!”1 With the words of Cincinnati Redlegs manager Birdie Tebbetts still ringing in his ears, 17-year-old southpaw Dave Skaugstad took the mound on September 29, 1957 at Milwaukee’s County Stadium. Appearing in his second major-league game, he relieved 20-year-old rookie Jay Hook, who’d held the National League pennant-winning Milwaukee […]

Once upon a time decades ago, girls played professional baseball. To quote from the opening paragraph of our book, The South Bend Blue Sox (McFarland, 2012), written by Robert M. Gorman and myself, “The unique circuit immortalized by the 1992 movie, A League of Their Own, resulted from talented women undertaking nontraditional roles and occupations […]

The Chicago Cubs opened 1982 with rookie Ryne Sandberg at third base, months after acquiring him in an offseason trade with the Philadelphia Phillies. Held to one hit in his first 32 at-bats, the 22-year-old Sandberg entered the Cubs’ April 23 game with the Pittsburgh Pirates batting just .140. On a windy day at Wrigley […]

The Chicago Cubs, managed by Joe McCarthy, were on a roll. They had won 11 of their last 12 games, and had vaulted from fourth place to second place in the National League, when they arrived in Boston for a three-game series with the Braves, July 25-27, 1928. The seventh-place Braves had just returned from […]

As the construction timeline for the new Yankee Stadium emerged, speculation that New York would host the 2008 All-Star Game ran rampant. Mayor Mike Bloomberg and Commissioner Bud Selig confirmed the rumors on January 31, 2007, at a press conference announcing that the 2008 midsummer classic would take place during the Stadium’s final season. Selig […]

It was early in the 1961 season; the Red Sox were 9-12 and the Senators (having played five more games) were 10-16. There was no reason to think either team was going anywhere.1 It was a Friday night in Washington and the 1961 Senators were a brand-new team, the Angels and Senators having joined the […]

Championship baseball generates excitement. Championship series ultimately decided by a single final game skyrocket interest surrounding the game. Compelling backstories raise the intrigue even higher. All of this was involved when the International League’s 1998 Governor’s Cup Series between two popular Triple-A franchises, the Buffalo Bisons and Durham Bulls, came down to a deciding Game […]

As the Boston Red Sox pounded the Cleveland Indians in front of 11,410 fans at Cleveland Stadium on July 3, 1943, Boston rookie Leon Culberson became the first player of the season to hit for the cycle. The New York Times reported that “Culberson’s contributions formed the major share of a 12-hit barrage laid down […]

Some of the first televised images of the Boston Red Sox were displayed early in April 1948 at the First Annual Electric Show at Mechanics Hall in downtown Boston. The Boston Globe announced that “Moving pictures of the Red Sox and Braves in action will be micro-waved by WBZ-TV from the [Hotel] Bradford, and picked […]