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As the saying goes, the squeaky wheel gets the grease. Jim Bouton had approached Seattle Pilots pitching coach Sal Maglie and asked why reliever Diego Seguí had been selected to start the first game of their July 18 twin bill instead of him.1 Bouton wasn’t satisfied with Maglie’s answer, but after Seguí won his start […]

The St. Louis Giants, after playing as an independent team since 1906, joined the newly formed Negro National League in 1920. The Giants’ purchase of legendary outfielder Oscar Charleston from the Indianapolis ABCs helped make them into a winner in 1921 after finishing the Negro National League’s debut season with a 32-40 record.1 The Columbus […]

The events of August 2 in baseball history are quite varied. In 1921 a Chicago jury arrived at a not-guilty verdict in the trial of the Black Sox, accused of participating in a fix of the 1919 World Series.1 In 1979 New York Yankees catcher Thurman Munson perished in an airplane crash in Canton, Ohio.2 […]

The first years of the 1970s were turbulent ones on American college campuses. In some places the upheaval even invaded that seeming bastion of order and tradition, the baseball diamond. The University of Vermont was a case in point. In mid-May 1971, Edward C. Andrews Jr., president of the financially troubled flagship state university, announced […]

It was looking like a sad Monday for Red Sox fans at Fenway Park. The 1946 pennant winners played a daytime doubleheader, making up a game postponed by rain the previous day. They were hosting the 1945 world champion Detroit Tigers, who had finished second in 1946. The first game was a heartbreaker of a […]

The St. Louis Cardinals’ dismal start to the 1921 season – one win in their first 10 games – seemed to augur yet another disappointing campaign for Branch Rickey’s team. The Cardinals’ losing record wasn’t that unusual, since they had been mostly a second-division club throughout their history. The franchise had never been in serious […]

Oakland Coliseum in 2023. (Courtesy of Jacob Pomrenke)   After Kansas City Athletics owner Arnold Johnson died in 1960, his heirs sold the team to Charlie Finley.1 Finley was unable to make the A’s competitive on the field and decided to move them out of Kansas City. After failed attempts to relocate to Louisville, Dallas, […]

By the numbers, Boston Red Sox pitcher Tim Wakefield’s start against the White Sox on June 10, 1996, looks like one of the worst games of his 19-season career. On a foggy night, Wakefield yielded a career-high 16 hits, along with eight runs, as Chicago steamrolled the struggling Red Sox 8-2 before a crowd of […]

On Saturday, September 27, 1924, with the New York Giants locked in a battle for the National League pennant with the Brooklyn Dodgers, the Giants were set to meet the seventh-place Philadelphia Phillies at the Polo Grounds in a critical end-of-season game. Phillies shortstop Heinie Sand was standing on the field during batting practice when […]

America has always had great duos. In entertainment it was Laurel and Hardy, Abbott and Costello, George Burns and Gracie Allen. In baseball it was the great Chicago White Sox tag team of Jerry Staley and Turk Lown. Together they formed the best one-two punch out of the bullpen in 1959 for manager Al Lopez. […]

Nineteenth-century journeyman Jim Clinton logged 400-plus games in baseball’s three major professional leagues between 1872 and 1886 and, in the midst of that (1877-1881), probably an equal number in various leagues and associations we would now categorize as “minor.” He served with seven different clubs over the course of 10 seasons in the National Association, […]

Ralph Theodore Joseph Branca was a New York guy. He was born on January 6, 1926, in Mount Vernon, just outside New York City, as the fifteenth of seventeen children. His middle name was a celebration of the first President Roosevelt, who also hailed from the Empire State.1 His elementary and high school years were […]

The world champion 1968 Detroit Tigers were largely “homegrown—signed and sealed by Eddie Katalinas and his staff.”1 Working tirelessly as a scout and director of scouts, Katalinas was instrumental in the discovery and recruitment of prospects. Not all of the recruits panned out, of course, but some became Tiger greats, including Al Kaline, Mickey Lolich, […]

Greg Terlecky was a starting pitcher for most of his decade-long professional baseball career, though all 20 of his major-league outings came in relief for the 1975 St. Louis Cardinals. He registered a loss in his only decision and carried a 4.45 ERA over 30⅓ innings. He began his brief tenure in the majors by […]

Prior to his untimely death in July 1918, Dr. Joseph Creamer did much good in his life, being especially revered for his longtime free medical care of East Side Manhattan indigents. But Creamer’s virtues were interred with him. To the extent that he is remembered at all today, it is for a single, regrettable act […]

The baseball fortunes of hard-throwing right-hander Frank Pfeffer turned on a single event: an offseason trade in the winter of 1905. The transaction dispatched Pfeffer from a Chicago Cubs club poised on the brink of National League domination to the sad-sack Boston Beaneaters, arguably the worst NL team of the Deadball Era. Worse yet for […]

The elder statesman of the Baby Birds staff that vaulted the Baltimore Orioles into pennant contention in the early 1960s was a mere 22-year-old. He is the only AL pitcher to lead the circuit in wins during a rookie campaign and the only one in either league to do so since Chicago Cubs righty Larry […]

“You automatically go all out, regardless of pain or what.”1 This was the guiding principle of New York Yankees pitcher Bill Stafford’s baseball career. Never had his philosophy been more tested than on the afternoon of October 7, 1962. After a screaming liner off the bat of San Francisco Giants outfielder Felipe Alou smashed into […]

John Young carried an impressive 6-foot-3, 210-pound frame during his baseball playing days. Even more impressive than his physical stature on the field, however, was the stature he later gained as a baseball ambassador for the underprivileged. In founding the Reviving Baseball in Inner Cities program, Young left an indelible mark on the game that […]

Few players in baseball history have jumped directly to the major leagues without ever playing a game in the minors. Many of these were the Bonus Babies in the years before the amateur draft was established in 1965. Before that, Hall of Famers Bob Feller, Frankie Frisch, Mel Ott, and George Sisler went directly from […]

During right-hander Lerrin LaGrow’s final year in the majors, he quipped “Hillerich & Bradsby” when asked to identify his toughest opposing hitter.1 By naming the company that manufactures Louisville Sluggers, he perhaps inadvertently referenced the moment for which he’s arguably most remembered – being the target of Bert Campaneris’s thrown bat during the 1972 AL […]

  Baseball only decrees 90 feet between bases and 60 feet 6 inches from home plate to the mound. Elsewhere, look backward, angel.“Thanks to Alexander Cartwright,” said former Commissioner Bowie Kuhn, “the outfield distance, fence height, and space between the seats and lines vary. Parks could do as they liked.”1 Some have been liked better. […]