Search Results

Luis Tiant had led the majors with a 1.91 ERA in 1972 but his 1973 season got off to a rocky start. The Yankees were in town and they went to town, scoring three runs in the top of the first inning. A single, followed by a strike ’em out, throw ’em out double play, sore-armed […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

Robert Lee “Bob” Oliver played baseball with the Kansas City Royals in 1969, their inaugural season, getting his first real opportunity to show off his baseball skills at the age of 26. He toiled in the minor-league systems of the Pittsburgh Pirates and Minnesota from 1963 to 1968, receiving a cup of coffee with the […]

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 […]

In October 1919 Joe Jenkins found himself embroiled in the Black Sox Scandal, the fixing of that year’s World Series by eight of his Chicago White Sox teammates. It was the biggest black eye in baseball’s history. Yet Jenkins, who didn’t make an appearance in the World Series, couldn’t even claim bragging rights within his […]

During the Deadball Era, it wasn’t all that unusual for a local sandlot player to get a shot at playing in the major leagues with his hometown team. So it was with Bert Yeabsley, a two-sport standout on the fields of Philadelphia, who found himself on the 1919 Philadelphia Phillies Opening Day roster. His major […]

Versatility can be both a blessing and a curse. Larry Kimbrough came to the Negro Leagues with the reputation of being both a switch-hitter and a switch-pitcher. Early in his career he faced the Harrisburg (Pennsylvania) Stars in an exhibition game and held them to two hits until the fourth inning, when they exploded for […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

When asked to make a list of the best hitters of the late 1940s and early 1950s, few would mention left-handed slugger Ferris Fain, but perhaps they should. Fain broke in with the Philadelphia Athletics as a 26-year-old rookie in 1947 and established a reputation as a daring first baseman with a discerning eye at […]

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 […]

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 […]

Pitcher Cliff Chambers showed both flashes of greatness and spells of rotten luck during his professional baseball career. He compiled a 48-53 major-league record with the Chicago Cubs, Pittsburgh Pirates, and St. Louis Cardinals, along with a 4.29 earned run average. His most notable performance – and the one that hinted at greater things to […]

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 […]