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The Pittsburgh Pirates “played headier baseball this afternoon than they have at any time in the series,” gushed Smoky City sportswriter Chester L. Smith, as the NL pennant winners beat the Washington Senators, 6-3, in Game Five of the fall classic to stave off elimination.1 The Bucs’ offense, which had scored only seven runs in […]

Wait ’til Next Year? The cry became a euphemism for a baseball season gone awry and nowhere did it receive greater play than in the 1940s and 1950s with the Brooklyn Dodgers and their long-suffering fans.1 The 1955 World Series title meant that next year was finally here. All the suffering was relegated to the […]

Baseball fans in the small-town New York-Penn League discovered an extra reason to go to games in the summer of 1975. On certain nights, there was a chance that beloved Hall of Famer Yogi Berra might join them in the stands at one of the short-season Class A loop’s modest ballparks. Yogi and his wife, […]

The Chicago Cubs and New York Mets traveled halfway around the world to start the 2000 season — for the first-ever major-league games to take place outside of North America. The Mets had blazed trails four seasons earlier; their August 1996 series against the San Diego Padres in Monterrey, Mexico, was the first time for […]

“The Grand Old Dame of 7th and Florida, familiarly known as Griffith Stadium, gave up the ghost quietly,” proclaimed sportswriter Bob Addie about the final baseball game in the storied history of the ballpark in the nation’s capital. “There were no eulogies, no ceremonies, no tears.” A sparse crowd of just 1,498 spectators showed up […]

Despite having a lifetime .236 batting average, Randy Hundley is one of the most beloved Chicago Cubs of all time. The Virginia native played 10 seasons with the Cubs in the 1960s and 1970s and was considered a leader on the field for the team that endured a historic collapse in 1969. Hundley also introduced […]

Bob Cerv survived kamikaze attacks in World War II and put all 10 of his children through college. In between, he was a three-time New York Yankee. The Yankees signed him, traded him, brought him back, let him go, and brought him back again. His claim to Yankee fame came in 1961, when he shared […]

Bob Bruce was a promising prospect with the Detroit Tigers in the 1950s, but his progress was delayed because he missed most of 1957 and 1958 while serving in the Army. The 6-foot-3 righty pitched in just 50 games for the Tigers as a swingman from 1959 through 1961. He got a chance to become […]

Venezuela has been a cradle of shortstops since 1950, when Alfonso “Chico” Carrasquel made his debut in the majors with the Chicago White Sox. In his steps followed Luis Aparicio, the only Venezuelan in the Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, Dave Concepción, Ozzie Guillén, and then another shortstop who played more games at that position […]

When the Baltimore Orioles announced their 2015 Hall of Fame class, it seemed fitting that Gary Roenicke and John Lowenstein would be inducted together. The two previously shared left field duties for the Orioles in the late 1970s and early 1980s, not an ideal situation for Roenicke – a former first-round pick still in the […]

Fletcher Low was a “cup of coffee” baseball player, appearing in just a single game for the Boston Braves in 1915. In that game, he hit a triple, knocked in a run, and scored a run. While his baseball career did not amount to much, he went on to have a successful academic career as […]

Charlie Jamieson was a star American League outfielder during the 1920s. In a career spanning 1915-1932, the speedy singles hitter achieved a .303 batting average with 1,990 hits in 1,779 games. In addition to being a very good leadoff man, he also had a fine reputation in the field. Jamieson initially struggled to find his […]

“Honest Jack” Boyle was a “19th century multi-position sensation.”1 He was the first of only five major-league players to log 500 games at catcher and at least two seasons of 100 games or more at first base (with Joe Mauer, Joe Torre, Gene Tenace, and Mike Napoli).2 Boyle abandoned boxing to become a major-league catcher […]

The story of Tony Horton, the young and talented slugger for the Red Sox and the Indians, is ultimately a tragic one from a baseball perspective. Just entering his prime seasons at the age of 25, he was forced to leave the game because of an emotional disorder, and ultimately he never returned. Piecing together […]

The tall, lanky left-handed pitcher started with youth baseball, excelled in the minor leagues, played for four major-league teams, then continued as a pitching coach at various levels to complete a 50-year career in baseball. Standing 6-feet-2 and weighing 200 pounds, James Philip “Jim” Shellenback, born November 18, 1943, in Riverside, California, grew up in […]

Most people who have become baseball fans since 1990 have never heard of Cot Deal. If they look hard, they will find his major league career summarized in six lines of print in the baseball encyclopedias. If they look harder, they will find something about him as a minor league manager or major league coach […]

Outfielder Lou Jackson, once described as a “wrist hitter with extraordinary pull ability,” appeared in 34 games for the Chicago Cubs and Baltimore Orioles between 1958 and 1964.1 In his dozen years in professional ball, the lefty swinger went deep as many as 31 times in a single Triple-A season, and twice ranked among the […]

“Eleven saves in two months. That’s more than Schultz had in his whole big-league career,” fumed Gene Mauch in September 1964. “He never saw the day he could get us out before,” continued the frustrated Philadelphia manager.1 In the last 60 games of the Cardinals’ 1964 season, Barney appeared 30 times, all in relief, winning […]

In the 1970s Gary Holle was a dual-sport phenom (baseball and basketball) from upstate New York who had a six-year minor-league baseball career and a two-week stay with the Texas Rangers in 1979. Born in Watervliet, New York, on August 11, 1954, to Charles and Jean Holle, Gary carved out a successful business career after […]

“Taking hits away from people,” said Dwayne Murphy, “is the part of the game I love most. I know what my reaction is when it happens to me. It’s demoralizing. Once, during batting practice, a player on another team . . . came up to me mad as hell. He told me I had no […]

Charles Radbourn’s pitching achievements were hailed by contemporaries and sportswriters for decades as some of the greatest feats of nineteenth century baseball. Little known today, many considered an 18-inning game in 1882 as the finest athletic contest ever seen on a baseball diamond. That game was won, not by the pitcher Radbourn, but by the […]

Richard Arlin Billings was born on December 4, 1942, in Detroit to Arlie and Dimple Billings, and played parts of eight seasons with the Washington Senators, Texas Rangers, and St. Louis Cardinals.1 The oldest of six children, Billings was recruited to play at Michigan State while playing “federation ball” in the Detroit area, teaming with […]

Like so many ballplayers of his generation, Jack Hallett gave what may have been the best years of his career to the service of his country. Yet, after Navy duty called him from the Pittsburgh Pirates’ pitching staff in 1943, he had enough talent to return as a major leaguer in 1946 against postwar competition […]

He was being compared to Eddie Stanky, because of his short, stocky, build. But he also played the game with a reckless abandon like Stanky, and was given the moniker “Scrappy Jack.” He was also referred to as the “The Hammer,” if for no other reason than it was an abbreviation of his surname. But […]