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No matter how you measure it, Tony Conigliaro’s career got off to a terrific start, but tragedy repeatedly intervened and the great promise of his early years remained unfulfilled.  A local boy made good, Tony was born and raised in the Boston area, signed with the hometown team, and made his major-league debut in 1964 […]

Tall, trim Oklahoma native Ralph Terry won 107 major-league games over 11-plus seasons, from 1956 into 1967. His most stellar and productive campaign was 1962, when he led the American League in wins, with 23, and compiled a 4.0 WAR for pitchers. Yet, he is most notably recalled for being on the mound in crucial, […]

Chroniclers of the game have rarely been kind to Andrew Freedman, principal owner of the New York Giants from January 1895 to September 1902. According to one team historian, Freedman was “naturally arrogant (with) a bad temper at the end of a very short fuse.”1   In much the same vein, Bill James memorably described him […]

“I prided myself on being a good defensive catcher,” three-time All-Star and two-time Gold Glove winner Johnny Edwards told the author.1 Edwards debuted on the Cincinnati Reds’ pennant-winning squad in 1961, inaugurating a 14-year career, including a one-year stop on the 1968 NL champion St. Louis Cardinals before spending his final campaigns with the Houston […]

Stories about Art Quirk’s golden arm and Ivy League degree accompanied the left-handed pitcher on his rise to the major leagues. There were double-digit strikeout games and a no-hitter. Most newspaper profiles mentioned the rarified source of his college diploma. But the excitement of his 1962 debut was short-lived when he was bumped from the […]

One of a long line of Cuban players to pass through the Washington Senators organization, Mike Fornieles burst onto the scene as a 20-year-old with a debut nearly unsurpassed in major-league history. He went on to pitch for five teams, primarily as a reliever, spending just over half his career with the Boston Red Sox, […]

A master of the one-liner, Billy Grabarkewitz once claimed that “Abner Doubleday dreamed up this game [of baseball] to drive people crazy.”1 Perhaps no one knew this more than the diminutive right-handed hitting infielder whose entire career pivoted on injuries. It was injuries that slowed Grabarkewitz’s march to the big leagues; injury to fellow infielder […]

It could be a good question in a serious trivia contest: “Who was the first African-American ballplayer honored by the Hall of Fame?” Rather few people would correctly guess Grover Jones. “My real name is Grover William Jones, Junior,” Deacon Jones explained in a 2008 interview. “Everybody started calling me Deacon because my father was […]

A Gold Glove shortstop but perennial weak hitter, Edwin Albert Brinkman played 15 seasons in the majors, the first 10 of them with the expansion Washington Senators. Traded to Detroit in October 1970 in the infamous Denny McLain deal, he led the Tigers to a division title and was voted Tiger of the Year in […]

The son of a Chicago policeman, Golden Gloves boxer, and “bonus baby,” Jim O’Toole would become a confident, competitive and highly consistent member of the Reds starting rotation throughout the early 1960s. The lefty made significant contributions to his team’s success in two of the most dramatic seasons in Cincinnati’s long major-league history: 1961 – the […]

There was never an Alex Grammas question on Family Feud. However, if Richard Dawson, the late and long-time host of the popular game show, were to have asked a hundred of his contemporaries how they remembered Grammas, the survey would invariably point to three answers: flawless fielding, excellence as a third-base coach, and his Hellenic […]

In the spring of 1970, a rangy 23-year-old right-hander stood atop the Los Angeles Dodgers’ minor-league pitching hierarchy. Sandy Vance, with a perfect name for Dodger fans to savor harkening back to Hall of Famers Dazzy Vance and Sandy Koufax,1 burst into the majors by happenstance that April, had solid seasons with both Los Angeles […]

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,” […]

Saves became an official major-league statistic in 1969. By the mid-1970s, closers had become firmly entrenched on big-league rosters. Pitchers such as Rollie Fingers, Bruce Sutter, Sparky Lyle, and Rich “Goose” Gossage were helping to define the role, often pitching multiple innings at the end of games. In 1976, the antacid maker Rolaids, whose motto […]

During the 1890s southpaw Bert Inks pitched for six different major league clubs – but posted a winning record for only one of them. More than a century later, that performance prompted a 19 th century baseball scholar to declare, “Bert Inks exemplified the lengths to which teams often go to give a left-handed pitcher […]

It’s a shame that Bubba Church is mostly remembered for getting drilled below his left eye by a Ted Kluszewski line drive, because, as a 25-year-old rookie, Church was a key member of the 1950 Whiz Kids pitching staff. In fact, it is unlikely that the Phillies would have won the pennant without him. Although […]

When people think of Nicaragua and baseball, the first name that comes to mind will always be El Presidente, Dennis Martínez. The second Nicaraguan in the majors was Tony Chévez, who signed together with Martínez with the Baltimore Orioles in 1973. Chévez was the bigger star at home, and expectations were higher for him.[fn]Hernández, Gerald. […]

It was one of the most bizarre batting races in National League history. Three players on the same team were competing for a batting championship, none of whom today would qualify for the honor. Not until December of 1926, nearly three months after the season ended, was it decided whether Bubbles, Cuckoo, or Rube had […]

Negro league fans called him “the black Lou Gehrig,” putting Buck Leonard in pretty lofty company. It didn’t hurt Buck that he followed Josh Gibson, “the black Babe Ruth,” in the Homestead Grays’ lineup. Was Buck Leonard the equal of Gehrig as a first baseman and hitter? He probably was a better first baseman than the […]

A right-handed slugger and sure-handed infielder, George Scales starred in the Negro Leagues in the 1920s and 1930s. He achieved a .323 career batting average, according to Seamheads.com, and he ranks ninth in career slugging percentage among Negro Leaguers with at least 3,000 plate appearances. The eight players ahead of him are in the Hall […]

The Dominican Republic has often been called “The Land of Shortstops,” and not without reason. On September 24, 2005, for example, 14 different Dominicans played the position in the major leagues. Many of those players come from a particular city in the southeastern part of the country, San Pedro de Macoris, which also sent a pair of […]

Through the 2021 season, Brady Anderson is the only player in the history of Major League Baseball to amass at least 20 home runs and 50 stolen bases in one season, and at least 50 homers and 20 steals in another. Anderson usually batted leadoff over a 15-year career (1988-2002) spent almost entirely with the […]

In 1883 the Worcester Ruby Legs became the Philadelphia Quakers and shortly the Phillies. From then until 1980, there were no World Series titles for the Phillies. They won just two National League pennants, in 1915 and in 1950, when a quiet, scholarly but rugged man named Eddie Sawyer led the club called the Whiz […]

The Polo Grounds, an odd name for an odd stadium, was home to several baseball teams, most notably the New York Giants until the team moved to San Francisco following the 1957 season. Its horseshoe-shaped grandstand and elongated playing area provided for ridiculously short distances down the foul lines and equally ridiculous long distances to […]