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A quick perusal of the performance of the Boston Braves during the war years of 1942-45 might lead one to conclude that the team’s destiny suffered few, if any, ill effects from the loss of ballplayers to military service.  The Tribe had been mired in the National League’s second division since 1935 and finished in […]

Baseball is thankfully free of artificial boundaries of time which confine other sports. This freedom helps to shape the unique magical charm that is an evening at the ballpark. Fans never know whether it will be a two-hour squeaker or whether they may be enchanted until past sunrise by the first-ever wild 12-hour 46-inning slugfest. […]

Eddie Mathews, the only man to play for the Braves in Boston, Milwaukee, and Atlanta, burst into stardom in 1953, the team’s first season in Milwaukee, when he belted 47 home runs at the age of 21. He hit 370 homers before his 30th birthday, and many believed that if anyone could top Babe Ruth […]

American popular culture has always had affection for the medical profession. Television images of Gunsmoke’s Doc Adams, Star Trek‘s testy “Bones” McCoy and the almost god-like Marcus Welby, have made these characters cultural icons. Media images often conflict with reality, doctors as miracle workers or good guys have an instinctive appeal. Fact often surpasses fiction […]

One of only 21 Montanans to make it to the major leagues, Herbert Eugene Plews was born in Helena on Flag Day, June 14, 1928, the only child of Herbert and Marie Plews. Father and son had different middle names. Had things worked out otherwise, he might well have been born in Australia. His grandfather […]

A baseball player fighting during a game isn’t that unusual. A player fighting twice in less than a year is probably a little rarer. Fighting twice in less than a year with your own teammates – during a game – may be unprecedented. But that’s exactly what happened to St. Louis Cardinals outfielder Ted Cather. […]

One might say that Jim Boyle went into the family business – recruited by no less than Hall-of-Fame manager John McGraw himself1 – but ultimately he chose his own path after being the first Boyle to attend college. Jim Boyle followed his uncles Jack Boyle and Eddie Boyle as a catcher into the major leagues. […]

The numbers for Nippy Jones in the 1957 World Series don’t look like much: three games, three plate appearances, two at-bats, no runs, no hits, one hit-by-pitch. But the “shoe-polish incident” in the tenth inning of Game Four, when Jones was able to confirm that a pitch from Tommy Byrne had struck his foot by […]

In a 1973 SABR survey, Birdie Tebbetts narrowly missed being chosen Vermont’s greatest baseball player, finishing second to Larry Gardner by a mere handful of votes. In almost every respect, Tebbetts was a solid candidate: a lifetime .270 hitter, Birdie amassed exactly 1,000 hits in a career that spanned 17 years, three of which were […]

William Matthews is one of those early 20th century players for whom a lot is not known. He was a right-handed pitcher for the Boston Red Sox near the end of the 1909 season, but we don’t have any information on his height or weight – though one news report had him as 6 feet […]

Even though he managed to stay on the roster most of the 1902 season with the Brooklyn Superbas, his only season in the big leagues, Ed Wheeler had a miserable rookie year. The 5-foot-10, 160-pound switch-hitting utility infielder got into just 30 games, committed six errors in his first two, and barely managed to keep […]

The second of three Boyle family members to catch in the majors,1 Eddie Boyle followed his older brother Jack Boyle as a catcher into the National League after a promising minor-league career. Touted as potentially superior behind the plate to his well-respected older brother, Boyle suffered a serious ankle injury during the offseason before his […]

The fifth-winningest pitcher of all time, Warren Spahn went 363-245 over parts of 21 years from 1942 to 1965. Only by remaining in the game two seasons too long did he fail to finish with an ERA under 3.00 (3.09) and a winning percentage over .600 (.597), and his totals are all the more impressive […]

John Drebinger once wrote of Eddie Brannick, “He has legions of friends, remembers the birthdays of many of them, yet once couldn’t recall the date of his own. A gourmet of rare taste, he knows how and where to dine and will order a meal of excellence only to touch scarcely any of it because […]

One of the important currents in the history of early 20th-century baseball is how many immigrants not only embraced their new home but also its national game. Hall of Fame umpire Tommy Connolly stands as a prime example of this fact. Born in Manchester, England, on December 31, 1870, Thomas Henry Connolly immigrated to the […]

Ellis Clary played in the majors for nearly four seasons during World War II, and he had an at-bat during the St. Louis Browns’ only World Series appearance in 1944. Once his playing career ended, he spent six years as a coach with the Washington Senators and more than three decades as a scout for […]

Every great city has its own great bar. Elizabethan London had the Mermaid Tavern. Paris has its Deux Magots. In New York City in the 1950s, there was no shortage of options, but for sports fans there was only one choice: Toots Shor’s. Initially located at 51 East 51st Street, across the street from Radio […]

The Boston Braves played 2,811 regular-season home games at Braves Field between 1915 and 1952, winning 1,378 of them. The very last of those wins, recorded in the first game of a Sunday doubleheader in September 1952, appears in retrospect to rank among the tightest and most exciting wins ever seen by Boston’s National League […]

Fifty games into their 1967 season the Houston Astros were on another trip to the bottom of the National League standings. At 19-31 and 14½ games out of first place, they were on track for a won-lost record even worse than the previous year’s 72-90. But an early June trip by the Astros to St. […]

You’ve heard it before. A batter steps up to the plate in a pressure situation, humbly claims that his solitary goal is to get a bat on the ball, keep the inning alive, and hopefully give his team a chance to win. The prospect of something heroic is just gravy, perhaps even sheer luck. Just […]

“BLASTED!” yelled the box score. “Senators Drub Tigers Again, 16-6,” lamented the sports page headline of the Detroit Free Press on September 3, 1954.1 Obviously, the Detroit scribes were miffed that the Tigers were soundly beaten by the Senators the day before, and to make matters worse, were swept in a three-game series in September, […]