Search Results

When the expansion Chicago Colleens got off to a 1-13 start in their inaugural season in 1948, the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League (AAGPBL) held an emergency meeting to decide how to prop up the floundering franchise.1 Rockford Peaches fans were not happy with how the issue was resolved.2 When the dust had settled, the […]

Pete Rose’s return to the Cincinnati Reds on August 17, 1984, marked a high point in a desperately low season for the team. At 51-70, the Reds had little left to play for and only the San Francisco Giants gave the Reds a cushion from the dampness of the NL West basement. Rose, Cincinnati-born and […]

The rising rafters of New Comiskey Park peered over the wall of the old ballpark across 35th Street, as though they, too, wanted one last look.1 It was the final Opening Day at Comiskey Park, kicking off the last of 81 seasons there. Sorrow for the storied park was somewhat tempered by the new one […]

In a game played before a Fenway Park crowd of 34,113, the Minnesota Twins turned two triple plays against the Boston Red Sox, a feat that had never happened before in the major leagues. Despite the rare accomplishment, the Twins lost to the Red Sox, 1-0. Left-hander Tom Bolton, a veteran of the Red Sox […]

One game in June counts as much as the other 161, but in practice they often don’t feel that way. The newness of the season has dissipated, but the excitement of a pennant race is still weeks away. However, this game between the Royals and Rangers had a little extra shine to it. The teams […]

If it weren’t documented in books, scorecards, and newspaper articles, Juan Marichal’s endurance would be the stuff of legend, like Paul Bunyan, posthumous sightings of Elvis Presley, and the Loch Ness Monster. With a windup gesture extending his left foot somewhere toward Pluto, the San Francisco Giants right-hander sustained 14 innings against the New York […]

Fifty-seven batters; four hits; one precious and decisive run. That was the story in a nutshell when the Baltimore Orioles hosted the Seattle Mariners on Tuesday night, September 1, 1981. Seattle’s Glenn Abbott and Baltimore’s Steve Stone and Tippy Martínez threw dueling two-hitters, with all the hits bunched in the fourth and sixth innings. Abbott’s […]

In the midst of a career year with the Pittsburgh Pirates in 2008, 29-year-old Xavier Nady was hitting .330 with 13 home runs and 57 RBIs in 89 games when he was dealt to the New York Yankees, along with Damaso Marte, for four players1 on July 26. Nady’s arrival at his new home field […]

“‘Finis’ was written to the 1927 chapter of the New York-Pennsylvania league yesterday afternoon as the season gasped its swan tones and passed on into peaceful sublime.”1 The Shamokin (Pennsylvania) News-Dispatch rolled out its purplest prose on September 12, 1927, invoking “swan tones” and “peaceful sublime” to summarize the hometown Shamokin Indians baseball team’s final […]

Looking back on it now, it was something akin to a 1972 moviegoer watching the final scene of The Godfather and immediately thinking, “I hope they make another one.” Sequels were not commonplace then, but it seemed everyone wanted to see more of Michael Corleone and his trigger-happy family. So it was with the September […]

Fifty games into their 1967 season the Houston Astros were on another trip to the bottom of the National League standings. At 19-31 and 14½ games out of first place, they were on track for a won-lost record even worse than the previous year’s 72-90. But an early June trip by the Astros to St. […]

Which pitcher earned the first win for the expansion Montreal Expos in 1969? If you said left-handed reliever Don Shaw, you would be correct. Besides the Expos, Shaw, a journeyman pitcher, applied his craft in parts of five seasons between 1967 and 1972 for the New York Mets, the St. Louis Cardinals, and the Oakland […]

Until a devastating ankle injury effectively ended his major-league career, George Van Haltren was late 19th-century baseball’s premier leadoff man. A lefty hitter with keen strike-zone awareness and a quick bat, Van Haltren topped the .300 mark in 13 of his 14 seasons as a lineup regular. He also drew a slew of walks, stole […]

“He came back from the war, raised seven kids, practiced law and life moves on.”1 So said Madison (Wisconsin) attorney John Gerlach in a 2012 interview about his late father and law associate, Johnny Glen “Henna” Gerlach, who captained the 1937 and 1938 University of Wisconsin baseball teams (a .415 hitter his senior season of […]

From 1970 to 1977, Rich McKinney was a utility player for all or part of each major-league season. His time in “The Show” was exclusively in the American League. He played for the Chicago White Sox, New York Yankees, and Oakland A’s. Originally slated as an infielder, McKinney also handled the outfield and designated hitter […]

Rodney Lea Nichols was born on December 29, 1964, in Burlington, Iowa. His family relocated to Albuquerque, New Mexico when Rod was about three years old, but he has always remained an Iowan at heart. Nichols early on adopted Iowa as one of his favorite college teams. “Back in the day, if you got the […]

In 1978 Cincinnati Reds’ manager Sparky Anderson, referring to the San Francisco Giants’ mound corps, said, “That’s the best pitching staff in baseball and Knepper is their best pitcher.”1 A year later, future Hall of Famer Willie McCovey echoed this sentiment when he compared his club’s rotation to the Los Angeles Dodgers’ fearsome staffs of […]

Born into a baseball family on September 2, 1933, during the first year of the presidency of Franklin Roosevelt, Glenna Sue Kidd grew up playing ball and working with her close-knit family on the Kidd farm near Choctaw, Arkansas. She had three brothers – the youngest was Joe – and two older sisters, Juanita and […]

Few names in early 20th-century America incited as much animosity and vitriol as Kaiser Wilhelm II, the emperor of Germany. After assuming the throne in 1888, the bombastic and often tactless leader inaugurated an aggressive foreign policy program that antagonized nations and directly led to World War I, in 1914. No wonder Ohio-born Irvin Wilhelm […]

Cleveland manager Kerby Farrell rushed to the mound after pitcher Herb Score was struck in the face by a line drive off the bat of the Yankees’ Gil McDougald on May 7, 1957. “He was bleeding from his eyes, nose, mouth and ears. All we could think of doing was trying to save his life,” […]

Jeff Gray1 pitched four years for collegiate baseball power Florida State University, followed by eight years of professional baseball, including parts of one season with the Cincinnati Reds and two with the Boston Red Sox. Gray’s admirable playing career was cruelly shortened at age 29 in 1991, when he suffered a stroke-like brain injury. Despite […]

Red Shannon is one of the 53 players who played for both the Boston Braves and the Boston Red Sox. His career embraced five consecutive years in the American League, bookended by two disconnected years in the National, first for the Braves and later with the Cubs. Shannon’s debut was with the Braves, in the […]

It was no surprise that Eddie McNichol would play professional baseball. Born on January 10, 1879, in Martins Ferry, Ohio, he grew up on Wheeling Island surrounded by baseball and baseball players. Wheeling Island, a tiny strip of land in the middle of the Ohio River between Ohio and West Virginia, produced several young men […]

Edited by Bill Staples Jr. and Eric Robinson, Committee Co-Chairs IN THIS ISSUE Library of Congress: Playing and Talking about Baseball across the Pacific 2018 MLB Japan All-Star Series Sayonara, Ichiro Video: Ichiro’s final swings in America Gentle Black Giants Now Available Rob Fitts wins 2019 McFarland-SABR Baseball Research Award Exclusive offer from McFarland for […]