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The New York Giants and the Pittsburgh Pirates were to play the initial game of a three-game series at Pittsburgh’s Forbes Field on Monday, September 8. The Giants had just concluded a four-game series against the Brooklyn Dodgers at the Polo Grounds. The Giants split the four-game set with more than 166,000 fans attending. After […]
Steve Rogers was preparing for a showdown against the Pittsburgh Pirates in the heat of the 1979 National League East Division pennant race when a reporter told him that manager Dick Williams had just said he would have preferred to start one of his good pitchers but that he had to go with Rogers. This […]
Shown sobbing just days earlier after receiving word of a trade from his beloved Mets, Wilmer Flores, who remained in Queens after the transaction fell through, stroked an even more dramatic than usual walk-off homer to power New York over Washington by a 2-1 score in 12 innings. Of the storybook tale, columnist Phil Mushnick […]
On April 22, 1980, the Chicago Cubs were 5-3, and one game out of first place in the National League East Division. They had swept the New York Mets in a three-game home series that drew healthy turnouts to Wrigley Field. Nonetheless, the “jury was still out” in regard to the amount of support new […]
After 15 seasons of pitching for the New York Giants, many of them dominant, Christy Mathewson was clearly not himself as the 1915 season began. The revered “Matty” lost his first three starts, posting a 4.50 ERA over that span. He was reported to have taken up the spitball for the first time – though […]
On August 27 the St. Louis Browns finished a sweep of Washington that allowed the Philadelphia Athletics to creep to within a half-game of first place. Since then the Senators (or Nationals, as many sportswriters called them) were on a torrid pace, posting a 16-5 mark. They were now on the verge of clinching their […]
“If you’d ever seen me swing, you’d say, ‘No way this guy could hit a home run.’ I step in the bucket. My back side flies up. It’s not a pretty swing.” – Cincinnati Reds pitcher Dave Burba, 1996.1 Rory Glynn, a Cincinnati Reds beat writer for the Cincinnati Enquirer, jested in 1996 that […]
Bill Faul is “kind of a pitching prestidigitator who practices screwball sorcery by hypnotizing himself if not the batter,” a sportswriter said in 1965.1 Although Faul had a modest six-year major-league career with the Detroit Tigers, Chicago Cubs, and San Francisco Giants, he gave the country’s baseball scribes plenty to write about. “Since the midseason […]
Right-handed pitcher Bob Spade had one notable season in the majors (17-12 with 2.74 ERA) with the 1908 Cincinnati Reds but it almost never happened. An ill-advised trade attempt and paperwork nightmare necessitated the Reds ownership formulating a deal for Spade even while he was still in uniform with them. Spade had two more lackluster […]
In the early years of the 21st century, the name of Joe Dobson, a right-handed pitcher who toiled for 10 years with the Red Sox, rarely crops up in discussions of the better Boston players of the past. Nonetheless, his 106-72 record places him ninth (through 2012) on the Red Sox all-time team list for […]
Though Galen Cisco pitched in nearly 200 games over his seven-year major-league career, his athletic accomplishments were much more substantial and longer-lasting than that: He played in a Rose Bowl game as a young man, and was still helping major-league pitchers four decades later. Galen Bernard Cisco was born on March 7, 1936, to Beryl […]
New York fans had to be pleased at the scene that was unfolding before their eyes on May 12, 1959. Their Bronx heroes trailed the league-leading Indians 7-6 heading into the bottom of the eighth inning. Cleveland starter Cal McLish, who was attempting to raise his record to 5-0, was lifted by manager Joe Gordon […]
Todd Frohwirth was a high school senior with no future in professional baseball until he saw Kent Tekulve on television and tried pitching like the unorthodox right-hander. Eight years later, he was Tekulve’s teammate in the major leagues. Exclusively a reliever, Frohwirth spent parts of nine seasons (1987-1994, 1996) with the Phillies, Orioles, Red Sox, […]
Curtis Brown’s one game in the majors came on May 27, 1973. He played left field for the Montreal Expos at Candlestick Park in San Francisco, going 0-for-4 against Ron Bryant. Less than two weeks later, the 27-year-old was sent back to the minors, never to return. For reasons unknown, he just didn’t have any […]
Frank Hoxie “Kid” Willson was born on November 3, 1895, in Bloomington, Nebraska, to Frank Warren and Isabella A. (Hoxie) Willson. He grew up working on his family’s truck farm along with his two younger sisters, Ida Mae and Veda A., and his younger brother, Edward. The elder Frank also worked as a hotel clerk, […]
If a player collects six hits in his first day in the majors and no one sees or reads about it, did it still happen? Unfortunately, rookie first baseman Guy Sturdy’s stellar doubleheader debut on September 30, 1927, for the seventh-place St. Louis Browns occurred on their last home date of the season, and one […]
A baseball player fighting during a game isn’t that unusual. A player fighting twice in less than a year is probably a little rarer. Fighting twice in less than a year with your own teammates – during a game – may be unprecedented. But that’s exactly what happened to St. Louis Cardinals outfielder Ted Cather. […]
In 1903 Honus Wagner, unquestionably the most outstanding baseball player of his era, predicted that Pittsburgh pitcher Bucky Veil would be “a great star.” Wagner may well have been right, had intervening circumstances not derailed the rookie’s promising major-league career Nevertheless, in his short stay (1903 and 1904) with the Pirates before it was curtailed […]
With a good Irish name like Paddy and a commonplace surname like Smith, it turns out that this major leaguer’s father was Italian. Paddy’s father, Angelo Amato, and his brother, Dominic Amato, moved to the United States from Monte San Giacomo near Salerno, Italy. They married the Houlihan sisters from Kingston, New York, whose parents […]
Left-hander Bill Walker overcame two life-threatening heart attacks by the age of 15 to become a big-league pitcher. He debuted with the New York Giants in 1927 after a mentally taxing seven-year journey in the minor leagues. With two National League ERA titles in three years (1929 and 1931), it appeared that Walker was headed […]
During a stellar career at Georgetown University in Washington, DC, Charlie Moran1 was “considered the crack college shortstop in the country”2 and had several major league clubs bidding for his services. Once he entered the professional ranks he soon developed a reputation as a trouble-maker and malingerer, wearing out his welcome with such celebrated managers […]
Baseball fans, tune in this season to SABRcast with Rob Neyer, a new weekly podcast hosted by award-winning author and longtime SABR member Rob Neyer. SABRcast will feature insights and analysis of what’s happening in modern baseball on and off the field, plus compelling interviews with figures from around the game — and music from […]
Baseball fans, tune in this season to SABRcast with Rob Neyer, a new weekly podcast hosted by award-winning author and longtime SABR member Rob Neyer. SABRcast will feature insights and analysis of what’s happening in modern baseball on and off the field, plus compelling interviews with figures from around the game — and music from […]