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Hall of Famer Wade Boggs’ illustrious 18-year career included 12 consecutive All-Star Game appearances, eight Silver Slugger Awards, and five batting titles. The 240 hits he collected in 1985 are tied for the 13th highest in a major-league season (as of 2023). Boggs was a member of the 1996 New York Yankees team that won […]
On May 12, 1939, the St. Louis Browns hosted the Detroit Tigers for the first of a four-game series but lost 1-0. After the Browns won the second game of the series, 5-3, on May 13, the two teams participated in a 10-man trade, sending players to the opposing dugouts for a doubleheader on May […]
Facing the Milwaukee Braves in the late 1950s was a proposition as daunting as a church group protesting suggestive song lyrics during rock ’n’ roll’s emergence at the time. It wasn’t exactly a futile journey. But it might have felt that way for NL squads. Henry Aaron was a highly significant factor for the Braves’ […]
Baseballs were flying out of major-league ballparks in 1953. At the end of play on this Sabbath Day, the National League had smashed 1,008 home runs on the season. Batters needed to hit only 92 more to break the single-season mark, set in 1950.1 The Milwaukee Braves, who had moved from Boston in the offseason, […]
Scipio Spinks and Gary Nolan never faced off as starting pitchers in the major leagues during the five seasons, 1969 through 1973, when their careers overlapped in the National League. That’s a shame, because when the pitchers started against each other in the short-season Class A Northern League one night in August 1966, they combined […]
When the 1969 baseball season got underway, the Cincinnati Reds’ fiery right-hander Jim Maloney felt that he had something to prove. For two seasons he had battled chronic shoulder pain that had taken a few notches off his heater. He was no longer the consistently overpowering hurler who had posted a 74-34 record over a […]
Brooklyn Dodgers manager Casey Stengel released 34-year-old Hack Wilson in August 1934, and picked a surprising replacement: 21-year-old rookie outfielder Nick Tremark, a left-handed batter, of Italian ancestry, from Yonkers, New York.1 What distinguished Tremark from other ballplayers was his diminutive stature – he stood 5 feet 4¾ inches.2 “Because he is a little fellow […]
A pessimistic attitude bounded about Redland Field as the Cincinnati Reds regrouped before the nightcap of their doubleheader on Sunday, June 18, 1933, against the St. Louis Cardinals. During their last three home games, the Reds had been thoroughly humiliated, outscored 37-3 and outhit 52 to 11. First-year Cincinnati manager Donie Bush looked to coach […]
“It was a dark and stormy” day. It was the kind of day that might have inspired Edward Bulwer-Lytton to open his 1830 novel, Paul Clifford, with the now cliché “It was a dark and stormy night.”1 It was the kind of day the fictional Snoopy, in myriad Peanuts cartoons, would start with those same […]
In January 1949, the St. Louis Cardinals sold right-hander Murry Dickson, a mainstay since their glory years earlier in the 1940s, to the Pittsburgh Pirates for $125,000. Dickson defeated his former club five times in eight decisions that season, with one victory especially harmful to St. Louis’s championship aspirations. His complete-game 7-2 win at Pittsburgh’s […]
On a warm Saturday afternoon in early May 1932,1 the day Burgoo King captured the 58th running of the Kentucky Derby, young Reds catcher Ernie Lombardi proved he was “king” of Redland Field when his screaming line-drive triple in the 12th inning completed an improbable 9-8 comeback victory for the hometown club over the Boston […]
It could have been the first time ever. From the very first occurrence of a major-league player hitting for the cycle (when Curry Foley used a grand slam to hit for the cycle on May 25, 1882) through the beginning of the 2020 season, there have been just two times when two major leaguers hit […]
“I saw Robinson coming in. I didn’t move because I had to stay to make the call on the pitch first. That’s why I stayed crouched over. I saw it perfectly. Yogi put the ball at the back of the plate and Robinson slid across the plate into the glove. I’m satisfied I made the […]
The 1958 World Series featured a rematch from 1957, the defending champion Milwaukee Braves once again facing the New York Yankees. The Yankees had taken charge of the American League early, gaining first place in the fourth game of the season and never losing it all year. A streak of 14-1 in May pushed them […]
Blessed with speed and quickness, Bill Bruton was arguably the fastest man in professional baseball in the 1950s. While prowling center field, he could race back for well-hit long balls and charge in to scoop up potential Texas Leaguers. When batting, he used his speed to intimidate opponents into making throwing and fielding mistakes. He […]
“The bonus rule will ruin baseball if it isn’t curtailed,” proclaimed Branch Rickey, Pittsburgh Pirates general manager, in August 1952.”1 A revised rule was adopted by the major leagues that winter. Clubs were required to carry any player receiving a signing bonus of more than $4,000 on their major-league roster for a minimum of two […]
Dave Jolly was 28 years old when he made his major-league debut as a member of the Milwaukee Braves. Both he and the team arrived in Milwaukee the same year, 1953. Over the ensuing five seasons the soft-tossing, durable right-handed pitcher became an integral member of the Braves bullpen, throwing 291 innings over that span, […]
Bill McKinley was a steady, dependable American League umpire whose 20-season career, from 1946 to 1965, was marked by numerous highlights and one well-publicized low point. The highlights included four World Series assignments, three All-Star Games, five no-hitters—one behind the plate—and other historic moments. McKinley was working home plate in 1947 when Larry Doby of […]
Vice and dissipation may have had their way. Meridian, Mississippi, was home to “The Father of Country Music,” Jimmie Rodgers, also known as “The Singing Brakeman.” It was also home to gas-station owner Danny Clark, and major-league pitchers Dennis “Oil Can” Boyd and Jay Powell. Clark’s claim to fame came from baseball as well. He […]
On the last day of the 1957 season, Sunday, September 29, the Milwaukee Braves entered their final home game against the Cincinnati Redlegs as National League champions after clinching the pennant a week earlier. At the end of six innings the game was a scoreless tie, and when the visiting Redlegs plated three runs in […]
The subject of this biography was a great female ballplayer. She did not play in the All-American League; in fact, she played softball rather than baseball. Nevertheless, she was one of the most significant figures in the ball playing scene of the 1940s and ’50s. The movie A League of Their Own popularized the All-American […]
After spring training tryouts with the Philadelphia Athletics and Phillies and seven years in the minors, Ed Cole caught on with the St. Louis Browns in 1938. Pitching primarily in relief, Cole won his only big-league game that season in a grueling start against the Boston Red Sox at Fenway Park. The rubber-armed pitcher, however, […]
The apex of Billy Meyer’s major league career came in 1948, when The Sporting News named the rookie pilot as Manager of the Year. He kept an undermanned Pittsburgh Pirate team in the middle of the pennant race until late September. That accomplishment sealed his reputation as a quintessential “baseball man.” William Adam (“Billy” or […]
Los Angeles’s Wrigley Field in was built and opened in 1925 as the finest minor-league park in the country. Some called it the best park in the country — majors or minors. From its earliest years Wrigley Field was home to multiple baseball teams, many other sports and community events. The history of Wrigley Field […]