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Eight-time Gold Glove winner Mark Belanger was celebrated for his wondrous defense at shortstop but jeered for his weak offense. A lifetime .228 hitter, Belanger was pinch-hit for 333 times in his 18-season career, retiring as the American League’s all-time leader in that category.1 Belanger’s Baltimore manager Earl Weaver even devised a strategy to limit […]

In his novel You Can’t Go Home Again, Thomas Wolfe tells the story of a man returning to his hometown in search of his identity. In May 1972, Willie Mays was sort of a George Webber-like character when he came to the Mets after spending the first 21 years of his career with the Giants — for 15 years […]

Lou Gehrig became the second New York Yankees player to hit for the cycle at least twice in his career, as the Yankees routed the St. Louis Browns, 14-5, on August 1, 1937.1 The Yankees hosted the Browns before a Sunday crowd of 18,924 at Yankee Stadium and came away with 17 hits. However, the […]

Bill Dahlen’s ferocious temper earned him the nickname Bad Bill and got him thrown out of dozens of games. His 34th and final ejection as a player came on July 31, 1909, in the Boston Doves’ 3-2 road loss to the St. Louis Cardinals.1 Dahlen in 1909 was in his 19th major-league season and his […]

The 1959 season marked 57 years since the Minneapolis Millers became charter members of the American Association in 1902. The Millers had independent ownership until Mike Kelley sold the franchise to the New York Giants in 1946.1 They were a Triple-A farm team for the Giants from 1946 through 1957, then became a Boston Red […]

When baseball returned to Washington in 2005 after an absence of 33 seasons, RFK Stadium became the home of the transplanted Montreal Expos, now the Washington Nationals. Its cookie-cutter design was of its era — round and multipurpose.1 As this baseball finale approached, the state of RFK Stadium could best be described as leaky and […]

On September 25, 1934, the Boston Red Sox – appearing at Fenway Park for the first time since August 28 – hosted the Washington Senators in a doubleheader. While away, Boston had visited all seven American League rivals, compiling an 8-13 record (with one tie). Despite the losing road trip, by the time the Red […]

On Saturday, August 2, 1975, in the midst of a ferocious regional heat wave, the western Massachusetts town of Chester reported a temperature of 107 degrees. So did the city of New Bedford, on the state’s southern coast.1 As of January 2021, these readings remained the hottest officially recorded temperatures in the history of Massachusetts.2 […]

These days, a man coming from Gayville might be taunted in some circles, feted in others. There appear to be two Gayvilles in South Dakota, one an unincorporated place on the western edge of the state and the other a town in Yankton County in southeastern South Dakota. In 2010, the population was 407. In […]

During a road trip late in the 1904 season, Brooklyn Superbas manager Ned Hanlon found his staff without an arm available to start a series finale in Chicago. His solution was the emergency recruitment of Joe Koukalik,1 a young right-hander prominent in the semipro Chicago City League. Although visibly nervous and constantly surrounded by Cub […]

Robert Charles Christian was born on October 17, 1945, in Chicago to a family of Dutch and Scots-Irish descent. His family would move to Southern California early on in his childhood and would remain in the city of El Cajon throughout his childhood. It was there that he would begin to be involved in sports […]

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 […]

Charles G. “Charlie” Fisher played just 11 games in the majors, and that’s based on the status of the Union Association of 1884 as a top-level circuit. Yet the infielder still has a unique distinction. Alaska is known as the “Last Frontier” for good reasons. With an abundance of unsettled land and a sparse human […]

Smoke. That’s what they called him. He was respected and admired, but first he was humiliated and discarded. Down to his last chance, Dave Stewart had a stunning rebirth in his hometown and became a four-time 20-game winner, a two-time ALCS MVP, a World Series MVP, and a three-time World Series champion. But before all […]

During the winter of 1911-1912, Dr. William D. Scanlan was obliged to make a life-altering decision. For the past seven years, he had been a pitching mainstay for the woeful Brooklyn Superbas. But during that same period, Doc Scanlan had also completed his medical studies, satisfied New York state licensing and internship requirements, and begun […]

Few players have been as synonymous with a team as George Brett and the Kansas City Royals. Yet the amiable, self-deprecating, and sometimes volatile Brett never viewed himself as being greater than the team he loved. A throwback to an earlier time, Brett favored pine tar over batting gloves, chewing tobacco over bubble gum, and […]

“He’s got that slow, easy delivery, and then – poof! – it’s on you. It’s very tough to hit. Very tough.” – Dave Winfield1 Winfield was far from the only hitter who found Tom Henke’s lively fastball problematic. Henke, a 6-foot-5, 215-pound right-hander, was one of the most dominant closers of his era. He debuted […]

The Cincinnati Reds did not seem a bit concerned about their opponent from the junior circuit. The Big Red Machine were the bullies on the beach, waiting to kick sand in the face of their rival, the Oakland Athletics. Pete Rose viewed the coming 1972 World Series as anticlimactic. “The real World Series was between […]

A school teacher, a football player, a Penn State graduate, a professional ball player, and finally, a bank cashier, Birdie Cree spent his major league career with only one team, while witnessing the rise and fall of managers Kid Elberfeld, George Stallings, Hal Chase, Harry Wolverton, Frank Chance, and Roger Peckinpaugh. Batting and throwing right […]

Jack Brickhouse, a broadcaster best known for covering Chicago Cubs baseball, also covered many other sports and teams and did a significant amount of non-sports broadcasting, including coverage of several national political party conventions, and interviews with four U.S. Presidents and Pope Paul VI. “My father ran the gamut of the entertainment world,” wrote Jack […]

Born on January 21, 1959, in San Cristobal, Dominican Republic, José Uribe found a path from the pockmarked, rock-and-dirt baseball fields of the Dominican Republic to international baseball success. Named the All-Decade Shortstop of the 1980s for the San Francisco Giants,1 he played well in an unforgettable World Series with the team in 1989. In […]

Bubba Morton spent parts of seven major-league seasons between 1961 and 1969 as a platoon outfielder and pinch-hitter with the Detroit Tigers, Milwaukee Braves, and California Angels. He was a spray hitter with occasional pop, had a penchant for getting on base, and played excellent defense. Don Mincher once called him “the perfect teammate.”1 Morton […]

The idea of a winter retreat appealed to many in the baseball business. The men the game attracted were by their nature sportsmen. Unless a man resided in a remote area during the winter, he gravitated towards his baseball companions, especially if he was a bachelor, to partake in any number of activities such as […]

Entrance to Four Mile Run Park in Arlington, Virginia, in the twenty-first century. (City of Arlington)   Take a flood-prone elementary school. Add a peppery, baseball-mad mayor and a group of disgruntled neighbors. Mix in dozens of minor-league ballplayers, ranging from top prospects to unwanted, unsigned good-enough-to-dream types. Oh, and throw in a bunch of […]