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Joaquín Andújar was running out of time. Bruce Sutter was, too. When the St. Louis Cardinals opened a season-ending three-game series against the National League East Division champion Chicago Cubs at Wrigley Field on September 28, 1984, Andújar was making his fourth attempt to win his 20th game. Sutter, meanwhile, needed one save to tie […]

Trailing the Pittsburgh Pirates in the National League standings in July 1921, the New York Giants bolstered their lineup by trading for star outfielder Irish Meusel. In his second game after the controversial deal, Meusel sparked New York to an early lead over the Pirates, but the Giants also needed Phil Douglas’s shutdown relief pitching […]

The 1958 World Series featured a rematch from 1957, the defending champion Milwaukee Braves once again facing the New York Yankees. The Yankees had taken charge of the American League early, gaining first place in the fourth game of the season and never losing it all year. A streak of 14-1 in May pushed them […]

It is one of the gold standards of major-league baseball: the 3,000-hit club. More than 16,500 players have participated in at least one major-league game. Of those, only 19 players had exceeded more than 3,000 hits in their career. On June 30, 1995, Eddie Murray became the 20th member to become immortalized on that coveted […]

The major leagues’ 2020 pandemic season, with its abbreviated 60-game schedule, was followed by the largest playoff field ever — eight teams per league, kicking off on September 29. While eight games on the second day of the playoffs captivated the sport, Minnesota Twins rookie Alex Kirilloff quietly made history. Game Two of the best-of-three […]

Edwin Díaz fired another fastball, but Teoscar Hernández fouled it off, the third in a row on a 3-and-2 count. Díaz—who had been credited with 32 saves in each of the last two seasons with the New York Mets—was trying to close out a 5-2 win for Puerto Rico over the Dominican Republic in the […]

“A perfect example of poetic justice in action,” wrote Lou Chapman of the Milwaukee Sentinel about right-hander Bob Buhl’s commanding 14-inning complete-game 2-1 victory over the Chicago Cubs.1 Buhl had surrendered only one hit over the first nine innings, but seemed destined to be on a short end of a 1-0 pitchers’ duel before pinch-hitter […]

Known as one of the feistiest players in baseball history, Edd Roush channeled that energy into a Hall of Fame career. An old-timer was quoted in the Brooklyn Daily Eagle in 1919 saying that Roush was more like the fiery old Baltimore Orioles of the 1890’s than any other player in the National League. The […]

On September 27, 1920, suspicions about the integrity of the previous year’s World Series between the Chicago White Sox and Cincinnati Reds were given substance by a self-admitted fix insider named Billy Maharg. In an interview first published in the Philadelphia North American and syndicated nationwide immediately thereafter, Maharg maintained that a number of Chicago […]

It took quite an odyssey for right-hander Rex Cecil to get into his first major-league game. It was August 11, 1944, and he was in San Diego. It was a Friday. Cecil had been playing professional baseball since 1937, when he was 20 and pitching for the Vancouver Maple Leafs. He’d never played for a […]

Utility infielder Luis “Pimba” Alvarado never hit much in the majors, but he forged a career with solid defense. He ran well and was known for his quick hands and release. One press guide said, “The ball seems to bounce from his glove to his throwing hand as if on a string.”1 Alvarado served four […]

Guy “Moose” Morton Jr. made his major-league debut with the Red Sox on September 17, 1954. It was the only day he appeared in a big-league box score. His father, Guy Morton — the “Alabama Blossom” — was a right-handed pitcher in the majors for 11 years (1914-1924) with the Cleveland Indians, overcoming a 1-13 […]

Her first words on the phone to the police were, “My name is Mary, and I’ve shot a man.”1 It was March 9, 1967. Left-hander Ted Davidson, just 11 days into spring training and with his big break in the Cincinnati Reds bullpen imminent, lay bleeding behind a Tampa bar. His blonde assailant had fired […]

Major-league right-hander Bob Chakales was one of five sons born to Edward Peter and Blanche Wiggs Chakales – (sons in order: Robert, Charles, Dwight, and twins John and James). Bob was born on August 10, 1927, in Asheville, North Carolina. His mother worked in retail, selling women’s clothing, and his father – known as Eddie […]

Two-time minor-league batting champion Ralph Sharman enjoyed a productive late-season tryout with the 1917 Philadelphia Athletics. Eschewing a potential full-season roster spot for 1918, Sharman instead enlisted in the Army in order to serve his country. Tragically, the 23-year-old soldier became the second player who had reached the major leagues to die while serving in […]

From 1950 to 1955, Robin Roberts was the top right-hander in the National League while pitching for the Philadelphia Phillies. For most of the remainder of his 18-year career, he was a crafty veteran who had a remarkable resurgence with the Baltimore Orioles. Either way, he would go out, take his turn on the mound […]

Asked by a sportswriter in January 1912 which pitcher was giving him the most trouble in the American League, Ty Cobb did not mince words. “I believe I have never in my life faced a pitcher who bothered me so much as that man O’Brien,” he growled. “O’Brien has everything. He has a ‘spitter’ the […]

In 1942 St. Louis Cardinals’ farm director Branch Rickey singled out a particular right-handed hurler among a small army of top-flight pitching prospects: Max Surkont “can become another [Bob] Feller for us,”1 declared the future HOF executive. But by the end of spring training the Cardinals, blessed with the major leagues’ best pitching, assigned Surkont […]

During my career I answered to a Peach, a Doc, and a Street. My age always kept me away from war. Collins put me on the Hall of Fame hill. I collected four World Series rings. I married a babe named Ruth. If Shoeless Joe would have stayed in the game, I might have “seen” things differently. I was a professional […]

It was one of the most bizarre batting races in National League history. Three players on the same team were competing for a batting championship, none of whom today would qualify for the honor. Not until December of 1926, nearly three months after the season ended, was it decided whether Bubbles, Cuckoo, or Rube had […]

When the Baltimore Orioles won four American League pennants in six seasons (1966-1971), no Baltimore pitcher earned more saves or appeared in more games than right-hander Eddie Watt. A short, chunky Midwesterner, usually with a pronounced wad of Red Man chewing tobacco bulging in his left cheek, Watt held right-handed hitters to a .200 batting […]

Ken Suarez, one of the “can’t-miss” catching prospects of the 1960s and a member of the Rangers’ inaugural squad in 1972, took a roundabout trip to arrive at his Arlington destination. Kenneth Raymond Suarez was born on April 12, 1943, in Tampa, Florida, the son of Joseph R. and Gladys M. (Wadsworth) Suarez, who married […]

The greatest shortstops in Negro League history were John Henry Lloyd (first), Willie Wells (second), and Dick Lundy (third), according to a 1952 Pittsburgh Courier poll of Negro baseball experts. Today Lundy is less well known than Lloyd and Wells, who are in the Hall of Fame, but during his career, everyone following Negro League […]

Ed Connolly was not a switch-hitter, but it appears he made a switch in his hitting. When he first signed with the Boston Red Sox in 1928, he was a left-handed batter but at some point he switched over to hit from the right side. Connolly, a catcher, was a Brooklyn native who’d previously played […]