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“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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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, […]

Juan Pizarro was a talented, durable Puerto Rican pitcher. The lefty pitched in all or part of 18 major-league seasons, starting as a rookie with the 1957 Milwaukee Braves. The Braves rushed him to the big club after one eye-opening season in Class A, yet their very deep pitching staff limited Pizarro’s opportunities. He did […]

Remembered for his dazzling performances against John McGraw’s Giants which earned him the nickname “Giant Killer,” Lew Richie’s eight-year career was spent entirely in the National League, where he quietly enjoyed a successful start with his hometown Phillies before emerging as a bona fide starting pitcher for Frank Chance’s powerhouse Cubs teams of the early […]

Millions of Californians were not born there but chose the Golden State as the epicenter of their career and family lives. Two of them, London’s Bob Hope and Tacoma’s Bing Crosby, won fame and glory in Hollywood with a series of “Road” movies. The subject of this article, however, is a baseball personality whose life […]

After three years of college, Jake Flowers spent most of his life in Organized Baseball. He was a major-league infielder for seven full seasons and parts of three others; a minor-league player, manager, and executive; a coach with three major-league clubs; and a scout for three organizations. As a major-league player, Flowers was plagued by […]

On December 6, 1960, the American League awarded Los Angeles and Washington, D.C., expansion franchises that would play in the league beginning in April 1961. With only four months to put a franchise together, Los Angeles owner Gene Autry first hired Bob Reynolds as team president and Fred Haney as general manager. When it came […]

It was April 30, 1957. In his first five innings in the majors, catcher Tom Patton did the following: Threw out one future Hall of Famer (Larry Doby) trying to steal; Exchanged rundown throws with a second Cooperstown-bound player (George Kell) to catch a third (Luis Aparicio); and Reached base against a perennial All-Star (Billy […]

If Ginger Beaumont is remembered today, it’s usually for being the first batter in modern World Series history. In the early days of the Deadball Era, however, he was considered baseball’s finest leadoff man, a lifetime .311 hitter who was good enough to be named by both Bill Klem and Honus Wagner as the center […]

When Mike Sandlock signed his first professional baseball contract, in 1938, he could not have envisioned that he would become a major-league teammate of no fewer than six Hall of Famers – Warren Spahn, Paul Waner, Ernie Lombardi, Pee Wee Reese, Billy Herman, and Ralph Kiner. Nor could he have imagined that during his five […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 mood was gloomy and subdued at Sportsman’s Park in the Gateway City on October 4, 1930, as the Cardinals prepared to face the seemingly invincible Philadelphia Athletics in the third game of the World Series, having lost the first two contests in the City of Brotherly Love. There was “none of the concerted cheering, […]

Of the Cincinnati Reds’ 18 extra-inning games in 1969, none was more dramatic than the extraordinary comeback win they accomplished on July 19. The Houston Astros appeared to have the game in hand with a 9-0 lead after their at-bat in the top of the sixth inning. But the Reds bounced back and tied the […]

Many surgical procedures or even surgical incisions are named after the surgeons who originally performed them. Having a medical condition named for a patient is uncommon, although silent movie star Rudolph Valentino died of Valentino Syndrome and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis is better known as Lou Gehrig Disease. Of course, if Claude Elliot had a more […]

Many baseball fans consider Branch Rickey the greatest innovator in baseball history. Not only did he break baseball’s color barrier by bringing Jackie Robinson to the majors, he also invented the farm system, which has become the standard means teams use to develop talent. Another great innovator who deserves credit for the changes he brought […]

In 1794, the legislature of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania codified a portion of English common law governing observance of the Christian Sabbath, or day of rest. The laws, known as “blue laws,”1 criminalized “any worldly employment or business whatsoever on Sunday (works of necessity, charity, or wholesome recreation excepted.)”2 Those laws were still very much […]

Fans of the Minnesota Twins were growing restless as the 1975 baseball season started. The franchise had been successful during its first 10 years in Minnesota, both on the field and at the box office. The Twins won the American League pennant in 1965, placed second in the 10-team AL three times and third once […]