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Tom Grieve has passed 50 years in baseball, 49 of them spent with the Texas Rangers franchise. He played, was general manager, and worked as a broadcaster for the Rangers, rightfully earning him the sobriquet “Mr. Ranger.” Thomas Alan Grieve was born on March 4, 1948, in Pittsfield, Massachusetts, to Alan and Polly (Hopkins) Grieve. […]

Ask American sports fans about Al Unser, and they’ll probably think of the four-time winner of the Indianapolis 500 or his son Al Jr., who won twice in his own right. Yet decades before, another Al Unser – no kin to the race car drivers – played parts of four seasons in the major leagues […]

Floyd Rayford’s soft hands and even softer belly, combined with his underrated athleticism and good nature, made him an Orioles’ fan favorite in the 1980s. With the skills to play six positions — primarily third base and catcher — during his professional career, and what one manager called the “perfect temperament for baseball,” Rayford spent […]

“The Washington public went enthusiastically, almost insanely, baseball mad” on the day of Hack Eibel’s debut. So wrote the Washington Post.  This happened when “Clark Griffith’s ambitious climbers batted the ‘13’ hoodoo all to pieces.”[1]  It was the 13th of the month of June and the Nationals had 13 hits, adding another win to a 13-game winning […]

Known as Piano Legs and Cheerful Charlie, the ponderous clubber Charlie Hickman possessed one of the Deadball Era’s most potent bats. In 1903 the 5’9″, 215-pound Hickman hit one ball 100 feet over the left field fence at Cleveland’s League Park, and another completely out of New York’s Hilltop Park. “If we had the lively […]

In 1915, America’s leading syndicated sportswriter, Hugh Fullerton, published a forgettable baseball novel in which a star left-handed pitcher named Williams is bribed and threatened by gamblers to lose the pennant for his team.1 Fullerton, who dedicated the novel to his friend and mentor, Chicago White Sox owner Charles Comiskey, had been writing about the […]

He describes himself as a very easy-going guy, but in the next breath he’ll tell you he’s a full-blooded German with a hot temper that sometimes explodes.” — Earl Lawson, The Sporting News1 The Kansas City Royals gathered in February 2008 at their spring facility in Surprise, Arizona. One coach, rumbling around on a golf […]

Wealthy and able, Edwin A. McAlpin was a man of many interests: family, commerce, Republican Party politics, the New York State National Guard, the Presbyterian Church, and the American Boy Scouts (an early rival of the Boy Scouts of America). For a relatively brief period beginning in 1889, McAlpin also took an active part in […]

Left-handed reliever Craig Skok pitched for three major-league ballclubs — the Red Sox, the Rangers, and the Braves — during the 1970s, throwing 150 innings in 107 games. He might have had some baseball in his blood. Craig’s father Joe was mistakenly reported at one point as having been a player in the Red Sox […]

Juan Francisco Herrera Villavicencio played three years for the Philadelphia Phillies (1958; 1960-61). Yet that accomplishment just scratches the surface of Herrera as a ballplayer and a man. “Pancho” – or, as he was typically known in Cuba, “Panchón” – was a childhood idol to many who grew up in his homeland. He also played […]

A light-hitting, rifle-armed shortstop who played a key role in baseball’s biggest scandal, Swede Risberg was a rising young player in the American League when he was banned from the game at age 25. The youngest member of the Black Sox, he always found his home state of California and the Pacific Coast League preferable […]

Starting in 1970, John Curtis played in the major leagues for 15 years. He was a respectable left-handed pitcher — 89 wins and 97 losses, with a lifetime ERA of 3.96 — praised as much for his eloquence as his fastball. John Duffield Curtis II was born March 9, 1948 in Newton, Massachusetts, the second […]

There have been 36 major leaguers nicknamed Cy, and only one of them had the first name Cyrus (Cy Malis). There were three Cyrils and one Ceylon. The most notable Cy was, of course, Cy Young – and there were four Cy Youngs, though the actual first names of the four Cy Youngs were Denton, […]

Throughout his 18-year major-league career, Lew Burdette was known for his antics as much as for his success on the mound. One of the best control pitchers of the 1950s, the right-hander paired with his roommate and best friend Warren Spahn to form one of the greatest and most durable pitching combinations in baseball history. […]

Satchel Paige threw his first pitch in professional baseball in 1926 for the Chattanooga White Sox, an inappropriately-named team in the lower levels of the segregated Negro Leagues. He played his last game in organized baseball in 1966 — a full 40 years later — for a Virginia club called the Peninsula Grays. In between, […]

Just five months before Cleveland’s Ray Chapman was hit on the head and killed by a pitch, Chick Fewster had his own brush with death. It was during spring training, in March of 1920. He was in his fourth season with the New York Yankees, still hoping to become a regular but coming off a […]

Baldomero Almada — “Melo” or (to Americans) “Mel” — was the first native Mexican ever to play in the majors. Almada was born in Huatabampo in the state of Sonora on February 7, 1913, but he grew up in Los Angeles from an early age. On September 8, 1933, less than two months after a […]

The career of Henry “Hunky” Hines spanned more than 20 years, from 1887 at the age of 19 through 1910 at the age of 42.1 His career took him from Minneapolis to St. Louis, and from Brooklyn to Oakland. When he was signed to play for the club in Davenport, Iowa, in 1903, the Davenport […]

The story of the Philadelphia Athletics’ 24-2 shellacking of the Detroit Tigers on May 18, 1912, actually started three days earlier with an incident involving Ty Cobb and a spectator during the Detroit Tigers’ 8-4 victory over the New York Highlanders at Hilltop Park in New York. The succession of events that followed produced an […]

Dave “Boo” Ferriss, an ex-G. I. discharged from the Army Air Corps in February 1945, began his major league career with an astonishing eight consecutive wins in 1945. The start of his career was as unlikely as any player before him, since he had minimal time as a professional player prior to his debut.1 In […]

“Bender’s control, his absolute mastery over the batters and his speed were almost ideal,” gushed the Philadelphia Inquirer about Charles Bender’s no-hitter, the first in the history of Shibe Park.1 Cleveland Naps batters were “Benderized and hypnotized” by the Athletics hurler, opined the Cleveland Plain Dealer, noting in the racially insensitive parlance of the era […]

Who was the greatest pitcher in Massachusetts history? Some fans would nominate standout hurlers from Boston’s professional teams, like Cy Young, Warren Spahn, or Pedro Martinez. Others might offer the names of Tim Keefe, John Clarkson, and Tom Glavine, Bay State natives who earned Hall of Fame honors by winning more than 300 games apiece.1 […]

Baseball card #186 in the 1967 Topps set seems in retrospect like a victory of hope over reality. The card shows New York Mets teammates Ed Kranepool and Ron Swoboda, hitters known more for their power potential than their actual production, kneeling with bats in a spring-training setting above the headline “METS MAULERS.” First baseman […]

Here are The SABR Bookshelf listings for Fall 2012. To get your NEW book listed on The SABR Bookshelf, make sure a review copy is sent to: SABR, 4455 E. Camelback Rd., Ste. D-140, Phoenix, AZ 85018. To ensure a listing in The Baseball Index — SABR’s online catalog of baseball research materials at www.baseballindex.org […]