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In the early 1970s, lefty pitcher Bob O’Brien made an unlikely and mercurial rise from unheralded draft selection to big-leaguer. His stay in professional baseball was brief, but along the way he became the subject of one of Tommy Lasorda’s greatest motivational stories. Robert Allen O’Brien was born on April 23, 1949, in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, […]

The telegram was brash and a bit disrespectful. Simply stated, it read “DEAR MOOSE: TOLD YOU SO. JOE PEP.”1 The New York Yankees needed pitching help—specifically a boost to their rotation—following the 1962 season. They set their sights on Stan Williams, a right-handed twirler for the Los Angeles Dodgers who had won 14, 15, and […]

At the Pirates’ minor-league pitching camp in 1970, Harding Peterson, the team’s minor-league director, told two pitching prospects to abandon their side-arm pitching delivery. Fortunately neither listened, as each would become a Pirate World Series hero, with Bruce Kison starring in 1971 and Kent Tekulve in 1979 with the “We Are Family” champs. During offseason […]

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 […]

When Gordie Sundin turned down numerous college football scholarships to pursue a career in professional baseball, it seemed the sky was the limit for the 6-foot-4 right-hander with an overpowering fastball. Instead, when injuries forced him out of the game at age 23, he went down in history with the dubious distinction of an infinite […]

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 […]

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, […]

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. […]

The first regular-season game at Jacobs Field was played on April 4, 1994. Through seven innings the Indians were down 2-0, and it looked as though the storyline would center on Randy Johnson’s dominant pitching performance. The Indians finally got to the lanky southpaw in the bottom of the eighth, when Manny Ramirez doubled to […]

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 […]

No manager in major-league history was more inclined to use left-handed shortstops than Billy Barnie of the American Association’s Baltimore Orioles. In his nine years at the helm there, from 1883 through 1891, he used seven of them,1 most notably Jimmy Macullar, who was his everyday shortstop for three seasons.2 When George Van Haltren, the […]