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The fireworks arrived a few days before the Fourth of July. On Wednesday, July 2, 1947, the Brooklyn Dodgers blasted the New York Giants, 11-3, in the first of a four-game series at Ebbets Field to gain sole possession of first place in the National League. The next day, the Giants exploded with five home […]

Seven times before 1953, Ted Williams had hit home runs on August 19. The one he hit this Wednesday afternoon at Boston’s Fenway Park was his 327th career home run. He had previously hit homers number 18, 49, 78, 79, 80, 117, and 319 on August 19. This home run provided the run that won […]

Time was running out for the Detroit Tigers to keep the Chicago White Sox from running away with the 1919 pennant. Ten years after manager Hughie Jennings took his Tigers to their last World Series, their third straight appearance and third straight loss in the fall classic, he knew his team had a narrow margin […]

The team that was the last to integrate had been – 26 years earlier – the first to field a native of Mexico in the major leagues. The team was the Boston Red Sox, who took until 1959 to field a Black ballplayer – Pumpsie Green. In 1933, however, when Baldomero Melo “Mel” Almada took […]

At the end of his 23-year career, Henry Aaron wanted to play a little longer. Aaron’s sixth-inning infield single off Detroit Tigers left-hander Dave Roberts drove in a run – his major-league record 2,297th RBI – in the Milwaukee Brewers’ 1976 season finale. Milwaukee manager Alex Grammas promptly sent a pinch-runner, rookie Jim Gantner, to […]

Brooklyn fans could barely believe what they were seeing. After losing the first two games of the 1947 World Series, their team rebounded to win the next two games at Ebbets Field. The fifth game, the last one to be played in Flatbush for the Series, was packed with fans hoping to see the Dodgers […]

By 1914, New York Giants executives had accepted that inconsistent performances had become the norm for Rube Marquard, but they could not have predicted that he was about to make a decision that could have left him exiled to life as a baseball pariah and “certain to be hard ridden by the rooters” in the […]

Certainly there were easier scenarios than facing Bob Gibson for one’s first major-league appearance, but the Milwaukee Braves’ Mack Jones made his debut on July 13, 1961, in St. Louis look like child’s play. His four consecutive hits, including a run-scoring double in his second at-bat, tied a National League record and reinforced the can’t-miss […]

One of the more obscure players in Red Sox history, Eusebio Gonzalez was the first foreign-born Latino to play for the Bosox. Eusebio Miguel Gonzalez Lopez was born in Havana, Cuba on July 13, 1892. Batting right and throwing right, he was an infielder listed as 5’10” with a playing weight of 165 pounds. Gonzalez […]

George Scott’s professional baseball career spanned 41 years beginning in Class-D ball at Olean of the New York-Penn League in 1962. His travels were highlighted by his 14 seasons in the majors, starting with the Boston Red Sox in 1966. Scott also played for Milwaukee 1972-1976, Boston 1977-1978, and split his final year between Boston, […]

Catcher Russell “Hack” Ennis played in one major-league baseball game. Though he did not get to bat, he was behind the plate when Ty Cobb got his last hit in a Detroit Tigers uniform. On September 19, 1926, with his Washington Senators ahead, 7-6, Ennis entered in the bottom of the ninth inning of the […]

Morrie Rath’s life could have been a Hollywood movie – the type of movie where the lead character keeps getting back up after getting knocked down. And for Rath’s movie, the final scene would have played out on October 1, 1919, during the first game of the infamous 1919 World Series. On the biggest stage […]

Right-handed-hitting outfielder Ken Hunt and one-time major-league single-season home-run leader Roger Maris1 were boyhood friends while growing up in Grand Forks, North Dakota. After the Maris family moved to nearby Fargo, the two all-around athletes were high-school sports rivals. During Hunt’s senior year in football, his team lost one game, a 7-6 setback to Fargo […]

In sports, college or professional, individual or team, nothing captures a fan’s interest quite like a streak. This is especially true with baseball. Whether it is a team’s winning or losing streak or a player’s performance within the chalked lines, the fanfare and pressure may build each day. The fervent fan or even the uninformed […]

There was never an Alex Grammas question on Family Feud. However, if Richard Dawson, the late and long-time host of the popular game show, were to have asked a hundred of his contemporaries how they remembered Grammas, the survey would invariably point to three answers: flawless fielding, excellence as a third-base coach, and his Hellenic […]

Jimmy Piersall played 20 years of professional baseball, including parts of 17 in the major leagues. He is best known for his nervous breakdown and hospitalization during his rookie season of 1952, an ordeal that led to a best-selling autobiography and two movies. Few could have imagined in 1952 that Piersall would have 15 years […]

Gary Kroll, a hard-throwing right-hander who once pitched 20 consecutive hitless innings in the minors, made his big-league debut for the Philadelphia Phillies on July 26, 1964. Less than two weeks later, the 22-year-old pitcher was gone, traded to the New York Mets for 35-year-old slugger Frank Thomas. Kroll had been regarded as a tremendous […]

Lanky and lightning fast, Amos Strunk was one of the best defensive center fielders of the Deadball Era and a major offensive contributor to Connie Mack‘s powerhouse Philadelphia Athletics teams which appeared in four World Series from 1910 to 1914. A patient hitter, the left-handed Strunk placed in the top 10 in the American League […]

Being a member of the umpiring staff of the 1901 American League has earned Jack Haskell an entry in modern-day baseball reference works. But that one-season tour of duty represents only a short chapter in the life of an outsized character who embodied a species now vanished from the baseball landscape: the hometown minor league […]

One of the most dependable relief pitchers for the Detroit Tigers and Houston Astros during a 13-year major-league career that spanned 1961-1973, Fred Gladding was a 6-foot 1-inch, 220-pound, glasses-wearing right-hander. Given a variety of nicknames by teammates that characterized his demeanor on the field and physical appearance, Gladding was a strong-willed competitor with a […]

The reigning American League champion Detroit Tigers got off to a terrible start in 1935. With the team in last place with a 2-9 record after six consecutive losses, rookie left-hander Joe Sullivan took the mound and tossed a complete-game victory over the Cleveland Indians. After two more complete-game victories, Sullivan was praised as the […]

In 1965 sportswriter Jerry Izenberg reflected, “When you think of the anatomy which kept Bob Swift active as a major league catcher for so many years, you look at the hands.” Not the legs, suggested Izenberg, because Swift wasn’t a fast runner, or the wrists, because he wasn’t known for his hitting. “The hands kept […]

“Not getting booed at Ebbets Field was an amazing thing. Those fans knew their baseball, and Gil was the only player I can remember whom the fans never, I mean never, booed.”1 — Clem Labine “… epitomizes the courage, sportsmanship and integrity of America’s favorite pastime.” — back of a 1966 Topps baseball card “Gil […]

If somebody claimed that a person could simultaneously throw three baseballs with one hand accurately to three different catchers, or, with one hand could throw two balls, one a curve and one a fastball, accurately to two catchers, it would sound too weird to be believed. How about a claim that a person, suspended upside […]