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Soon after he signed his first professional contract, Fred Hopke declared his ambition in answer to a questionnaire: “First string major league player.”1 The quest for his grail consumed 10 years of his life, but he never got beyond spring training. Love for the game stuck out all over him. “Fred Hopke would wear a […]

“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 […]

“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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

“One reporter said my expression was ‘dour.’ I had to look that one up,” quipped B.J. Surhoff.1 Over 19 major-league seasons (1987-2005), the lefty swinger with a game face as grim as a beleaguered soldier appeared in more than 1,000 games for both the Milwaukee Brewers and Baltimore Orioles. Surhoff saw regular duty as a […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

“It was just another one of his usual days. I got over being amazed at him 10 years ago.” – Ken Boyer, speaking of Stan Musial, September 27, 19621 “I’ll just have to try to stroke the ball to left field. O’Dell has good breaking stuff.” – Stan Musial, September 27, 19622   A late […]

Major-league brothers are relatively rare. Brothers playing in the same game are even rarer. Brothers filling the positions of pitcher and catcher at the same time are rarer yet. But that’s what occurred with Andrew Romine and Austin Romine for the Chicago Cubs against the Milwaukee Brewers on August 12, 2021. The circumstances for this […]

The starting pitcher for the Yankees was Aaron Small. In the late 1980s, he, Jason Giambi, and future Yankee Cory Lidle pitched together at South Hills High School in West Covina, California. When asked which one was the best, Giambi smiled and said, “I think if you were to ask scouts back then, I think […]

Willie Mays hit a career-high 52 home runs in 1965. (National Baseball Hall of Fame Library)   Before a crowd of 8,922 at Candlestick Park, Willie Mays hit his 44th and 45th home runs of the season to lead the San Francisco Giants over the Houston Astros, giving San Francisco the outright lead in the […]

In a time when baseball players from the Dominican Republic were just beginning to populate major-league rosters, the Dominican-born Alou brothers—Felipe, Matty, and Jesús—made history in 1963 by becoming the first instance of three brothers appearing as teammates in a major-league game. Their place in baseball history is also defined by their becoming part of […]

From Sandy Koufax and Don Drysdale to Sam McDowell, Bob Veale, and Jim Bunning, baseball in the 1960s witnessed some of the hardest-throwing and most intimidating pitchers in the sport’s history. Included in that fraternity of strikeout artists was Jim Maloney, who broke in with the Cincinnati Reds as a 20-year-old rookie in 1960. Four […]

“It was almost like Roberto Clemente playing the Reds all by himself,” gushed sportswriter Les Biederman in the Pittsburgh Press, “and coming so close to wrecking them singlehandedly.”1 Affectionately nicknamed “Arriba” by Pirates radio broadcaster Bob Prince, Clemente belted three home runs and knocked in all seven Pirates runs, but his offensive heroics were not […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]