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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. […]

Infielder Bill Narleski may have lost some playing time due to serving more than three years in the infantry during the First World War, but he found that the Second World War gave him a couple of years he probably wouldn’t have otherwise had. His son Ray pitched for six seasons in the majors, winning […]

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, […]

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 […]

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 […]

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, […]

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 […]

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 […]

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. […]

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 […]

“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 […]

In 1954 Gus Triandos, a powerfully built catcher who hit a lot of home runs, was languishing in the New York Yankees’ farm system. To the one-year-old Baltimore Orioles, a team that had a severe shortage of talent, Triandos seemed plenty good enough. And he was: After being sent to the Orioles in a blockbuster […]

His potential was glimpsed when future Hall of Famer Nolan Ryan, months removed from his Rookie League debut in 1965, was said to have the ability to “throw as hard as Dick Selma.”1 That fall, Eddie Stanky, who managed Selma in the Florida Instructional League, claimed the right-handed hurler could become “the best relief pitcher […]

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. […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

“I’m just relieved to have this over with,” said 43-year-old Nolan Ryan after tossing 146 pitches (including 103 strikes) over 7⅔ innings against the Milwaukee Brewers at County Stadium to win his 300th big-league game. “The last 15 days have been the toughest emotionally that I’ve ever gone through.”1 Since holding the Detroit Tigers to […]

It was an unseasonably cool summer evening in Spokane – in the mid-60s at gametime. But the cool breeze didn’t mean cooler heads would prevail during the final game of a four-game series between two cross-state rivals, the Bellingham Mariners and Spokane Indians. “We kinda had a little bit of bad blood with [Bellingham],” Spokane […]

Two teams with a history of extra-inning games1 faced each other on a Saturday evening in the Astrodome and, after 4 hours and 14 minutes, the Houston Astros emerged victorious over the San Francisco Giants in 14 innings before the remnants of a crowd announced as 27,208. Giants great Willie Mays stood atop the list […]

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 […]

“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 […]