Search Results

Del Pratt was arguably the second-best second baseman of the second decade of the 20th century. And his argumentative nature led The New York Times’ John Kieran to call him “the greatest clubhouse lawyer baseball ever knew.” Pratt was born into a well-off family on January 10, 1888, in Walhalla, South Carolina, near the Georgia-North […]

Edythe Perlick (later Keating), the star left fielder for the Racine, Wisconsin, Belles from 1943 through the 1950 season, exemplified the kind of women who played hardball in the All-American Girls Base Ball League, today called the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League. A steady and productive hitter, a speedy defensive outfielder with a strong and […]

Willy Miranda epitomized the “good field, no hit” shortstop. He was a lot more than good in the field, though—Tom Lasorda, to name just one, thought the flashy little Cuban was the best he ever saw at short.1 Wielding the same battered, patched, and secretly doctored glove for nearly his entire pro career, Miranda was […]

Alex Gaston was noted as the poor-hitting catcher who broke up his own brother’s no-hitter. It was on September 12, 1926, in the second game of a doubleheader in St. Louis. Milt Gaston was pitching for the Browns and brother Alex was playing for the Red Sox. Boston had won the first game, 11-3. Milt […]

The Cleveland Indians’ return to prominence in the mid-1990s is well known. So is the plan that general manager John Hart used to orchestrate it. The plan focused on developing young players and signing them to long-term contracts before they became eligible for arbitration and free agency.  What perhaps is not so well known is […]

Dick Koecher, a left-handed pitcher from Philadelphia. joined his hometown Phillies for parts of three postwar seasons – 1946, 1947, and 1948. He had served in the United States Navy during World War II. Hundreds of thousands of fellow servicemen doubtless dreamed of pitching in the major leagues. Koecher accomplished his dream. He was 20 […]

In 1916 Stan Coveleski of the Cleveland Indians and Jack Nabors of the Philadelphia Athletics played their first full season in the major leagues, and each pitched more than 200 innings. They had similar ERAs — 3.41 for Coveleski and 3.47 for Nabors — but while Coveleski’s won-lost record was 15-13, Nabors’s record was abysmal: […]

“If you can’t get fundamentals down for Hal Lanier, you cannot play for Hal Lanier,” declared the native Floridian about his managerial philosophy, nearly a half-century since his professional baseball début in 1961.1 Lanier’s emphasis on the foundations of baseball characterized his longevity as a helmsman and, for 10 seasons, a major league ballplayer. To […]

A gritty and hard-nosed middle infielder, Larry Brown debuted as a 23-year-old with the Cleveland Indians in 1963. Once described by The Sporting News as “one of the top shortstops in the league,” the 150-pound Brown proved that a rifle arm, sure hands, defensive versatility, and sheer determination could lead to 1,129 games in a […]

Bill Jennings was a tall, dignified, modest gentleman fondly remembered by everyone who met him. His major-league career is limited to the 64 games he played for the lowly St. Louis Browns in 1951 but Jennings lived an honest, unassuming life both in and out of Organized Baseball. William Lee Jennings was born on September […]

Baseball has yet to take firm hold in the island of Jamaica, even though it is surrounded by other nations with a strong tradition in the sport. As the 2018 season ended, four men of Jamaican birth have made it to the majors, all of whom learned the game in the United States. The first […]

Hard-throwing left-hander Herb Hippauf’s major-league career was confined to three brief, ineffective relief appearances within a six-game span during the Braves’ 1966 inaugural season in Atlanta. Forced out of baseball the following season by chronic elbow pain, Hippauf parlayed his passion for the game, a keen eye for talent, and an exemplary work ethic into […]

Robert Ruliph Morgan Carpenter Jr. was born August 13, 1915 in Montchanin, a community in New Castle County, Delaware. A month later, in nearby Philadelphia, the Phillies captured the first National League pennant in the team’s 32-year history. There was no connection then between these two events, but in time the Carpenter name and the […]

Tony Lucadello was one of the best “ivory hunters” of all time — a scout with a keen eye for talent and street-smart in the way he watched and signed players. He was generally a quiet man, never drank or swore, and always dressed sharply in jacket, tie, and hat — a “gentlemen’s gentleman.”1 But […]

A veteran of 12 major-league seasons, Alvaro Espinoza played a variety of roles for five different teams. He went from prospect with the Minnesota Twins to starting shortstop with the New York Yankees to utility infielder with three other teams. He is best remembered by Cleveland Indians fans as a versatile backup on the 1995 […]

He had just 11 big-league at-bats in 1990, but Brian Traxler was still a cult figure. Over 13 years as a pro, the first baseman delighted fans across the minors, the Caribbean winter leagues, Asia, and independent circuits. His immediate appeal was visual. “Trax” was rotund — leniently listed at 5-feet-10 and 200 pounds, he […]

The Los Angeles Dodgers clubhouse was filled with press and well-wishers the evening of June 3, 1968, all there to celebrate the fifth consecutive shutout of veteran right handed pitcher Don Drysdale. Amid the throng came longtime clubhouse man Nobe Kawano, holding a telegram for Drysdale that had just come in from Silver Spring, Md. […]

In the early twenty-first century, a significant portion of the action within professional baseball games consolidated around three basic results for any plate appearance: walks, strikeouts, and home runs. Baseball fans and analysts following this development labeled it the “Three True Outcomes” (TTO). “True” because walks, strikeouts and homers – in contrast to, say, around-the-horn […]

Weather forecasts predicted rain but when the sun rose on New York, there were clear skies as the Brooklyn Dodgers prepared to face off against the Yankees for the second time since 1941. The wind “played tricks with the pennants high above the roof” of Yankee Stadium and “sweaters and topcoats formed standard equipment for […]

On June 24, 1946, the Spokane Indians, a Class B Western International League team full of World War II veterans and promising prospects, traveled by bus across Washington state for their next series in Bremerton. While the team stopped for dinner in Ellensburg, word came that third baseman Jack Lohrke had been recalled by the […]

Monday, August 10, may well have been the most important day of the entire 1981 baseball season. This was the day that regular season play would resume after a two-month players strike had wiped out more than one-third of the schedule. Furthermore, in Philadelphia that night, Pete Rose would become the all-time National League hits […]

“The Greatest Rhubarb In The History Of Braves Field” So said Boston Traveler sportswriter John Drohan in the September 28, 1951, edition of his newspaper, remarking upon the happenings at the previous day’s Braves-Dodgers tilt at the Wigwam. Brooklyn’s Dodgers were struggling to retain the top spot in the senior circuit’s standings. Their advantage over […]

When second baseman Bill Ripken was named to the Double-A Southern League All-Star team in 1986, the stars seemed to be aligning for him to join his father, Cal Sr., and older brother, Cal Jr., in the big leagues with the Baltimore Orioles. The elder Ripkens had already spent several years together in the majors, […]

This article was originally published in the December 2020 edition of the SABR Black Sox Scandal Committee Newsletter.   Eddie Cicotte expressed remorse later in life for his role in the 1919 World Series fix, but his words and actions at the time may indicate he was more of an instigator in the Black Sox […]