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Right-handed pitcher Happy Finneran played major-league baseball for five seasons. After playing two years for the Philadelphia Phillies, Finneran jumped to the Federal League in 1914 and played until the league folded in 1915. In 1918 he pitched for the Tigers and the Yankees. Joseph Ignatius Finneran was born on October 29, 1890, in East […]

Clint Brown was a member of the Cleveland Indians starting staff for four years before a broken wrist sidelined him in 1934. He was relegated to the bullpen and eventually was sold to the Chicago White Sox. With Chicago he established records (all since broken) for relievers by appearing in 220 consecutive games without a […]

Named after one president and toiling in the shadow of another pitcher named after the same president, Grover Cleveland “Slim” Lowdermilk had a career that spanned the second half of the Deadball Era. From 1909 to 1920 Lowdermilk was an adequate pitcher with occasional flashes of steadiness for six different teams. He closed out his […]

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 […]

Marty McManus lived a life in baseball, spanning the years 1920 through 1948. He played as a major-league infielder for 15 years and was player-manager for the Boston Red Sox for most of the 1932 and 1933 seasons. When women began to play pro baseball during World War II with the launch of the All-American […]

Johnny Couch, a proud Montana native, was a fan favorite of the San Francisco Seals following World War I. He reinvented himself multiple times during a 15-year professional pitching career (1914-29). Known as a “gentleman scholar” in baseball circles because of his studies at Stanford University, he entered law enforcement after his playing career, retiring […]

Jack Perrin’s major-league playing career lasted just two days, but he got four games in. Perrin played right field for the Boston Red Sox, debuting on July 11, 1921 and finished his playing time on July 12 – appearing in both halves of back-to-back doubleheaders. He was 3-for-13 at the plate, all singles, and never […]

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 […]

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 […]

Today we would call Sherry Magee a five-tool player: he could hit, run, field, throw, and hit with power. For more than a decade he was the Philadelphia Phillies’ clean-up hitter and greatest offensive star, setting the all-time team record in stolen bases (387) and ranking among the top ten in almost every other category. […]

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 […]

Ronald Michael Diorio was born in St. Mary’s hospital in Waterbury, Connecticut, on July 15, 1946. His parents, Charles and Gilda (Follachio) Diorio, were first generation Americans, with roots in the Calabria and Abruzzi regions of Italy. Charles, a Waterbury native born in 1906, worked as a plumber. Gilda worked in the shop as well. […]

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 […]

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, […]

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, […]

“I express my thoughts. I’m a screamer, a yeller, and a cusser. I never hold back,” Dallas Green said after he was named manager of the Philadelphia Phillies in 1979.”1 With his no-nonsense confrontational style, attention to detail, unmatched work ethic, and passion for baseball in the “old-school” tradition, Dallas Green led the Phillies to […]

Don Baylor was a hustling player who ran the bases aggressively and stood fearlessly close to home plate as if he were daring the pitcher to hit him. Quite often they did, as Baylor was plunked by more pitches (267) than any other player in the 20th century, leading the American League eight times in […]

Fred Schulte played center field for the pennant-winning 1933 Washington Senators. His three-run homer in Game Five of the World Series against the Giants pulled the Senators even. But New York won on a 10th-inning homer by Mel Ott that tipped off Schulte’s glove. The victory gave the Giants the championship. In his 11-year big-league […]

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 […]

“We got seven runs early and felt we were in pretty good shape,” California Angels manager Doug Rader groaned. “We got pounded. It’s the worst one I’ve been in.”1 “It was one of those days that no matter what they threw, everything fell in for hits for us,” marveled the Brewers’ Jim Gantner.2 “They hit […]

With the best pitching in the National League taking on the league’s best offense on July 11, 2003, at Coors Field, the outcome of the game rested on a confrontation between a backup third baseman and a well-traveled set-up reliever. The 2003 season had been very good to the Dodgers pitching staff, which had given […]

Entering the 1958 season, only two major-league teams – the Detroit Tigers and the Boston Red Sox – had never employed a Black player. Controversy in each city guaranteed that the first player across the line would play under extra attention and pressure. The Tigers acted first, introducing their first Black player in June.1 The […]

Walter Alston lost his first game as a major-league manager in a tight one-run decision. It happened on April 13, 1954, at New York’s Polo Grounds, as the New York Giants trimmed Alston’s Brooklyn Dodgers by a 4-3 score. Fast-forward 23 seasons, 2,040 regular-season wins, 4 World Series titles, and 1 cross-country move later, and […]

Despite a balmy 81-degree game-time temperature and a promotion in which the Twins gave away a car at the game, the Tuesday evening game between the Chicago White Sox and Minnesota Twins drew a sparse turnout of 3,630. Those who decided not to come to the ballpark not only missed out on an opportunity to […]