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Depending on how you spell it, or sometimes how you pronounce it, Boston has enjoyed its share of “Miller Time” for many seasons. In recent years the Red Sox have employed pitchers Andrew and Wade Miller, third baseman Bill Mueller (pronounced Miller) and first baseman Kevin Millar (OK, close enough). In past history there were […]

Johnny Lazor was a ten-year veteran of the minor leagues and a wartime major-league outfielder for the Boston Red Sox, playing for four seasons from 1943 through 1946. Why he never appeared in the ‘46 World Series is a matter of conjecture, but there appear to have been a couple of good reasons. He was […]

Artie Wilson’s career makes just the barest impression in the old Baseball Encyclopedia: 19 games and 24 plate appearances spread across five weeks in the spring of 1951. But both before and after that short stint with the famously fated ’51 Giants, Wilson ranked for years as one of the biggest stars in two big-time […]

“When Mr. Reardon speaks you are under the impression that he has just spit out a hand grenade.” — Harry A. Williams, Los Angeles Times1   Beans Reardon learned a lot about umpiring at the age of 16 when he worked as a riveter’s assistant. “Riveting was good education for umpiring,” he recalled. “If I […]

In the 146 years of professional baseball, no team has come close to attaining the legendary status of the 1927 New York Yankees. They were, and are, the symbol of greatness, both individually and as a team. As the prominent baseball historian Donald Honig said, “Never before or since has there been in the game […]

Vaughan Pallmore “Bing” Devine, a soft-spoken, modest man, spent more than a quarter-century as a baseball executive and played a major role in building four National League champions and three World Series winners. Devine left his biggest mark as the general manager of the St. Louis Cardinals, whose owner fired him in 1964 just as […]

Todd Frohwirth was a high school senior with no future in professional baseball until he saw Kent Tekulve on television and tried pitching like the unorthodox right-hander. Eight years later, he was Tekulve’s teammate in the major leagues. Exclusively a reliever, Frohwirth spent parts of nine seasons (1987-1994, 1996) with the Phillies, Orioles, Red Sox, […]

“I was a character in baseball. I saw it as an interim type of career,” Lou Skizas told Bill Gleason.1 Skizas, known as “The Nervous Greek” during his four-season major-league playing career, was perhaps best known for an unusual ritual that he followed before coming to bat. Before reaching the plate, the right-handed-batting Skizas dropped his […]

Pi Schwert has the distinction of being one of a small handful of former major-league players to serve in the United States House of Representatives.1 An excellent defensive catcher for the University of Pennsylvania, he went straight to the New York Yankees after graduating in 1914, playing in 12 games over two seasons. Years later, […]

Chicago fans were outraged when the White Sox traded their most popular player, Minnie Miñoso, to Cleveland in December 1957 with Fred Hatfield for Early Wynn and Al Smith. Wynn was a 37-year-old right-handed pitcher who had posted a losing record for the Indians that season, and his best days appeared to be behind him. […]

R C Stevens, said one of his minor-league managers, was “capable of breaking up a game anytime he took his bat in hand.” He hit 191 home runs in 12 minor-league seasons, but didn’t meet the test in the major leagues, and played only briefly in four seasons, three of them (including 1960) with the […]

Dick Gyselman made it to the major leagues for 82 games with the Boston Braves in 1933-34, but his greatest achievement, arguably, is a mark he set in the lower circuits–his 2,500 games played at third base is the all-time minor league record. In a professional career that totaled nineteen seasons, the six-foot, two-inch Gyselman […]

In the first decade of the 1900s, most major-league baseball players still originated from the northern United States and were not educated past high school. It was not especially common to find Southern college men on big-league rosters. Weldon Henley was one of the earlier such players to appear in the majors when he debuted […]

In the locker room celebration after the New York Mets won the 1969 National League pennant, he was quoted by the New York Daily News as saying, “I’ll walk down the street in New York now and people will say, ‘There’s Art Shamsky of the Mets.’ People used to laugh. They won’t anymore.’”1 Indeed, after his performance […]

Miguel González enjoyed a long and prolific career as a major-league catcher and coach, and along with Adolfo Luque is considered to be one of the two true patriarchs of baseball in Cuba, where he was a player, manager, and owner in the Cuban League from 1910 through 1960. He was a coach on the […]

On the morning of September 15, 1958, Central Railroad of New Jersey commuter train No. 3314 was nearing Bayonne when it ran through several signals and plunged off an open drawbridge into Newark Bay. Forty-eight people lost their lives. One of the victims was George “Snuffy” Stirnweiss, a second baseman who played for the New […]

There have been two big leaguers named Joe Morgan — and it was not hard to tell them apart. Joseph Michael Morgan played fractions of four seasons in “The Show,” finishing with three games for the 1964 Cardinals. He was white. Joe Leonard Morgan’s Hall of Fame career ran from 1963 to 1984. He was […]

Don Bradey’s professional baseball career spanned 15 seasons—a career that saw him travel the country, with stops in Colorado Springs, Memphis, Waterloo, Syracuse, New Orleans, Little Rock, Durham, Oklahoma City, San Antonio, Amarillo, and Charlotte. But it was during his 12th season that Don was elevated to major-league status with the Houston Colt .45s. Although he pitched […]

The neighborhood surrounding 11th and Wharton Streets in South Philadelphia is known for producing entertainers Frankie Avalon, Bobby Rydell, Fabian Forte, and Chubby Checker. John Marzano wasn’t a teen idol. He didn’t star in Beach Blanket Bingo and he didn’t invent “The Twist.” However, at one point in his baseball career, Marzano was considered the […]

Pack your bags. Frank Lane’s in town. The compulsive trader known as Frantic Frank shuffled at least 690 players in 414 transactions with five teams.1 Wherever Lane went, turmoil followed. He traded one manager for another. He traded a home run champion for a batting champ. He traded local heroes and future Hall of Famers. […]

“That’s the hardest hit ball I ever saw.” – Terry Moore1 The ball came off the bat of Walter Sessi, the unlikeliest of heroes for the 1946 World Champion St. Louis Cardinals. Sessi debuted with the Cardinals in 1941 and was hitless in 13 at-bats. After missing four seasons while serving in World War II, […]

The 1952 World Series was the fourth straight for the New York Yankees and the third in six seasons for the Brooklyn Dodgers. The teams had met in the last Game Seven, in 1947, with the Yankees winning—a familiar outcome. In 1952, New York was looking for its 15th world championship, the Dodgers, seemingly as […]

On the final day of the 2008 season, the New York Mets were wrapping up their time at Shea Stadium and preparing to move to Citi Field, which was under construction in the parking lot behind left field. Besides commemorating their 45 seasons at Shea, the Mets had a tangible purpose as they hosted the […]

As winter turned to spring in 1941, war was spreading across the globe, a wildfire uncontained. Nazi Germany had subjugated much of Europe, with invasion of the Soviet Union next. Britain had endured The Blitz for months, Luftwaffe terror raining from above. Hitler’s racist regime brutally persecuted Jews, evolving by 1942 into the genocide we […]