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The answer to that long-fought debate as to which baseball player was the best violinist of all time is Sonny Senerchia, who appeared in 29 games with the 1952 Pittsburgh Pirates. Perhaps his toughest competition was Eddie Basinski, a violinist with the Buffalo Symphony Orchestra, who played with the Pirates in 1947.1 Emanuel Robert Senerchia […]

Baseball fans in the 1960s and ’70s could bet their Cracker Jack that second baseman Félix Bernardo Millán would put the ball in play when he stepped up to bat for the Atlanta Braves or New York Mets. In 6,325 plate appearances, the 172-pound right-handed batter whiffed only 242 times, establishing himself as the National […]

To many, there can be no greater honor than to serve one’s country, but occasionally the call to duty comes at an inopportune time.  Bill Landis expresses no regrets, but history should nonetheless note that he played the full 1967 season for the 1967 Boston Red Sox, perhaps the most beloved of all Red Sox […]

Bobby Maier would have been forgiven for harboring some bitterness toward manager Steve O’Neill and the Detroit Tigers. For most of 1945, the 29-year-old rookie had started at third base for the Tigers, doing a consistent if unspectacular job at the plate while proving perhaps less reliable with the glove. But as Detroit entered the […]

A flaky southpaw from California with a deep repertoire of pitches, Frank Bertaina spent parts of seven major league seasons (1964-1970) with the Orioles, Senators and Cardinals. Primarily a starter, he was in Baltimore’s bullpen for the 1966 World Series but did not see action. Frank Louis Bertaina was born on April 14, 1944, in […]

Jack Sanford got his start in baseball with a push from his big sister. Sanford was named National League Rookie of the Year, won sixteen straight games one season, and started three times in the World Series, but he never got over being labeled “no prospect” when he was a teenager. John Stanley Sanford was […]

Hard luck dogged [Hal] Bevan through the early seasons of his career as a player,” wrote The Sporting News in the player’s 1968 obituary.1 Misfortune also brought him an early death, just 37 years old. Bevan was a third baseman who never made an error while playing for four major-league teams during three seasons, but […]

Hennery Peck, more popularly known as Peck’s Bad Boy, was a fictional character created by George W. Peck, a newspaperman, in the 19th century. Hennery was a mischievous child whose doings became a popular term for any incorrigible rule-breaker. Hennery had a real-life counterpart in Russ Meyer, a right-handed pitcher for six major-league teams from […]

Don Buddin played shortstop for the Red Sox in 1956 and then, after a year of Army service, from 1958 through 1961. After leading the league in shortstop errors in both 1958 and 1959, he became the butt of near-constant abuse from sportswriters and fans alike. Because of the numerous miscues, Boston Globe writer Bob […]

Visalia, California, has long been a good baseball town. Located in the agricultural San Joaquin Valley, it has been a mainstay of the California League since 1946, except for a couple of intervals.1 As of 2015, 13 men born in Visalia had played in the major leagues, including Marty Perez, who got into 931 games […]

While common wisdom dictates that baseball games are won with bats, balls, and gloves, Charlie Dressen believed until his dying breath that any game could be won with brains. Well, any game could be won with his brains. And it’s not hard to see why. Few field leaders had the percentages figured better than Dressen, […]

November 1976 was a difficult month for fans of the Baltimore Orioles. After an 88-win, second-place finish in the just-completed season, the advent of free agency during the offseason stood to dramatically alter the team’s chemistry, and within a ten-day period the worst-case scenario was realized: On the 19th of November, 20-game winner Wayne Garland […]

His nickname says it all: The Human Rain Delay. In the years before seemingly every big-league ballplayer stepped out of the box after every pitch to go through a routine of incessant equipment adjusting, Mike Hargrove was an anomaly and drove pitchers, managers, fans, and even broadcasters mad. “With machine-like precision,” wrote Bob Sudyk, “Hargrove […]

Without the benefit of hindsight, we can imagine that John Weldon Wyckoff thought himself lucky. Fresh from college at Bucknell and with a year of seasoning in the Tri-State League, he was called up to the big leagues in 1913, to the powerhouse Philadelphia Athletics no less, for which he pitched on two pennant winners. […]

Bill Campbell could be excused for deeming life as unlucky as a crooked draw. His mother died giving birth to him on September 7, 1923, in Atlantic City. Dad kept the secret from him till Bill was 11. He lived with his father, a traveling paint salesman, then aunts, then Dad again, changing schools six […]

Many major leaguers are more remembered for their accomplishments in the minors. Ron Necciai’s 27 strikeouts in a minor-league game outshone his lackluster performance with the Pittsburgh Pirates. Ox Eckhardt’s lifetime minor-league average of .367 overshadowed two brief trials in the majors. And Leo Kiely’s achievement of winning 20 games in relief during a season […]

Seventy-three, 61, 60, .406, 104, 130, 1.12, and 383: these are some of the best known batting, baserunning, and pitching marks in single-season history. Another received almost similar respect in the years prior to World War II but has since been nearly forgotten. When Ferdie Schupp turned in a 0.90 ERA in 1916, a standard […]

New Yorkers awoke to a dismal morning on June 13, 1948. Raindrops fell in spurts from low, gray clouds. A chill, unusual for late spring, filled the air. Players gathered in the clubhouse at Yankee Stadium. Where was Babe Ruth? The Yankees had scheduled a celebration on this day to mark the stadium’s 25th anniversary […]

The Northern Independent League, formerly known as the Northern New York League, was expected to go from four to six teams in 1906 by expanding into two Canadian cities, Montreal and Ottawa.1 But when Montreal’s application was “turned down with a thud,” the league made a curious decision.2 It admitted Ottawa and began the season […]

On June 15, 1940, Mother Nature must have been a New York fan. The Giants got in a full set of batting practice prior to a game against the visiting Pittsburgh Pirates. A rain shower then “washed out the Pirate chance to get in a few swings”1 but ended in time for the game to […]

A small crowd of 4,611 braved the “steel gray day”1 at New York’s Polo Grounds to see history being made in a National League game between the hometown Giants and the visiting Boston Braves.2 Hoyt Wilhelm, a 29-year-old rookie right-hander for the Giants, homered in his first career at-bat and then went on to earn […]

It was barely the third week of the 1961 season. A meager crowd of 8,518 fans huddled together in the confines of Milwaukee’s County Stadium, braving the cold weather. Their reward was witnessing Warren Spahn’s second career no-hitter. Five days after his 40th birthday, Spahn took the mound and pitched a gem, blanking the Giants […]

“I was amazed by the game he threw,” gushed Houston Astros second-year skipper Grady Hatton after rookie Don Wilson fanned 15 Atlanta Braves and tossed the first no-hitter in the history of the Astrodome.1  “I never caught anyone who threw harder,” Wilson’s batterymate, Dave Adlesh, said excitedly. “He wasn’t afraid to challenge the hitters.”2  The […]

Rich Hill had bounced around professional baseball for 10 years before he arrived in Los Angeles in 2016. He began his major-league career as a starter with the Chicago Cubs, debuting in 2005 and compiling an 18-17 record in four seasons there. Over the next six years, he struggled with several injuries, never pitching more […]