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Skipper Connie Mack was tired of waiting. Eleven days after his Philadelphia Athletics (102-48) played their last regular-season game, they finally took the field for Game One of the World Series.1 The delay was caused by the National League, which had concluded its regular season just two days earlier with the juggernaut Chicago Cubs (104-50) […]

With his chokes-up-on-the-bat stance, second baseman Félix Millan built a career as a singles hitter. His 12-year tenure in the majors ended with 1,617 base hits. But extra-base hits and home runs numbered 289—less than 20 percent of the total. Millan’s performance on July 21, 1975, may best represent this cornerstone of his contributions, which […]

Though Ken Harrelson of the Boston Red Sox got the game-winning grand slam in the bottom of the ninth and Bill Harrelson of the California Angels was the losing pitcher, there was no Harrelson vs. Harrelson last-minute drama at Fenway Park in August 1968. As the Red Sox and Angels resumed the suspended second game […]

Virgil Trucks’s 1952 season has been described by Gregory H. Wolf as “one of the most incongruous and surprising ones imaginable.”1 Trucks had missed almost the entire 1950 season with a serious arm injury and struggled in 1951 to regain his well-regarded fastball. In his first four starts of 1952, Trucks was tagged for 30 […]

It was supposed to be a getaway game for both teams, scheduled for 4:05. Mother Nature had other ideas: The game started at 6:37 due to rain. Those of the announced crowd of 24,338 who stayed were treated to a tense, well-pitched game and some baseball history. The visiting Cardinals (20-10) were leading the NL […]

The 1949 World Series opened with Allie Reynolds facing Brooklyn’s best pitcher, Don Newcombe. Yankees manager Casey Stengel wanted the 1950 World Series to start that way as well. Reynolds against Philadelphia’s best pitcher. But it did not work out that way as Jim Konstanty rather than Robin Roberts started Game One. Eddie Sawyer’s gambit […]

Throwing a complete game had become a remarkable event by 2004. In the entire season, Boston Red Sox pitchers threw a total of only four complete games. Curt Schilling had three of them, and Pedro Martínez threw this one, on August 12 at Fenway Park against the Tampa Bay Devil Rays.1 Martínez, in his seventh […]

In September 1976 Hall of Fame inductees Yogi Berra and Warren Spahn were only the two most prominent names among a large field of managerial candidates available to the expansion Toronto Blue Jays. But the Jays startled the baseball world by selecting the hardly-household-name Roy Hartsfield as the franchise’s first skipper. But the surprise may […]

When considering the life of Dick Armstrong, most contemporaries think only of his ample accomplishments in the theological world. This is for good reason. Armstrong spent six decades of his life as a noted Presbyterian minister, pastor, educator, author, and humanitarian. Yet he had more than one career, and there is so much more, from […]

If you were lucky enough to bring Ron Darling to a party, how would you introduce him? Especially if the party was outside the New York City area, it’s possible you would have to do just that. While he has numerous accomplishments on and off the baseball field, he hasn’t grabbed the headlines (for all […]

A few years before the New York Yankees had a Murderers’ Row in their lineup, George Perring was proud owner of a bat carved from the hangman’s gallows of a prison. So the story went, at least, back in mid-1915. The tale made the news from coast to coast, and was even printed in Hawaii […]

During the 1890s southpaw Bert Inks pitched for six different major league clubs – but posted a winning record for only one of them. More than a century later, that performance prompted a 19 th century baseball scholar to declare, “Bert Inks exemplified the lengths to which teams often go to give a left-handed pitcher […]

Elston Howard was born February 23, 1929, in St. Louis, Missouri, the son of Emmaline Webb and Travis Howard. A schoolteacher in Sikeston, Missouri, Emmaline fled to St. Louis when Howard, her principal, refused to marry her. She worked to become a dietician, and when Elston was 5 years old, she married Wayman “Big Poppy” […]

Dennis Bennett, a member of the Phillies’ pitching rotation in 1964 and a fun-loving character on baseball’s stage for much of the 1960s, was blessed with a great left arm and a thirst for the good life. He also overcame several reckless brushes with danger, including a tragic accident, to forge a seven-year big-league career, […]

A five-year veteran of the Negro Leagues, Ernesto Vibert Clarke was a one-hit wonder who followed the adage If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again. The phrase may be a cliché, but in Clarke’s case it’s an accurate one.  The native of Panama recorded his first and only hit in the major leagues […]

“A ballplayer making good in the big league, a handsome fellow in any company, his waving brown hair carelessly thrown back from his brow, his voice pitched in those taking North Carolina accents, was it any wonder that he found ready listeners?”1 Thus wrote the Twin-City Daily Sentinel (Winston-Salem, North Carolina) of George Suggs, whose […]

Any ballplayer named Durham is bound to attract the nickname “Bull” – even if he was a fairly average 170-pounder, standing 5-feet-11. Edward Fant Durham was a right-handed pitcher, who batted from the left side. He pitched for the two Sox teams – for the Boston Red Sox from 1929 through 1932 and for the […]

Joe Cambria was one of the most prolific scouts in major-league history, signing hundreds of men to professional contracts as a scout for Clark Griffith and the Washington Senators. He also inked countless others as a promoter of semipro and Negro Leagues baseball in Baltimore and minor-league teams throughout the country. He was one of […]

Bill Killefer began his 48-year career in Organized Baseball in 1907 as an unlikely professional, weighing only 125 pounds when he played with Jackson of the Southern Michigan League. According to his brother Wade, “the bats he used were almost as big as he was.” It would be years before he grew to be 5’10 […]

“(Jim) Hardin is one of those pitchers who doesn’t have an overpowering fastball or an outstanding breaking pitch. But his physical ability is of major-league caliber, make no mistake about it, and he’s the type who squeezes every ounce out of what he has.”1 Jim Hardin began his baseball life as a catcher, but made […]

Infielder Ted Schreiber was #10 in the long list of New York Mets third basemen. He played just 39 games as a utilityman for Casey Stengel in 1963. Of his 55 plate appearances, the most significant was his next to last — the final regular-season out made in the Polo Grounds. Second base was his best […]

When Ned Garver won his 20th game on the last day of the 1951 season for the lowly St. Louis Browns in 1951, he became the first pitcher in major league history to win 20 games for a team which lost 100. One of the most durable pitchers of his era, the right-handed Garver led […]

On the last day of the 1955 regular season, 18-year-old Roger Marquis played one inning in right field and batted once for the seventh-place Baltimore Orioles. That was his only major league appearance, and he was out of professional baseball altogether by age 21. Roger Julian Marquis was born on April 5, 1937, in Holyoke, […]

Russ Scarritt enjoyed an exceptional rookie season for the Boston Red Sox in 1929, leading the club with 71 runs batted in, second (to Jack Rothrock) in average with .294, and legging out 17 triples – a single-season Red Sox total that has not been topped since 1914. He was born in Pensacola, Florida, on […]