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Most famous for his wildly successful tenure in the New York Yankees front office from 1920 through 1945, Ed Barrow left his mark on the Deadball Era as well. Though he never played a game of professional baseball, the ubiquitous Barrow was a key participant in the careers of countless players and a major actor […]

John (Jack) Burwell Reed played the outfield in the regular and post-season for the fabled 1961 New York Yankees, and contributed to their pennant-winning efforts in 1962 and 1963. He was Mickey Mantle’s defensive replacement for most of these three seasons.  Jack was a terrific high school/college athlete in Mississippi, winning the state quarter-mile run […]

With a competitive, sometimes combative, spirit and a devastating split-fingered fastball, Jack Morris became the pitcher of the 1980s and continued his dominance into the early 1990s. His 162 victories in the 1980s were 22 more than runner-up Dave Stieb of Toronto. Four times he was a member of a world-championship team, including a one-year […]

“Now Ol’ Rebel Oakes come up from the South With some tan on his face and a chew in his mouth; When asked if he thought he could build up a team That can drag down a pennant and fulfil a dream, Ol’ Oakes, he say: ‘Mebbe so!’”1 Ennis Telfair Oakes was born in the […]

One of the first things one notices about short-term Boston Red Sox leftfielder/pinch-hitter Gene Rye is that he used another surname while playing professional baseball, apparently Anglicized from Mercantelli. He was also sometimes known by the nickname “Half Pint” – he was 5-feet-6 and weighed 165 pounds. He batted left-handed, but threw right-handed. Rye, as […]

Soft-spoken Richard Atley Donald once threw 95-mile-per-hour fastballs for the 1939 New York Yankees, the first major league team to win four straight World Series.  He won 12 straight games for them, to set an American League mark for rookies. Atley was a star pitcher for the 1937 Newark Bears, considered by many to be […]

“There was never a more graceful player than Bridwell.” — Sportswriter Sam Crane, 19101   Al Bridwell was a natural in the field, one of finest defensive shortstops of the Deadball Era. Hitting did not come naturally to him, but as a member of the New York Giants, he became a solid hitter under the […]

This book is to be neither an accusation nor a confession, and least of all an adventure to those who stared face to face with it. It will simply tell of a generation of men who even though they may have avoided the shells were destroyed by the war. –Erich Maria Remarque, All Quiet on […]

Best known as the principal owner of the New England Patriots football team from 1960 to 1988, Billy Sullivan began his career in professional sports in baseball when Boston was a two-team city. As publicity director for the Boston Braves from 1946 to 1952, Sullivan crafted numerous ideas to encourage baseball fans to patronize the […]

It is fitting that Bill Sayles started his big league career in Boston. The Sayles family had come full circle. He may not have realized it, but he was not the first of his family to ply his trade in Massachusetts. His ancestors landed on Boston’s shore before Boston was Boston. The Sayles family can […]

Babe Ruth was irreplaceable. So when the end finally came for Ruth during the first game of a doubleheader on May 30, 1935, Boston Braves manager Bill McKechnie sent in outfielder Hal Lee to replace the irreplaceable. Lee was accustomed to playing in the shadows of other stars of the 1930s, including Chuck Klein and […]

The Monster. It wasn’t a nickname Dick Radatz liked but the minute it was out there, it stuck. For three seasons (1962-1964), he was one of the most dominant relief pitchers in the game, a supernova.1 He may have been overused, perhaps burning out after facing more than 500 batters for each of four seasons […]

The son of a brilliant but combative Hall of Fame baseball executive, Lee MacPhail inherited his father’s intelligence and a love of baseball, but a wholly different personality. While Larry had a short and somewhat mercurial baseball career colored by both triumph and controversy, his son Lee spent four decades in baseball and earned the […]

“I want to give it my all and teach my kids you can get knocked down and people can say you’re no good, you’re old, blah blah, but if you have passion, you can work really hard and you can go and give it your all, and if it doesn’t work out, at least you […]

The shame of it is that Chuck Hostetler was always known for his speed. Those legs got him noticed, whether in semipro industrial leagues or on dusty minor-league fields in Kansas and Oklahoma. So even now, it hurts a bit to watch the black-and-white images of Hostetler hurtling around third base at Wrigley Field before […]

Few players in the years before World War II started their professional baseball careers in the major leagues, but “Bennie” Huffman broke into the Big Show in 1937 with the St. Louis Browns. If it had not been for a serious shoulder injury that summer as well as the later onset of World War II, […]

In 1794, the legislature of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania codified a portion of English common law governing observance of the Christian Sabbath, or day of rest. The laws, known as “blue laws,”1 criminalized “any worldly employment or business whatsoever on Sunday (works of necessity, charity, or wholesome recreation excepted.)”2 Those laws were still very much […]

It was the weakest arm in the Red Sox outfield against the fastest runner on the basepaths for the Chicago White Sox, but in this wild and wacky season, the Cardiac Kids found yet another way to pull out an improbable victory. Gimpy-armed right fielder Jose Tartabull became the instant hero when his throw from […]

Baseball folklore has it that Abner Doubleday “chased the cows out of Elihu Phinney’s cow pasture on an afternoon in 1839”1 and thus was inspired to invent the game of baseball. While home on leave from the United States Military Academy, as the story goes, Cadet Doubleday (Class of 1842) drew up the rules and […]

Managing a baseball team is a roller-coaster experience, and Bobby Cox saw plenty of ups and downs during 35 seasons as a professional manager. The high points included a World Series championship and 14 division titles with the Atlanta Braves, as well as an International League Governor’s Cup crown with the 1976 Syracuse Chiefs. Low […]

Clyde “Hardrock” Shoun didn’t plan on playing in the big leagues in 1944. Since the end of the previous campaign, the 32-year-old Cincinnati Reds southpaw had expected to be drafted any day, and did not report to spring training. The call from Uncle Sam finally came in late March, and Shoun was inducted into the […]

The St. Louis Cardinals’ owner, Sam Breadon, generally shunned publicity. Nevertheless, Breadon knew that the way to attract more fans to the games was to have a winning team and also to get more information about the games to the fans.1 The June 24, 1920, issue of The Sporting News steadfastly questioned how the newbie […]

When St. Louis Browns coach Charley O’Leary pinch-hit in the final game of the 1934 season, the fans at Navin Field in Detroit thought they were witnessing nothing more than a bit of harmless fun to liven up a relatively meaningless contest. At the time, O’Leary, a veteran of 833 games with the hometown Tigers […]

In 1939, Yankee Stadium hosted the seventh All-Star Game between the American and National Leagues. (SABR-Rucker Archive)   The New York Yankees did not have an auspicious beginning as a franchise. Starting as the New York Highlanders, they played their home games at Hilltop Park in upper Manhattan from 1903 to 1912. In 1913 the […]