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Harold Wolfe is among the several baseball players from northern Ohio to make it to the big leagues via the minor-league Duluth (Minnesota) White Sox in the second decade of the 20th century. The White Sox player-manager from 1909 to 1916 was Cleveland native Thomas J. “Darby” (aka “Dook”) O’Brien (1876-1964). O’Brien recruited boys from […]

If a player collects six hits in his first day in the majors and no one sees or reads about it, did it still happen? Unfortunately, rookie first baseman Guy Sturdy’s stellar doubleheader debut on September 30, 1927, for the seventh-place St. Louis Browns occurred on their last home date of the season, and one […]

Half of the most famous version of the “Pretzel Battery,” catcher Heinie Peitz was a noted “coacher”—more of a bench jockey in modern parlance—whose mouth gained him nearly as much attention as his play. For nine years of his 16-season (1892–1906, 1913) career, he was a Cincinnati Reds mainstay. When he retired, Peitz ranked 12th […]

For eight years after World War II, Doris Jane “Sammye” Sams, an excellent fast-pitch softball player from Knoxville, Tennessee, enjoyed an outstanding career in the pro All-American Girls Base Ball League (now known as the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League). By the time her final season ended in 1953, Sammye, as friends called the right-handed […]

On November 12, 1982, Joe Altobelli was named the seventh manager in Baltimore Orioles history. Piloting one of the 26 major-league teams was surely an enviable position to hold. Unfortunately, for Altobelli, he was supplanting a legend. Earl Weaver, Baltimore’s field manager from mid-1968 to 1982, led the Orioles to six division titles, four pennants […]

In his 92 years of life, Clarence Eldridge wrote for big-city newspapers, practiced law, held leadership roles at an automobile manufacturer, worked in New York’s advertising world, occupied senior positions at two well-known food companies, and served as a marketing and management consultant with such sagacity that he was eventually elected to the American advertising […]

During the winter of 1935-1936 Connie Mack completed the destruction of his last winning dynasty. Since capturing his third straight pennant in 1931, Mack had traded or sold six of his regular position players and his top three pitchers to raise the cash he needed to keep his Philadelphia Athletics afloat during the Depression. The […]

Venezuelan infielder Dámaso Blanco was 30 years old and in his 12th pro season when his dream finally came true with the San Francisco Giants. He told me the story in 2010. “The most important moment in my baseball career as an active player came on May 26, 1972. That day I played in my […]

On July 27, 1955, the players and staff of the Cleveland Indians presented a brand-new $3,000 Oldsmobile to coach Red Kress for his untiring work with the team. The Indians’ third baseman, Al Rosen. summed it up by saying that the team wanted to do something for Red to pay him back for all he […]

In 1947 Clint Hartung, the Hondo Hurricane, was going to be the biggest thing to hit New York baseball since Babe Ruth. Like the Babe, the 6-foot-4, 215-pound giant could pitch and hit home runs out of sight. The Giants signed Hartung in 1941. He had led his high-school team in Hondo, Texas, to the […]

Remembered for his blazing fastball, Monty Kennedy had an abbreviated minor-league baseball career that was quickly interrupted by military service. Perhaps because of this lack of development time, Kennedy struggled constantly with his control during his time with the Giants and the club eventually ran out of patience with him. However, Kennedy displayed flashes of […]

On the morning of August 27, 1947, Baltimore Orioles manager Tommy Thomas phoned Mel Ott to tell him that they had “bought the best pitcher in the International League” — Ray Poat. Thomas went on to warn the New York Giants skipper, “Only one thing, Mel, don’t use Poat in relief. He’s a starter and […]

“I got the name Show Boat in St. Louis with the Cards in 1930,” wrote George “Showboat” Fisher in a 1985 letter. “The show ‘Showboat’ was in St. Louis most of the summer, the fans liked what they saw, so they started to call me ‘Show Boat.’ I hit .374 to lead the club, and we won […]

The New York Yankees teams of the late 1960s and early 1970s under manager Ralph Houk struggled to find an identity after their long stretch of dominance in the American League ended in 1965. Following the departure of franchise legends, several young talents emerged in this period of transition. The Yankees looked to the future […]

Rubén Gómez was the second pitcher from Puerto Rico to reach the majors — and the first to start and win a World Series Game. He led the New York Giants to a 6-2 win in Game Three at Cleveland on October 1, 1954. A limber 6 feet even and 170-175 pounds, Gómez was amazingly […]

In 1970 sportswriter Ted Blackman quipped, “If John Bateman bought a pumpkin farm, they’d cancel Halloween.”[fn]“Hustling Bateman Frets in Hospital Bed,” The Sporting News, April 18, 1970, 24.[/fn] The luckless reference was to the cursed timing of a kidney injury that hospitalized the Montreal Expos starting catcher two days before the start of the 1970 […]

Wilson was meant to be. The no-hitter he pitched for the White Sox on August 11, 1991, changed not only his life, but also the way a country’s new generation embraced baseball. Asked about the game over the years, he would repeat, “It was a gift from God.”1 Indeed, it seems it was. Wilson Álvarez […]

He was equally as adept at coordinating pitchers and throwing out baserunners as he was as a leader and strategist in the dugout. However, Alfonso Ramon Lopez chose to credit his supporting cast of players for his successes rather than himself. Much like his mentor Casey Stengel, Lopez knew that he could not have won […]

One teammate said Brad Radke was his hero. Another said Radke had more heart than anyone he ever played with. His pitching coach — after nearly three decades in professional baseball — said Radke was the man he respected most in the game. Stoic toughness. Steady reliability. Big-game guts. Brad Radke displayed it all during […]

Editor’s note: This article first appeared in the SABR Baseball Research Journal, Vol. 37, in 2008.   When the Boston Red Sox won the World Series in 1918, it was their fifth triumph in the fifteen years of the modern classic. The club had the best player in baseball, outfielder-pitcher Babe Ruth, another top hitter […]

Here are the SABR Defensive Index™ rankings through games of June 16, 2019. For the seventh consecutive season, the SDI will be used to help select the winners of the Rawlings Gold Glove Award and Rawlings Platinum Glove Award™, presented by SABR. The SABR Defensive Index accounts for approximately 25 percent of the Rawlings Gold […]

  Wahconah Park: an outdated barn or a precious relic? A swamp or a hallowed slab? A money pit or a landmark? After well over a century, the dichotomy persists. Baseball players were facing off there before Babe Ruth was born, before “Take Me Out to the Ball Game” was written, before architects sketched the […]

If “What’s past is prologue,” as Shakespeare wrote,1 Ruppert Stadium’s in Newark began with Charles A. Davids, a Bayside, New York, promoter.2 To most of the public, though, it begins with the baseball original for whom the park was named, ultimately housing two teams so good that to some they seemed better than several teams in […]

There are times when our humanity transcends decades-long sports rivalries because something, or someone, bigger than all of us is present. In the City by the Bay, the afternoon of October 2, 2016, was one of those times. The San Francisco Giants were hosting the Los Angeles Dodgers at AT&T Park on the last day […]