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In his debut for the Chicago Cubs, right-handed pitcher Dallas Beeler checked off more “career goal” boxes than some other pitchers manage in their entire major-league careers. As the starting pitcher in the first game of a doubleheader against the Washington Nationals, Beeler tallied six strikeouts, picked off a player, and singled his first at-bat […]

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, […]

Jim “Zipper” Zapp played a big role in getting the Birmingham Black Barons to the 1948 World Series against the Homestead Grays. It was a season that had seen a young rookie named Willie Mays spell him in the second game of a doubleheader. Zapp was a big right-handed outfielder, standing 6-feet-2 or -3 and […]

The New York Giants were known as the “Windowbreakers” when they smashed the single-season record for home runs in 1947. Leading the assault were the four big bats in the middle of the lineup: Johnny Mize with 51 homers, Willard Marshall with 36, Walker Cooper with 35, and Bobby Thomson with 29. Marshall, the left-handed […]

“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 […]

Larry Rosenthal was a product of the Depression-era Middle West America who found his way to the major leagues through amateur baseball . . .the “sandlots.” He was a left-handed-hitting and throwing outfielder who had eight seasons in the American League and another nine in the high minors, mostly in the American Association. In the Twin […]

Between the two of them, the baseball-playing Bender brothers embodied much of the popular turn-of-the-century American Indian stereotype, both positive and negative. Tall, dignified, and stoic, Charles “Chief” Bender epitomized the Noble Savage. He was also one of the finest pitchers of the Deadball Era. Never the staff workhorse, Chief Bender was manager Connie Mack’s […]

In 1945, The Sporting News reckoned Eddie Mayo as “an excellent example of the Salvation Army adage, ‘A man may be down, but he is never out.’”1 Acquired by the Detroit Tigers a year earlier after he had failed in several attempts to stick in the big leagues, the 34-year-old infielder helped pace the club […]

When Jeff Montgomery took the mound for the Cincinnati Reds on August 1, 1987, he was living out the storybook baseball tale. A three-sport athlete from small Wellston, Ohio, Montgomery grew up a couple of hours down the road from Riverfront Stadium in the era of the Big Red Machine. His idol, Reds manager Pete […]

Two words: Señor Smoke. Hernandez/Lopez. Things Change. Take your pick of the trio of descriptions that defined Aurelio Lopez’s baseball career. Things change. That’s a truism that, in its pithy wisdom, fails to reveal that perceptions of the past — even the recent past — can vary so widely from those of contemporary observers. Ask […]

When Andy Piercy reported for duty with the vaunted Chicago White Stockings in early April 1881, “the weather was intensely cold, the ground frozen hard, and the ball-field covered with ice and snow.”1 It signaled an ominous beginning to an abortive major-league baseball career for the 24-year-old rookie. He came to the club as the […]

Joe Gibbon fulfilled his dream when he made the Opening Day roster of the 1960 Pittsburgh Pirates, the World Series champion that season. Joe pitched 12 full big-league seasons plus part of a 13th before retiring in 1972. He was talented enough in basketball to be drafted by the NBA champion Boston Celtics in 1957, […]

It may surprise you to learn that by 1960 just two players born in the Dominican Republic had played in the majors: Ozzie Virgil and Felipe Alou debuted in 1956 and 1958, respectively. In 1960 they were joined by Julian Javier in the season’s second month. On July 3, 1960, Rudy Hernández became the first […]

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 […]

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 […]

It was an unseasonably cool summer evening in Spokane – in the mid-60s at gametime. But the cool breeze didn’t mean cooler heads would prevail during the final game of a four-game series between two cross-state rivals, the Bellingham Mariners and Spokane Indians. “We kinda had a little bit of bad blood with [Bellingham],” Spokane […]

Right-handed starting pitcher Kevin Millwood came to the Philadelphia Phillies in a December 2002 trade for backup catcher Johnny Estrada. The Phillies were looking for an ace to anchor a young pitching staff after acquiring free-agent slugger Jim Thome to bolster the offense. Millwood, coming off an 18-win season for Atlanta, fit the bill. He […]

Hours after 44-year-old Randy Johnson of the Arizona Diamondbacks failed to notch his 295th career win on September 1, 2008, 42-year-old Greg Maddux of the Los Angeles Dodgers won his 354th, tying Roger Clemens for eighth all-time. With Arizona slated to visit Los Angeles for a pivotal three-game series the next weekend, the prospect loomed […]

Montreal Expos manager Tom Runnells raised more than a few eyebrows during spring training in 1992 when he proclaimed his squad was “the team to beat” in the National League East.1 Although they had a promising group of young ballplayers, Montreal had finished dead last in the division in 1991 and a worst-to-first turnaround defied […]

“In the first game of the new season, Manager Mel Ott of the Giants rang up six records.” — Walter Graham, Springfield (Massachusetts) Republican, April 18, 19451   When newspapers reported that New York Giants player-manager Mel Ott broke six records in an 11-6 win over the Boston Braves on Opening Day 1945, it got […]

“You Called That a What . . . ?”The Newsletter of the Official Scoring Committee Society for American Baseball Research (SABR) June 2018, Volume 3, Number 2 Past newsletters   Editor: Stew Thornley Committee Meeting at Convention to Feature Real Live Official Scorers New Minor League Rule Raising Questions (and Answers) Conundrum of the Month […]

Editor’s note: This article was published in SABR’s 1994 Baseball Research Journal (Vol. 23).   As major league baseball continues to deliver self­-inflicted wounds to itself in the form of a players strike, the issue of baseball’s long-standing exemption from federal antitrust laws has resurfaced. While today’s ballplayers and owners recently scrapped in conference rooms […]