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Shortly before Christmas of 1889, about 20 men gathered at New York City’s luxurious Fifth Avenue Hotel. Although all were well dressed, there were two distinct groups. One group was youthful and in prime physical condition; the other was more mature and perhaps not so physically robust. Both were, however, there for the same purpose, […]

The idiosyncratic Ralph Works produced a memorable, if not very successful, baseball career. After a promising major-league debut with Detroit in 1909, he proved a “persistent in-and-outer” with the Tigers over the next several seasons, never consistently successful and often clashing with manager Hughie Jennings.1 A long, restless denouement followed, with Works on the move […]

Lore Verne “King” Bader was a lesser member of the 1918 Boston Red Sox. A right-handed hurler, he pitched in just five games, starting four and compiling an unexceptional 1-3 record. All told, Bader appeared in a modest 22 games over three major league campaigns, in 1912 (with the New York Giants) and 1917-18 (with […]

When George Brett incurred some nuisance back problems in the late stages of his career with the [Kansas City] Royals, he sought relief from a chiropractor in Overland Park[, Kansas]. On one of his first visits, perhaps the first, Brett lay face down on the table — vulnerable, as he recalls — waiting for treatment, […]

When Scott Williamson joined the Cincinnati Reds at spring training in 1999, he was a non-roster invitee with long odds of making the team. Before the year was over, however, the hard-throwing right-hander was an All-Star and the National League Rookie of the Year. Although injuries prevented Williamson from replicating the success of his rookie […]

John Young carried an impressive 6-foot-3, 210-pound frame during his baseball playing days. Even more impressive than his physical stature on the field, however, was the stature he later gained as a baseball ambassador for the underprivileged. In founding the Reviving Baseball in Inner Cities program, Young left an indelible mark on the game that […]

Once described as the “Heinz of Baseball” because of his variety of pitches and deliveries, Elmer Ponder tossed a two-hit shutout for his first big-league win as a late-September call-up with the Pittsburgh Pirates in 1917. After missing almost a season and a half because of World War I, Ponder went on to post a […]

The late 1940s Boston Red Sox consisted of larger-than-life, highly paid, talented baseball men who could accomplish just about anything “except win pennants,” according to Al Hirshberg in a 1951 Saturday Evening Post article on Billy Goodman. Goodman had made his major-league debut in the spring of 1947 and was “not a glamorous slugger, not […]

Chuck Connors was a career minor-league ballplayer who played portions of two seasons in the major leagues, with the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1949 and Chicago Cubs in 1951. Connors gained greater fame as one of the very few ballplayers who was a successful actor in his post-baseball career, best known for his role as Lucas […]

When the Baltimore Orioles won four American League pennants in six seasons (1966-1971), no Baltimore pitcher earned more saves or appeared in more games than right-hander Eddie Watt. A short, chunky Midwesterner, usually with a pronounced wad of Red Man chewing tobacco bulging in his left cheek, Watt held right-handed hitters to a .200 batting […]

A combination of accountant, impresario, and American success story, Russian-born Leonard Koppett wrote with verve and understanding about the personalities, games, and statistics of the national pastime and other major sports for over half a century. Today, he is honored from Israel to Cooperstown. Born Leonard Kopeliovitch in an apartment near Red Square in post-revolutionary […]

Brandon McCarthy entered professional baseball with great promise. His minor-league performances fast-tracked him to the major leagues, but that promise was undermined by a series of injuries that often paused his career. In spite of injuries, McCarthy had a big-league career spanning 13 seasons in which he played a significant role on several contending teams […]

In the summer of 1904, the Zanesville, Ohio, baseball team had a game scheduled with a team in neighboring New Concord. “When the time arrived for the boys to take the bus, there was one player missing, so the bat boy had to be used in right field to complete the team. As luck would […]

It was the sixth inning of a 1913 exhibition game between the Brooklyn Superbas and Ty Cobb’s All Stars, and “there suddenly boomed from the first base coaching lines a chatter, the likes of which has not been heard from our side since the day of the Big Wind.”1 Benny Meyer was giving both teams […]

There have been three Gooches in major-league history, and at least another eight in the minors. The Gooch considered here is John Beverley Gooch, who played 805 games over the course of 11 seasons (1921-30; 1933), batting .280 with just seven homers while driving in 293 runs. His younger first cousin Charlie appeared in 39 […]

A baseball lifer, Wayne Terwilliger found himself with more notoriety at age 80 than he had garnered in his previous 56 seasons in Organized Baseball combined when he agreed to return for the 2005 season as manager of the Fort Worth Cats in the independent Central League.1 In doing so, he joined the legendary Connie […]

As is the case with so many Negro League ballplayers who were born before the twentieth century or just after it began, details of William Hoskins’ birth and early years are wanting. His draft registration card, issued in 1940, offers as much clarity as is available about his origins, including his reported birth on March […]

Johnny Morrison had one of the deadliest, most knee-locking curveballs baseball had ever experienced. “You simply couldn’t see it,” raved contemporary Pat Duncan. “The ball came in like a fast ball and it dropped so fast that it fell completely out of your vision unless you were looking for such a hook.”1 That pitch became […]

Becoming the third woman to own a major-league baseball club, Joan Whitney Payson marked history by heavily investing in the expansion New York Mets of 1962. The club’s first majority stockholder, she was also the first of her gender to purchase such an enterprise with her own funds. Born into considerable wealth, she used much […]

“You Called That a What . . . ?”The Newsletter of the Official Scoring Committee Society for American Baseball Research (SABR) October 2017, Volume 3, Number 1 Past newsletters   Editor: Stew Thornley Howdy Conundrum of the Month (or Quarter or Whatever) Non-Guest Column Q & A with Gary Mueller Official Scorers Confab at Winter […]

  Erected in 1890 to furnish a home field for Brooklyn’s entry in the upstart Players League, Eastern Park served the ensuing seven seasons (1891-1897) as the base of operations of Brooklyn’s National League club. Handsome, spacious, and well-maintained, the two-tier ballpark was also a versatile venue, accommodating high school, college, and semipro football, soccer, […]

Three Rivers Stadium; if it wasn’t the most picturesque coliseum in American sports history, it was perhaps one of the most perfectly named. In southwestern Pennsylvania, Pittsburgh, the county seat of Allegheny County, lies partly in a hilly region known as the Golden Triangle, the location of the city’s business district. For those unfamiliar with […]

Editor’s note: This article was published in SABR’s 1994 Baseball Research Journal (Vol. 23).   As major league baseball continues to deliver self­-inflicted wounds to itself in the form of a players strike, the issue of baseball’s long-standing exemption from federal antitrust laws has resurfaced. While today’s ballplayers and owners recently scrapped in conference rooms […]

The New York Mets and the Cincinnati Reds finished the 1999 regular season with identical records of 96-66, forcing a one-game tiebreaker in Cincinnati to see who would earn the wild-card spot in the National League.1 New York had struggled several times during the season. The Mets fired three coaches – pitching coach Bob Apodaca, […]