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When even the most casual baseball fan envisions a first baseman, they conjure an image that looks a lot like Ryan Howard. In other words, a surprisingly athletic, imposing 6-foot-4, 250-pound frame that looks more natural at defensive tackle than on the baseball diamond. For a time, Howard’s production was the pinnacle of that prototypical […]

“You dream of things like this, but you never think of it happening to you. It’s something out of the movies.” — Mike Devereaux, October 15, 1995, after being named NLCS MVP1   Mike Devereaux became an instant hero on an Atlanta Braves team filled with future Hall of Famers. Having played with five different […]

With two major leaguers, a third brother, Charles, who coached the Villanova University baseball team for more than two decades, and a fourth, Hugh, who coached the Hazleton High School basketball team to three state titles, the McGeehan family of Luzerne County, Pennsylvania, built a towering sports legacy in the first third of the 20th […]

The only image of John Brown we could find is this cartoon from the July 10, 1942 St. Louis Argus.   John Wesley Brown came by his nicknames of “Lean Man” and “Slim Man” quite honestly. He stood 6-feet-1-inch tall and tipped the scales at less than 160 pounds. He was a right-handed pitcher who, […]

He was a sports broadcaster and former college football player from the Midwest. Tall and grey haired, he sported a crooked nose as a football injury badge. Answering to the name Harmon, he called gridiron action working for ABC telecasts. It would be understandable to many if he were often mistaken for the great Tom […]

“It exceeded all proportion, It could not be contained, It bloomed round like a dark sunrise, It glistened in the rain. The little boys with crew cuts Or blond locks oh so fair Would look and cheer with wonder At Oscar Gamble’s hair.” —Roy Peter Clark1   Oscar Gamble made his big-league debut in 1969 […]

“Jerry Lynch scares you with everything he does in baseball. He scares you when he tries to catch a fly ball. He scares you when he runs the bases. He scares you when he throws the ball. But most of all he scares you when he comes off the bench as a pinch-hitter with a […]

During the first 25 years of the club’s existence, the public face of major league baseball in Brooklyn proceeded from team president Charles H. Byrne to pennant-winning field manager Ned Hanlon to front office functionary-turned-club boss Charles H. Ebbets. Throughout that period, the club’s chronically depleted treasury was regularly replenished by a far less visible […]

Danny Heep was a respectable major leaguer who made a career not out of being a star, but of being a highly useful role player who fit in well on championship-caliber teams. He was born on July 3, 1957, in San Antonio, Texas, where he grew up and went to college. His father, Jacob, was […]

In 1950 Casimir James Konstanty, a sometime gym teacher and baseball nomad, and Edwin Sawyer, a manager who had never played in the big leagues, led the Philadelphia Phillies to their first pennant in 35 years. Eddie Sawyer summoned Konstanty from the bullpen 74 times that season to set a record for appearances. Along the […]

Dick “Cannonball” Redding pitched professionally from 1911 to 1936 and got his nickname from his blazing fastball that knocked back catchers.1 Redding claimed he once fired a brand-new baseball against the side of a building and the ball broke apart.2 His velocity was so legendary that some historians have wondered if Redding was the hardest-throwing […]

Any conversation about the greatest hitter in baseball history must include Rogers Hornsby in the opening gambit.1 His .358 lifetime batting average in 23 big-league seasons is second all-time to Ty Cobb’s .367 and well ahead of such all-time greats as Tris Speaker (.345), Ted Williams (.344), Babe Ruth (.342), Lou Gehrig (.340), and Stan […]

Pat Gillick served four different stints as a general manager, and during each his task was different. That he succeeded at all four marks Gillick among the very best in the history of the game. In Toronto, he built an expansion team into one of baseball’s best organizations (winning 86 or more games for 11 […]

In 1949 Bantam Books published Joe DiMaggio’s autobiography Lucky To Be a Yankee.  It could be the title of Johnny Blanchard’s life story as well. “I was so lucky to have been a member of the best New York Yankee team ever,” Blanchard says, referring to the 1961 Bronx Bombers. “With any other organization, I […]

Bob Burda appeared in 388 major-league games, spread widely across seven seasons from 1962 to 1972. Nearly half of those appearances (185) were as a pinch-hitter. He played first base in 106 games and the outfield in 97. He was always surrounded by established stars, which limited his opportunities. Only once, in 1970, did he […]

The Pittsburgh Pirates went 21-12 in August and upped their record to 70-61 as September arrived. They still trailed the first-place Milwaukee Braves by 7½ games. Their record for the first week of September was 5-3. Despite beating the Braves three times in their four-game series the previous weekend, the second-place Pirates closed the gap […]

Baseball fans are usually divided into two camps: those who enjoy good hitting and those who enjoy good pitching.1 On a hot and humid Saturday afternoon at Crosley Field, fans saw both. The Brooklyn Dodgers and Cincinnati Reds played the second game of a four-game series, and it seemed as though three Dodgers pitchers served […]

A respectable crowd1 passed through the turnstiles at the Polo Grounds for a Monday afternoon matchup between the top two teams in the National League, the New York Giants and the Chicago Cubs. Included in the audience were sailors from the German Navy,2 whose ships were docked in the Hudson River. Chicago (24-18) came into […]

While pulling on his gray Pittsburgh road uniform in the visitors’ locker room at Wrigley Field on the morning on September 16, 1975, Pirates second baseman Rennie Stennett grimaced in pain. Unsure if he would be able to play, Stennett gazed down at a heavily-taped sprained ankle “which he said has been hurting him for […]

When the Brooklyn Tip-Tops and Newark Peppers met in Brooklyn on September 6, 1915, for a repeat performance of the two states/one-day doubleheader they had played on Memorial Day, any hopes for Federal League box-office success were long since gone, especially in Brooklyn. Not only was Robert Ward’s Brookfeds team offering a lower-quality product, their […]

Before Joe DiMaggio had his 56-game hitting streak in 1941, the major-league record for consecutive games with a base hit was the streak of 42 consecutive games achieved by Bill Dahlen of the Chicago Colts in 1894. As the 1897 season began, the National League’s Baltimore Orioles had just completed their third straight pennant-winning season. […]

When the 1960 season ended, Washington Senators fans had good reason to be optimistic about the team for the following season. The Senators narrowly missed out on a fourth-place finish, which would have been their highest since 1946. Losing 11 of their last 12 games of the season scotched hopes for the higher finish. The […]

Hall of Famer Johnny Mize could hit a baseball. Author Joe Posnanski suggests of Mize, “He was Lou Gehrig good. He was Stan Musial good. He was Mel Ott good, Frank Robinson good, Joe DiMaggio good, Albert Pujols good.”1 So good, in fact, that in 1947 with the New York Giants Mize became the only […]

On a dreary Monday night at Cleveland Stadium, 22,456 fans “shivered through 3 hours and 1 minute of action,”1 including errors, arguments, ejections, a rain delay, poor pitching, and, finally, great pitching. On May 10, 1954, the Indians prevailed over the New York Yankees, 8-7. The game began with an explosion of runs in the […]