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Each one of the three years he played as a big-league infielder, Homer Ezzell hit better than the year before, but even the 1926 Red Sox didn’t feel they had a position for him.  He had a great name: Homer Estell Ezzell. It was bestowed on him, of course, by his parents, George and Leila, […]

A big-league career is often a product of fate, luck, and timing.  Bob Keely would attest to that.  In 1944 the St. Louis Cardinals signed the 34-year-old sandlot star as a third-string catcher. Six months later, Keely was a world champion. Keely was originally signed by the Redbirds in 1936, but a knee injury ended […]

Doc Prothro never played professional baseball until he was 26 years old. He was a dentist with his own practice in Dyersburg, Tennessee pitching for a town team when he was spotted by a scout and signed, skipping the minor leagues and heading straight to a major-league debut in Washington DC. He spent over a […]

In 1942 St. Louis Cardinals’ farm director Branch Rickey singled out a particular right-handed hurler among a small army of top-flight pitching prospects: Max Surkont “can become another [Bob] Feller for us,”1 declared the future HOF executive. But by the end of spring training the Cardinals, blessed with the major leagues’ best pitching, assigned Surkont […]

Larry Pratt of the 1914 Boston Red Sox may not have been asked to be part of the team that won the World Series in 1915 (and again in 1916), but he never found out. Instead, he jumped his contract and played for the Tip-Tops and the Pepper. That may sound a little comic but […]

Tex Vache was a reasonably sizable ballplayer for his era who performed well at the plate during his one year in big-league ball, with the 1925 Boston Red Sox. Even though the Red Sox of the day were in no position to be too selective with their signings, one can reasonably guess that Vache’s poor […]

“Gary [Bell] has come up with a good nickname for Freddy Velázquez,” wrote Jim Bouton in Ball Four. “Freddy just sits there in the bullpen, warming up pitchers, and he never gets into a game and just looks sad. So, Gary calls him Poor Devil.”1 Although Velázquez saw action in just 21 major-league games for […]

Versatility is the best word to describe Felix Mantilla’s 11-year career, in which he won a world championship with the 1957 Milwaukee Braves, appeared in the All-Star Game, and played every position other than pitcher and catcher.  Felix (Lamela) Mantilla was born on July 29, 1934, in Isabela, a town in the northwest corner of […]

“It was the worst trade I ever made,” said Washington Senators manager Bucky Harris about the straight swap of shortstops. He sent Buddy Myer to the Boston Red Sox for Topper Rigney on May 2, 1927. Rigney was 30 and had five years of big-league experience. Myer, 23, had one. But two seasons later, the […]

Whitlow Wyatt already had strong ties to Atlanta baseball when he arrived with the Braves for the 1966 season as the team’s pitching coach. The native Georgian was a short-stint collegian at Georgia Tech before starting his professional baseball career in 1927 and later serving as pitching coach for the city’s standout Class AA Southern […]

“This game is tough to play,” said 11-year major-league infielder Doug Flynn in an interview with the author.1 Progressing through the Cincinnati Reds’ system in the early 1970s, Flynn was a utilityman on the Reds championship teams in 1975 and 1976 before being traded to the New York Mets in 1977. A Gold Glove winner […]

Don Hopkins, an outfielder by trade, got into 85 big-league ballgames in 1975 and 1976. He made just eight plate appearances and played 10 innings in the field. Yet he scored 25 runs and stole 21 bases. How did he compile such bizarre statistics? He was the third of Charlie Finley’s “designated runners” with the […]

Johnny Lucadello was a hard-hitting and versatile infielder who, like many of his generation, saw a promising Major League career fizzle after he lost four prime years to military service. John Lucadello was born on February 22, 1919, in Thurber Texas.1 At its peak, in the early 1900s, Thurber, situated between Fort Worth and Abilene, […]

After the Red Sox purchased his contract in the middle of the season, Neal Ball played in only 18 regular-season games for Boston in 1912, collecting nine hits. To the baseball world, Ball is better remembered for a defensive play he made against Boston three years earlier while playing shortstop for the Cleveland Naps: the […]

“The only thing wrong with Spooner, Is that he didn’t come along Sooner!”1 – A Brooklyn sportswriter   By any measure, 1954 was a big disappointment for the Brooklyn Dodgers, winners of the National League pennant in the two preceding seasons. The Dodgers still had never won a World Series title, losing five times to […]

Baseball games are frequently protested by managers and teams on the wrong side of controversial calls, but it’s rare that a protest is upheld and a game’s result is impacted. One such successful protest occurred during the 1924 season, following an umpire’s erroneous ruling after a series of substitutions. The scoreboard read “Boston Red Sox […]

St. Louis Cardinals fans had little reason to cheer during the Deadball Era of 1901 to 1919. The Cardinals posted nine consecutive losing records from 1902 to 1910, and they produced only four winning campaigns – never two in a row – during the entire era. Five of the19 seasons ended with St. Louis at […]

On a late-April Sunday afternoon at Crosley Field, the Cincinnati Redlegs hosted the Milwaukee Braves in a slugfest. Cincinnati battled from behind three times to defeat the defending National League pennant winners. A wild and loud crowd of 14,925 braved a chance of rain to cheer the Redlegs to victory. The seesaw game ended on […]

A warm, humid Sunday afternoon hovered over the west side of Cincinnati on July 16, 1933, as the struggling hometown Reds (35-49, in the cellar of the National League) got set to do battle in a doubleheader against the mighty New York Giants at Redland Field. The Giants were at the other end of the […]

The Man continued to damage Brooklyn’s pitching. The day after he collected five hits in five at-bats, Stan Musial went 4-for-6 as the Cardinals romped over the Dodgers in a contentious 13-4 win that saw two Cardinals hit by pitches. It was the Cardinals’ sixth win in a row.1 Musial entered the game batting .393 […]

George McQuinn led the offense as the Browns swept the Boston Red Sox, 9-3 and 4-3, in a doubleheader at Sportsman’s Park on July 19, 1941. McQuinn’s 4-for-5 performance in the first game included the only batter’s cycle of the 1941 season. McQuinn, considered the best defensive first baseman in the American League at the […]

On June 27, 2024, the defending World Series champion Texas Rangers traveled to Baltimore for a four-game series with the Orioles. It marked the first time the two teams had faced each other since the Rangers swept the Orioles in the 2023 American League Division Series. The home team responded with retribution, winning the first […]

The Braves had last hosted a World Series game in 1948, and that game was played in Boston. In 1957 the Braves, in their fifth season in Milwaukee, won the National League pennant. The first two games of the World Series were played in New York. The Yankees, behind Whitey Ford, had won the opener, […]

The Boston Red Sox had won eight of their last nine games heading into the twin bill in St. Louis on June 12, 1941, but they hadn’t played for three days in a row, thanks to a scheduled offday and rainouts of their first two dates against the Browns.1 They got off to a solid […]