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Editor’s note: This article was originally published in 2021 as part of the SABR Century 1921 Project.   1921 New York Giants team photo (SABR-RUCKER ARCHIVE)   The New York Giants and their manager, John J. McGraw, were optimistic that the 1921 season would result in a World Series triumph. Hopefully, this would end the […]

Few multi-purpose stadiums in North American history can rival Toronto’s Exhibition Stadium for the number, variety and stature of events held there. Set in a vast fairgrounds complex on the shore of Lake Ontario, the municipal facility originally known as Canadian National Exhibition (CNE) Stadium served as the largest sports and entertainment venue in Canada’s […]

This multi-purpose facility has been called “The Madison Square Garden of Puerto Rico.”1 Its use in boxing and basketball is a big reason, but the parallel extends to track and field, as well as political conventions. Baseball, however, forms an especially rich chapter in the history of Estadio Sixto Escobar (as it is known to […]

“There is a tide in the affairs of men. Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune; Omitted, all the voyage of their life is bound in shallows and in miseries,” wrote William Shakespeare in Julius Caesar. The line, spoken by Brutus, might well have been spoken about Al Weis. The self-described “journeyman ballplayer” […]

Few people can say that their job made it possible to travel around the entire world. Parnell Woods traversed North and Central America while playing baseball, being selected to eight East-West All-Star Games along the way. After his baseball career, he was able to travel throughout Europe and Asia as the traveling secretary for the […]

It was very difficult to win games for the 1964 Boston Red Sox. Not a single starting pitcher on the team had a winning record. The team finished in eighth place, with a record of 72-90. There were a few players fans could cheer for. There was 19-year-old Tony Conigliaro who hit 24 homers, and […]

On August 7, 1923, the Washington Senators sent rookie hurler Monroe Mitchell to the hill versus Cleveland. Mitchell was coming off a five-hit shutout of the Browns which had earned him his first major league victory. Against the Tribe, he lost his shutout immediately when Charlie Jamieson led off with a triple and scored on […]

Called the “King of the Caribbean” by baseball people and “Big Daddy” by players he was scouting, Howie Haak gained acclaim as the scout who threw open all of Latin America to major-league baseball. Living up to yet another nickname, “El Tiburón” — The Shark — Haak built upon the work Joe Cambria had done […]

“Bullpen coaches are probably the most underappreciated of any uniformed member of a Major League staff,” MLB.com reporter Evan Drellich once wrote, “just because they’re well out of the public eye.”1 If that’s a credible rule, then Luis Isaac must have been an exception when he held that job for the Cleveland Indians, because local members […]

At age 22, crafty left-hander Jerry Nops was a budding star, a 20-game winner for the 1897 Temple Cup champion Baltimore Orioles. By age 26, his major league career was behind him, a sterling .637 winning percentage notwithstanding. Undone by alcohol abuse and behavioral issues, Nops – whom Cooperstown-bound manager Ned Hanlon once described as […]

George Edward Jeffcoat, the older of two brothers who played in the majors, spent two full seasons and parts of another two others pitching in the National League. He had a record of 7 wins and 11 losses in 70 appearances between 1936-43 with the Brooklyn Dodgers and Boston Braves. After his playing days, he […]

John Michael “Red” Corriden, the first-base coach for the 1947 New York Yankees, was a baseball lifer. From 1908 until he retired from baseball after the 1958 season, a span of fifty-one years, Corriden served as a player, coach, manager, and scout. The 1947 season was Corriden’s first as a Yankees coach. He was brought […]

Ted Strong Jr. thrilled baseball fans with a hard-hitting swing that he displayed over his 10 seasons in the Negro Leagues and in Mexico. The tall, muscular Strong played in seven All-Star games as a member of the Kansas City Monarchs and other teams. This two-sport superstar also toured the country as a member of […]

On Monday evening, September 22, 1947, the “sizzling steaks [were] on the house . . . [and] free gravy down the shirt front” was de rigueur at 600 Flatbush Avenue.1 Pitcher Hugh Casey, proprietor of Hugh Casey’s Steak and Chop House, was optimistically throwing a victory dinner party for his Dodgers teammates. Brooklyn’s beloved “Bums” […]

“Moe was just scary. The whole league was afraid of him.” – Terry Ryan, future Minnesota Twins GM and teammate of Moe Hill’s in 19731 “A living legend, the Hank Aaron of Class A ball.” – Rick Wolff, a Midwest League opponent of Hill’s in 19742   If ever a player personified minor-league baseball, it […]

From the hot corner, Milt Stock made vital contributions towards the Philadelphia Phillies’ first two pennants. As a second-year player in 1915, he took over third base responsibilities when Bobby Byrne suffered a serious injury during the home stretch, and helped the Phillies capture their first NL flag. For another decade, with several teams, he […]

Leroy Stanton overcame many obstacles on his path to a major-league baseball career. He grew up poor in an area overlooked by scouts, suffered a serious injury from an early-career beaning, and missed two seasons after being drafted into the Army. After cups of coffee with the New York Mets in 1970 and 1971, Stanton […]

Despite winning three professional batting titles, outfielder Luis Mercedes played only 70 major-league games over parts of three seasons (1991-1993) for the Baltimore Orioles and San Francisco Giants. After retiring, he became a renowned hitting instructor in his native Dominican Republic. Luis Roberto Mercedes Santana was born on February 15, 1968, in San Pedro de […]

During the 1873 season of the National Association, Charles H. Porter served as president of the Boston Base Ball Association, the corporation that entered the Boston baseball team to compete for the National Association championship. As the Boston team won the championship in 1873, Porter led a financial revitalization of the Boston Base Ball Association […]

Abraham Lincoln Manley was born on December 22, 1885, in Hertford, North Carolina, one of seven children of William and Rebecca (Faulk) Manley. The family owned land, raised and raced horses, and were practicing Quakers.1 In high school, Abe worked in a sawmill, and lost the top of his left thumb while cutting a piece […]

The Cincinnati Reds won consecutive pennants in 1939 and 1940 and a World Series championship the latter year thanks in no small part to the stellar play of their little-remembered right fielder, Ival Richard Goodman. Outstanding in the field as well as at bat, he typically hit third a lineup that also featured 1940 National […]

In 1964 columnist Dick Young cracked, “Battered plate umps will insist upon double Blue Cross coverage if Jesse Gonder continues to do all the catching for the Mets.”1 The humor in the reference to Gonder’s league leading 21 passed balls was lost on the African-American backstop. Until later in life, when he appeared to come […]

Two years after this game, the Boston Red Sox were well on their way to winning the American League East. That team went on to win the 2018 World Series, marching through each of the three rounds of the postseason with only one loss per round. The 2018 Red Sox featured an outfield of Andrew […]

Roman candles and bottle rockets lit up the evening sky on the Fourth of July in the Twin Cities. In the afternoon the Minnesota Twins produced baseball fireworks in the first game of a doubleheader at Metropolitan Stadium against the Chicago White Sox. It was the summer of 1961, and fans were coming out in […]