Search Results

In an era when roster flexibility was a necessity, Ambrose Reid became a fixture across the diamond, playing nearly every defensive position during a 13-year Negro League career from 1920 to 1932.1 Found most often in left field and at third base, the right-hander stood six feet tall and weighed 181 pounds. Nicknamed Buck,2 Reid […]

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 […]

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 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 […]

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 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 […]

For nearly a quarter century, Gussie Busch simultaneously led a nationwide brewing company and the St. Louis Cardinal franchise. Nicknamed “The Big Eagle”, Gussie lived life to its fullest. His enemies called him profane, tyrannical, hot-tempered, a philanderer, and a huckster. His friends saw him as soft-hearted, congenial, open, personable, philanthropic, and loyal. In 1953, […]

No one confused portly right-hander Jim Tobin with hard-throwing contemporaries like Bob Feller, Johnny Vander Meer, or Hal Newhouser. “Tobin’s fast ball could not break a pane of glass,” opined sportswriter Arthur Daley in the New York Times. “He has two pitches — slow and slower. … He is the most tantalizing gent on the […]

Mel Roach was more a spectator than a player for the 1957 world champion Milwaukee Braves. He played the first part of the season in the minor leagues before the Braves called him up in July. He spent the rest of the campaign as an occasional pinch-hitter and pinch-runner, batting only seven times and stroking […]

Outfielder Chaney White had a 17-year career in the Negro major leagues from 1920 through 1936. During that time, he was a member of numerous championship teams that included squads in various Negro Leagues, the Cuban Winter League, the Florida Hotel League, and the California Winter League. In 1934, at age 40, he was still […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

“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 […]

Branch Rickey, who had shaken the foundations of Organized Baseball in 1947 when he orchestrated Jackie Robinson’s integration of the sport with the Brooklyn Dodgers, was still innovating seven years later. He had left as Brooklyn’s general manager to take over the same spot with the Pittsburgh Pirates in 1950. Before the 1952 season he purchased […]

In what was described by Bert Walker of the Detroit Times as “one of the most vicious slugfests seen on the local diamond this year,” the Detroit Tigers and the Chicago White Sox combined for 43 hits and 31 runs at Navin Field in the Motor City on Tuesday, June 2, 1925. The Tigers enjoyed […]

“He’s been hotter than the weather, and in the Midwest, that’s torrid.” Les Biederman of the Pittsburgh Press, discussing Ernie Banks who during the final four games of a five-game series between the Cubs and Pirates went 11-for-19 with five home runs and 13 RBIs.1 Ernie Banks, in his second full season with the Chicago […]

Bargain seekers got all they wanted as the Tigers played football with the Indians and won both halves of the doubleheader 7-3, and 20-1.1 The opposing managers in the twin bill in Detroit on September 5, 1924, were two old foes, Ty Cobb of the Tigers and Tris Speaker of the Indians, both of whom […]

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 […]