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From his early days as an amateur, pitcher Bill Hawke mowed down opposing batsmen with a lightning quick fastball and tantalizing off-speed pitches. When the distance between the batter and pitcher was expanded to 60 feet, 6 inches in 1893, Hawke changed his strategy and began to induce outs with grounders and pop flys. In […]

Curtis Le Roy Blefary is best remembered for winning the American League Rookie of the Year award in 1965. He had three productive seasons for the Orioles before his intertwined personal demons, alcohol and anger, overcame his terrific natural ability. Blefary was a key contributor to the Orioles’ pennant in 1966. The left-handed hitter was […]

If you were drafting players in a fantasy baseball league, you would probably rely heavily on statistics to make your decisions. But if you were choosing players for a real team for an actual 154-game season, your choices might be very different. The rigors of travel, game pressures, team chemistry and other intangibles might cause […]

Though his major league career consisted of only five hitless at-bats for the 1980 Baltimore Orioles, Drungo Hazewood remains a legendary baseball cult figure, chiefly because of his unique moniker. Eyewitnesses to Hazewood’s feats of power and speed, however, wondered what might have been had the muscular outfielder learned to hit a curveball before leaving […]

Gene Kelly heard of Joe McCarthy’s death during a 1957 Phillies game at Connie Mack Stadium. On the air, he praised the man who never played in the big leagues, but played them like a cello. Some called McCarthy a pushbutton skipper, Kelly said over flagship WIP Radio. Others hailed perhaps the best manager of […]

While he may not have had major-league success as a player himself, Greg Pavlick has certainly had a long baseball career. Pavlick has been involved in professional baseball since 1971 and helped nurture the careers of countless young players within the Mets and Yankees organizations. Gregory Michael Pavlick was born on March 10, 1950, in […]

The Boston Red Sox were clinging to the slimmest of leads in the American League East Division. They had just lost two of three games to the Milwaukee Brewers at County Stadium. A quick look at the standings on July 4, 1975, showed that the Red Sox were in a virtual tie with the Brew […]

Over a three-year span, 1912 to 1914, Larry Cheney was one of the National League’s most durable and effective pitchers, racking up more than 300 innings each season and joining Joe McGinnity, Deacon Phillippe, Vean Gregg, and Wes Ferrell as the only hurlers ever to reach the 20-win mark in each of their first three […]

Since major-league baseball began, no player has ever enjoyed a debut to match Ted Cox’s. In every one of his first six at-bats, he got a base hit. Other players have made a hit in their first time at bat. Some of the greatest hitters of all time took a long time to get established. […]

John McGraw was perhaps the National League’s most influential figure in the Deadball Era. From 1902 to 1932 he led the New York Giants to 10 National League pennants, three World Series championships, and 21 first- or second-place finishes in 29 full seasons at their helm. His 2,763 managerial victories were second only to Connie […]

Gordon Stanley “Mickey” Cochrane was one of baseball’s greatest catchers. He compiled a .320 lifetime batting average over 13 seasons from 1925 to 1937, handled outstanding pitchers Lefty Grove and Schoolboy Rowe during their record-tying 16-game winning streaks, and in 1947 was the first catcher elected by the Baseball Writers Association of America to the […]

There is nothing quite like one’s first view of a big-league ballpark. From a distance you see the light standards rising high into the sky and as you get closer the rest of the building comes into focus. The car ride that Gordon Tillett took his grandson on in 1962 was to a relatively new […]

Long-forgotten today, New York Giants right-hander Louis Drucke appeared on the verge of stardom at the close of the 1910 season. Although his 12-10 record was not particularly eye-catching, his pitching had been. The hard-throwing hurler had led National League pitchers in strikeouts per nine innings pitched, and placed in the league’s top ten in […]

Fresco Thompson, the jester in Walter O’Malley’s court, ran baseball’s most productive scouting and player development factory during the 1950s and 1960s. With O’Malley providing the money, Thompson and his scouts providing the players, and vice president Buzzie Bavasi molding the roster, the Dodgers won eight pennants and four World Series between 1952 and 1966, […]

Sherry Smith was a laconic Georgian who narrowly lost a World Series game to the young Bambino, fashioned a long mound career despite missing a season as a doughboy during World War I, and later nabbed small-town scofflaws as efficiently as he had baserunners who’d strayed too far off the first sack. Sherrod Malone Smith […]

One of the most electrifying ballplayers of his generation secured his place in baseball history by following a simple rule: See the ball, hit the ball. Vladimir Guerrero was a force of nature. Watching Guerrero hit from the stands was one of the great pleasures a baseball fan can have on a beautiful summer day. […]

Griffith Stadium played host to the 23rd All-Star Game on July 10, 1956. A sellout crowd of 28,843 saw the National League win its sixth decision in the past seven encounters, 7-3. The overflow crowd filled the seats behind the center-field wall, creating a bad background for the batters, and there were 17 strikeouts in […]

For Jim Kaat, the last of his 31 career shutouts undoubtedly was the most amazing of them all. It came June 4, 1980, a 10-inning blanking of the New York Mets at Shea Stadium – just over a month after the St. Louis Cardinals purchased the 41-year-old left-hander from the New York Yankees. Kaat had […]

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and a conclave of civil rights advocates arrived at Memphis Municipal Airport on the morning of April 3, 1968. Dr. King’s group made the trip to show solidarity with the city’s 1,300 striking Black sanitation workers.1 Later that day Dr. King gave his iconic “I’ve been to the Mountaintop” speech […]

Entering the 1958 season, only two major-league teams – the Detroit Tigers and the Boston Red Sox – had never employed a Black player. Controversy in each city guaranteed that the first player across the line would play under extra attention and pressure. The Tigers acted first, introducing their first Black player in June.1 The […]

The 1945 Negro League World Series was taking place in a postwar America. Japan had surrendered, World War II was over, and the famous “kiss” of a sailor and nurse in a celebratory Times Square sparkled on the cover of Life magazine. Yet old issues remained. “Jim Crow must go!” African American soldiers demanded, in […]

At the opening of the 1963 major-league season, the Cincinnati Reds projected pitcher Jim Maloney as the team’s number-four starter, behind Bob Purkey, Joey Jay, and Jim O’Toole.1 Purkey and Jay were 20-plus-game winners the previous year, while O’Toole won 16.2 For his part, the 22-year-old Maloney, a 6-foot-2, 190-pound right-hander, had gone 9-7 after […]

The New York Yankees were five-time World Series champions heading into the 1954 season. Nobody would argue, not even Yankees manager Casey Stengel, that New York had the firepower to keep hanging championship banners from the rafters at Yankee Stadium. What was the last team to win a pennant in the American League before the […]

The New York Giants were once again in their familiar position of first place in the National League. John McGraw’s bunch were a dynasty in the early 1920s, winning back-to-back World Series titles against their crosstown rival New York Yankees in 1921 and 1922. In 1923 they saw the Yankees finally have the upper hand […]