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Johnny Ostrowski shares the same Polish ancestry as Carl Yastrzemski, but his Red Sox career was in many ways the polar opposite of that of the Hall of Fame legend. While Yaz accumulated a team-record 11,988 regular season at-bats over 3,308 games, Ostrowski is one of 12 position players to appear in only one game, […]

As a 33-year-old veteran outfielder, “call me Mike” McCormick was a major contributor to the Boston Braves’ run to the 1948 pennant. In 343 at-bats in 115 games, the right-handed-hitting McCormick batted .303, to help solidify the Braves outfield. A pinch hitter extraordinaire, Mike stroked six hits in 14 tries off the bench. He started […]

Bobby Hofman spent a lifetime in baseball. Over a career roughly divided into three distinct phases, he played major-league baseball for parts of seven seasons, and then managed and coached at various levels, including Oakland, for the next 20. He transitioned from there into a career as a big-league executive until his retirement in 1989 […]

Harry Arthur “Cookie” Lavagetto is best known for one swing of the bat against Bill Bevens of the New York Yankees on an October day in 1947. But his baseball career, as a player and manager, was much more than that. The six-feet, 170-pound Lavagetto played professional baseball for ten seasons over a fourteen-year span, […]

Andy Seminick was a rock-solid catcher who had a career year in 1950 and had a lot to do with the Phillies winning their first pennant in 35 years. He was the antithesis of bonus babies like Curt Simmons, Robin Roberts, Richie Ashburn, and Stan Lopata because he was anything but highly sought after. He […]

Steve Bilko was a heavy hitter. Baseball encyclopedias list him at 6-foot-1 and 230 pounds, the greatest tonnage that baseball allowed in print in the 1950s until the mammoth Frank Howard came along. When anyone asked Bilko how much he weighed, as so many did, he’d say between 200 and 300. Years later he told […]

William Edward Voss had an eight-year major-league career playing outfield for the Chicago White Sox, California Angels, Milwaukee Brewers, Oakland A’s, and the St. Louis Cardinals. Voss was born in Glendale, California, on October 31, 1943. When he was a youngster, his baseball idol was Mickey Mantle. In 1968 he commented, “I think he’s a […]

In the 1930s and 1940s famed New York City restaurateur Toots Shor hosted many of the greats of sports and show business. But in the winter of 1947 Shor’s attention focused on a baseball prospect little known outside the environs of New York – Larry Miggins. Informed that the St. Louis Cardinals had snatched the […]

Jerry Moses aspired to become a major-league ballplayer, and declined football scholarships at Southeastern Conference (SEC) universities to pursue his dream. A 1970 American League All-Star, Jerry became the youngest Red Sox to hit a home run, at age 18 and 289 days, with a pinch-hit rocket off Jim “Mudcat” Grant on May 25, 1965. […]

Johnny Murphy was an ace relief pitcher for the 1930s New York Yankees who spent 18 years playing professional baseball. Murphy spent even longer in the front office, first with New England’s obsession—the Boston Red Sox—serving as a scout and then ran the team’s minor league operations. Moving onto New York’s National League expansion franchise, […]

The fifth-winningest pitcher of all time, Warren Spahn went 363-245 over parts of 21 years from 1942 to 1965. Only by remaining in the game two seasons too long did he fail to finish with an ERA under 3.00 (3.09) and a winning percentage over .600 (.597), and his totals are all the more impressive […]

The leading member of the 1947 Yankees’ catchers-by-committee group, Aaron Robinson was behind the plate in seventy-four games, more than any of his fellow backstops. But perhaps his most important role that season was helping groom his eventual successor, future Hall of Famer Yogi Berra. Aaron Andrew Robinson was born on June 23, 1915, in […]

Often overshadowed by those of two older brothers, Kerry Don McDaniel’s brief career in baseball is remembered by a nickname – Butch – appended to him by a neighbor’s father but never used professionally by the athlete. Instead he laughingly remembered being known solely as the younger brother of Lindy or, a few years later, […]

Joe Frazier’s chance to manage in the majors came at the dawn of free agency and the beginning of a tumultuous period for the New York Mets, the team he led in 1976 and for two months in 1977. After a professional career as a player and manager that began before World War II, he […]

Cleveland manager Kerby Farrell rushed to the mound after pitcher Herb Score was struck in the face by a line drive off the bat of the Yankees’ Gil McDougald on May 7, 1957. “He was bleeding from his eyes, nose, mouth and ears. All we could think of doing was trying to save his life,” […]

Les Moss was introduced to sports page readers as the “greatest find in professional baseball,” according to his enthusiastic manager Jerry Tiemann, skipper of the Americus Pioneers in the Class D Georgia-Florida League. Moss was 17 years old at the time. He’d been signed by St. Louis Browns scout Jack Fournier in October 1941, when […]

During his full-time playing days with the Boston Braves (1942-1950), outfielder Tommy Holmes was a particular fan favorite, especially among those who populated the right field grandstand known as the Jury Box, where fans often carried on a conversation with Holmes as he stood in his position.1 Twice an All-Star (1945, when he was elected […]

On the morning of Saturday, September 20, 1952, the St. Louis Cardinals had only the slimmest of mathematical chances to win the National League pennant. Since July 1, the closest the Cardinals had been to first place was on September 9, when they were within 6½ games of the league-leading Brooklyn Dodgers. When play closed […]

In the days of two eight-team major leagues, “division” meant something quite different from the three regional designations currently used in the National and American Leagues. Back then, fans and writers alike tended to dwell at some length on which teams were in each league’s “first division” – among the top four teams in the […]

It was the weakest arm in the Red Sox outfield against the fastest runner on the basepaths for the Chicago White Sox, but in this wild and wacky season, the Cardiac Kids found yet another way to pull out an improbable victory. Gimpy-armed right fielder Jose Tartabull became the instant hero when his throw from […]

The 1944 Brooklyn Dodgers were struggling. They played .167 baseball in July, winning just five of 30 games. They had completed a 20-game road trip from August 9 to 27. After winning the first three games against the Chicago Cubs, they went 3-14, including losing both ends of three doubleheaders, and they dropped into last […]

“There were just seven wonders of the world before this world series broke out and today there are nine,” gushed sportswriter Grantland Rice after the St. Louis Cardinals rode the exploits of Wild Bill and the Wild Horse of the Osage to a convincing 5-1 victory over the Philadelphia Athletics to take a three-games-to-two lead […]

Anticipation of the 1931 World Series steadily peaked all summer in the St. Louis area as the Cardinals clinched their fourth National League pennant in mid-September. The Redbirds eventually finished 13 games better than the runner-up New York Giants, but their previous league flags, in 1926, 1928, and 1930, were all secured by meager two-game […]

In the early part of 1927, the Midwest was bursting with anticipation as the baseball season segued from projections to facts delivered by daily sports accounts. By mid-April, pitching matchups, game summaries, and season standings would replace the “dreary box-scoreless winter” to provide “something in the newspapers.” Even an umpire might expect applause for one […]