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Chief Johnson was a strong-armed pitcher who had great beginnings to his professional baseball career but met a tragic, untimely end. Johnson was known for hurricane speed and a slippery-elm-laced spitball that baffled batters at all levels of competition. He pitched a shutout in his first major-league start and became a controversial figure when he […]

In the foothills of the northernmost Green Mountains, just 16 miles from Vermont’s Canadian border, the village of Enosburg Falls proclaims itself “Dairy Center of the World.” Its annual Vermont Dairy Festival attracts thousands of visitors, but its population of slightly over 2,000 is roughly the same as it was more than a century ago. […]

Ronald Michael Diorio was born in St. Mary’s hospital in Waterbury, Connecticut, on July 15, 1946. His parents, Charles and Gilda (Follachio) Diorio, were first generation Americans, with roots in the Calabria and Abruzzi regions of Italy. Charles, a Waterbury native born in 1906, worked as a plumber. Gilda worked in the shop as well. […]

Left-hander Clyde Shoun played for the Braves near the end of a long 14-year career in the majors that saw him make all but the last 16 of his 454 appearances in the National League. Typically used in relief, he started just 85 contests and posted a 73-59 lifetime record with a career 3.91 ERA. […]

Talk about your quick-starting careers. Billy Pierce didn’t play organized baseball until he was 15. Born in Detroit on April 2, 1927, Pierce attended Highland Park (Michigan) High School, but originally he was not a pitcher. As he recalled to Mark Liptak, “I was a first baseman when I was 14, and the kid who […]

Imagine being able to say you’d seen the big-league debuts of Ernie Banks, Roberto Clemente, Sandy Koufax, Don Drysdale, and Bill Mazeroski1 – not to mention an All-Star Game, a no-hitter, a four-homer game, and a batter hitting for the cycle. Some baseball lovers spend a lifetime hoping to see those kinds of milestones. Bill […]

“An average day in the minors is far superior to the best day pulling green chain and risking life and limb in a stifling sawmill,” said Jamie Burke, commenting on his first seven years in the minors. “It’s my job; I’m getting paid for something I love to do.”1 That attitude is what kept Burke […]

During a fifteen-year major-league career that spanned the Deadball and Lively Ball Eras, Jack Fournier was one of the premier power hitters in baseball. His batting accomplishments were impressive: While compiling a lifetime .313 batting average, he led the National League in home runs once; led the American League in slugging percentage once; hit three […]

Ernie Nevers’ football career as a fullback and coach is well documented. While a full biography has yet to be written, much ink has been spilled in the telling of his gridiron glory. His baseball career has not been so well scoured in the near century since he pitched professionally. It is only natural that […]

Quietly dependable though seldom spectacular for most of his five full major-league seasons as an infielder, Steve Yerkes grasped immortality when he played a central role in one of baseball’s legendary episodes. In the bottom of the 10th inning of the deciding game of the epic 1912 World Series, Yerkes raced home with the winning […]

Given a comical nickname based on his last name and beaky nose, William Dayton “Poll” Perritt had a successful 10-year pitching career, pitched in a World Series, was bribed by Hal Chase, tussled with John McGraw and oil barons, and became a modestly successful Louisiana oilman. William Dayton Perritt was the first child born to […]

Charles O. Finley indulged in many whims as owner of the A’s—and hiring world-class sprinter Herb Washington was one of his most fanciful experiments. Washington’s stint with Oakland (1974 and early 1975) was just part of Finley’s longstanding infatuation with “designated runners.” The track star was the second of six specialists whom the A’s employed […]

Despite 100-plus big-league victories, a half-dozen straight workhorse campaigns of 200-plus innings tossed, and a crucial role in a historic mid-’60s American League pennant drive, Pedro Ramos’s small degree of diamond immortality will likely always rest upon two individual pitches tossed in the midst of an erratic 15-season sojourn. Both fateful deliveries came while he […]

Through 2024, over 23,000 players have played baseball in the major leagues; only 152 were born in Mexico. Fernando Valenzuela stands above them all. One of the game’s brightest and most beloved stars over the course of his 17-season MLB pitching career (1980-1991, 1993-1997), Valenzuela’s 173 victories, six All-Star selections, and 41.5 career WAR topped […]

Roy Cullenbine’s greatest skill was unappreciated in his time. Cullenbine walked in 17.8 percent of his plate appearances, the seventh-highest rate in history.1 He set a record by drawing walks in 22 consecutive games. But his extraordinary ability to get on base didn’t impress the people who signed his paychecks. One general manager said he […]

Wayne Bromley “Rasty” Wright spent his entire adult life pursuing his two passions, baseball and his alma mater, The Ohio State University. Wright was a star collegiate pitcher for the Buckeyes from 1915 through 1917. Going directly from college to the majors — a rarity throughout baseball history — he went on to pitch for […]

Bob Lennon hit 64 home runs for the Southern Association Nashville Vols in 1954, but his most memorable homer came on April 30, 1957, when he was playing for the Chicago Cubs. “It was what I had dreamed about,” he recalled in a 1993 interview. He hit it in Ebbets Field, where he had rooted […]

“It exceeded all proportion, It could not be contained, It bloomed round like a dark sunrise, It glistened in the rain. The little boys with crew cuts Or blond locks oh so fair Would look and cheer with wonder At Oscar Gamble’s hair.” —Roy Peter Clark1   Oscar Gamble made his big-league debut in 1969 […]

“What if?” It is a perennial question and in baseball, the “what if?” usually pertains to injury. What would have a team accomplished had not half of its players been on the DL at one point or another during a season? What if a pitcher’s promising career had not been torpedoed by a line drive […]

If God had not created Hustling Dan O’Leary, Damon Runyon would have. O’Leary is not well known today but he was well appreciated by the sportswriters of his time, as he was usually involved in something that would make an amusing story. He danced on the edge of fame and infamy, and even The National […]

Horacio “Rabbit” Martínez (1912-1992) was the prototype for the long line of shortstops from the Dominican Republic: slick-fielding, quick, and a threat on the basepaths. He had an outstanding career in the Negro Leagues with the New York Cubans (1935-36, 1939-47). Though professional ball was largely absent in his homeland while Martínez was active, he […]

When Shufflin’ Phil Douglas arrived on the baseball scene in 1910 at the tender age of 20, he brought with him size and a fastball impressive enough to draw comparisons to Walter Johnson’s. Douglas, a product of Cedartown, Georgia, was a big man, especially for that era, standing 6-feet-3 and weighing 190 pounds, who threw […]

Here are the full SABR Defensive Index™ rankings, through games of August 17, 2014. The SABR Defensive Index draws on and aggregates two types of existing defensive metrics: those derived from batted ball location-based data and those collected from play-by-play accounts. The three metrics representing batted ball data include Defensive Runs Saved from Baseball Info […]

Index for Bill James’s Baseball Analyst Nos. 1-40, 1982-1989 Read Rob Neyer’s introduction of the Baseball Analyst archives “Baseball Analyst,” a Bill James creation that he self-published from 1982 to 1989, was one of the first publications to feature articles devoted to sabermetrics — a phrase he coined in part to honor SABR. “Baseball Analyst” […]