Search Results

The highest grossing baseball movie of all time, A League of Their Own, features a 15-second scene where an African-American woman picks up an errant ball and throws it back with such snap that it raises eyebrows.1 The film tells the story of what is now known as the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League (AAGBPL), […]

By all accounts, the Homestead Grays had a pretty good year in 1930. If what was past is prologue, then for the 1931 Homestead Grays, their 1930 season was clearly the start of something big. Playing an independent schedule in the East while Midwest teams engaged in what would be the last full season of […]

A list of hit sequences for players who completed a cycle during the 1920-2017 period.This is the online appendix for Herm Krabbenhoft’s “‘When You Come to a Fork in the Road, Take It’: Who Took the Cycle or Quasi-Cycle?”   Click here to scroll down for Table A-2: Sequences for Players Who Completed a Quasi-Cycle […]

Cover of the May 1927 issue of Yakyukai depicting O’Neal Pullen and Shinji Hamazaki (Rob Fitts Collection)   Kazuo Sayama, baseball historian, author, and member of the Japanese Baseball Hall of Fame (enshrined in 2021), states with great passion and conviction that had it not been for the tours of the Negro Leagues’ all-star Philadelphia […]

Carlos Bernier’s game-changing speed fueled the native Puerto Rican’s rise through the minor leagues after Jackie Robinson integrated major-league baseball in 1947. Reaching the majors in 1953 with the Pittsburgh Pirates, Bernier’s debut as a pinch-hitter in a 4-2 loss to the New York Giants at Forbes Field on April 22 made him – in […]

The last day of the regular season in the 1959 National League pennant race, September 27, ended without a league champion. The Los Angeles Dodgers and Milwaukee Braves ended the schedule in a tie. Los Angeles had bested the Chicago Cubs 7-1 on the final day and the Braves, hearing of the Dodgers victory, and […]

The Pittsburgh Pirates were eager to open the 1954 season following a disastrous 1953. That year the Pirates went 50-104, finishing 55 games behind the league-leading Brooklyn Dodgers. On the “brighter” side, their record was an improvement over the 42-112 record of 1952. Throughout the mid-1950s, the Pirates frequently joined the Chicago Cubs in the […]

With one day left in the American League schedule, Detroit’s Heinie Manush was battling New York’s Babe Ruth for the league batting crown. Both batters were hitting .372; Manush was 182-for-489 (.37219), while Ruth was 184-for-494 (.37247). The outcome would be decided on this Sunday afternoon. Just below them was Detroit’s Bob Fothergill, at .360. […]

Hard-throwing Dazzy Vance was in agony. Brooklyn sportswriter Thomas W. Meany reported that Vance suffered from serious inflammation in his right shoulder caused by warming up too quickly six days earlier against the Pittsburgh Pirates.1 According to Robins beat reporter Thomas S. Rice, Vance’s right arm was “blue from the rupturing of a blood vessel,” […]

To paraphrase a newspaper account of the July 10, 1941, game between the New York Yankees and St. Louis Browns: It was Johnny Niggeling’s birthday, but Joe Gordon, Joe DiMaggio, and the Yankees got the gifts.1 Niggeling, the Browns’ knuckleballer, started against the Yankees on his 38th birthday and held them to three hits in […]

When Ebbets Field locker-room attendant Dan Comerford arrived at work on the morning of July 12, 1929, several packages were waiting for him at the clubhouse door. The five boxes – each containing a dozen new baseballs – had been sent from the office of National League President John Heydler. Seeing the parcels did not […]

Those who took part in the April 17, 1972, exhibition between the Oakland Athletics and the University of California, Berkeley Golden Bears say the game was played to a nearly empty house at Oakland-Alameda County Coliseum.1 That’s unfortunate, because Bay Area baseball fans missed an interesting game. On the field, the Athletics – reigning American […]

Game Five of the 1957 World Series had everything a fan wanted to see: nail-biting tension, high-stakes drama, unsung heroes, excellent fielding, aggressive base running, clutch hitting, and lights-out pitching. In what was described as the “fiercest struggle of the World Series thus far,” Milwaukee’s Lew Burdette hurled a masterful shutout, needing only 86 pitches […]

Myles Thomas was the winning pitcher in seven of the New York Yankees’ 110 victories in 1927. He also has the distinction of owning the fifth-highest batting average (.333) on a team known as Murderers’ Row. But there’s more. In real life, Myles Thomas was a Pennsylvania farmer’s son, a baseball star for Penn State, […]

For young Dickie Cole, growing up in Southern California in the 1930s, dreams of becoming a major leaguer must have seemed as distant as the nearest big-league team, the St. Louis Cardinals, half a country away. Lying on the living-room floor and listening to France Laux doing the Cardinal games on KMOX radio in St. […]

Few players have been as coveted by professional clubs as Paul Pettit was in the spring of 1949. During that high school season, the hard-throwing left-handed pitcher drew crowds to the small southern California town of Lomita. They echoed the influx to the region after oil was discovered there in the early 1920s. Pettit’s powerful […]

Baseball lifers Branch Rickey and Fred Haney described Cal Hogue’s knee-buckling curveball as one of baseball’s best — if he could control it. Seven years after signing his first professional contract, Hogue finally reached the majors in 1952, tossing a four-hitter in his first start. He never harnessed the potential of his breaking ball and […]

John J. Quinn spent 47 years working for major-league baseball teams, 28 of those as a general manager. During his tenure as GM of the Boston and Milwaukee Braves (1945-58), the franchise won three National League pennants and the 1957 World Series. After owner Bob Carpenter brought Quinn to Philadelphia in 1959, the savvy executive […]

Instead of being the good-hitting second baseman and field leader that the Milwaukee Braves expected him to be – the player who would make enough of a difference to help lead them to the National League pennant in 1954, Danny O’Connell turned out to be a disappointment, compiling just a .248 batting average in four […]

A onetime budding prospect in the Milwaukee Braves’ organization, Al Spangler drew favorable comparisons to Hall of Famer Richie Ashburn for his speed and pesky hitting throughout much of his early career. Seemingly in spite of the table-setting success of an Ashburn-like talent, Spangler often found himself on teams in search of a power-hitting slugger, […]

After the first game of a doubleheader against the visiting Chicago Cubs on July 4, 1928, rookie outfielder Wally Roettger of the St. Louis Cardinals was hitting a robust .341. In the second game, however, he dislocated his right ankle and broke both bones in his lower leg sliding into third base.1 The injury ended […]

With his character and the way he has given back to the game, Frank Torre is far more than just Joe Torre’s big brother. Frank Torre spent seven seasons in the majors as a first baseman with the Milwaukee Braves and Philadelphia Phillies. He was known more for his defensive prowess at first base than […]

“My only regret is that I can’t sit in the stands and watch myself pitch.”1 No one ever accused southpaw Bo Belinsky of being modest. And probably no pitcher in baseball history ever got more mileage out of 28 wins (against 51 defeats) in parts of eight big-seasons as Belinsky. Belinsky took baseball by storm […]