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To many, there can be no greater honor than to serve one’s country, but occasionally the call to duty comes at an inopportune time.  Bill Landis expresses no regrets, but history should nonetheless note that he played the full 1967 season for the 1967 Boston Red Sox, perhaps the most beloved of all Red Sox […]

“I didn’t like how my baseball career ended, particularly because I was so young. I won only 19 games total. But I realized how fortunate I was to have made it to the majors. Not many make it. And how many guys who played for many years didn’t get to play in the World Series […]

A member of the three-time American League champions, Ed “Farmer” Willett was a fixture in the Detroit Tigers rotation from 1908 to 1913. During that six-year period, the 6-foot, 183-pound right-hander won at least 13 games in each season, topping out with a career-high 21 victories in 1909 when the Tigers captured their third consecutive […]

Catchers may often disagree with the calls made by umpires, but it didn’t take Mickey Devine that long to get himself suspended for the depth or demeanor of his disagreement. On June 1, 1916, in his first year in Organized Baseball, the young New Haven catcher was “ordered from the field for disputing Umpire Stafford’s […]

Mike Hart was so determined to play in the major leagues that he turned down two lucrative offers to play in Japan. A chance to play outfield for the Yankees was denied when the baseball commissioner nullified his trade to New York. Hart hit over .300 for five teams in Triple-A,1 yet his MLB career […]

With his trademark dark glasses and red socks, Bob Addie, the son of a New York City butcher, was a respected and popular fixture on the Washington sports and social scene for almost 40 years. A columnist and Senators beat writer for the Washington Times-Herald and the Washington Post, Addie served as president of the […]

Among the smiling faces seated in the front row in the 1970 Naugatuck High School baseball team photo is that of senior tri-captain John Caneira. There was good reason for Caneira and his teammates to be happily posing for the camera despite losing a marathon struggle in the previous year’s Connecticut Class A final, for the […]

Sam Crawford sprung from fertile Midwestern farm soil, and like a storm blowing across his native Nebraska’s prairie swept over the major league baseball landscape for nearly two decades. One of the Deadball Era’s most consistent performers, the powerful Crawford never led his league in slugging percentage, but finished in the top ten in that […]

Sam Rice broke into the major leagues in August of 1915 as a 25-year-old pitcher with the Washington Nationals. After moving to the outfield midway through the following season, he became one of the leading hitters in the American League. Over the course of a 20-year career, most of which he spent in Washington, Rice […]

In the California winter leagues of 1929, California resident and Toledo Mud Hens manager Casey Stengel spotted a hard-hitting shortstop named Bill Knickerbocker. Stengel convinced the teenager to try out for the Mud Hens in the spring. The youngster hitch-hiked across the country in 1930 to join Toledo at spring training in Anniston, Alabama. Knickerbocker […]

Veteran broadcaster Lanny Frattare was the “Voice of the Pittsburgh Pirates” for two generations of fans. He belongs to a special roster of long-serving Pirates on-air talent that includes Rosey Rowswell, Bob Prince, and the team’s current play-by-play man, Greg Brown.1 Frattare served the Bucs from 1976 to 2008. He never called a World Series […]

Homer Peel played five seasons in the major leagues, earned a World Series ring with the New York Giants in 1933, and was once traded for Grover Cleveland Alexander. He is more widely known, perhaps, as the “Ty Cobb of the Texas League.” His consistent hitting over 14 seasons in the Texas League resulted in […]

Garrabrant Ryerson Alyea IV, a free-swinging right-handed batter and just the ninth player to hit a home run on the first pitch he saw in the major leagues, was born on December 8, 1940, in Passaic, New Jersey to a family of Dutch heritage that had been in the northern New Jersey area since the […]

On June 24, 1945, seven weeks after the German Wehrmacht surrendered to the Allied armies and on the e day more than 40,000 Russian troops paraded through Moscow’s Red Square to celebrate their victory over the Nazi invaders, a son was born to Mary and Ralph Zeigler in Greencastle, Pennsylvania, on June 24, 1945. William […]

In 1962 the Los Angeles Times veteran sportswriter Braven Dyer offered in three short sentences an apt analysis of the brief career of Ron Moeller: “Moeller is something of a problem pitcher. At times, he seems to have everything. The next time out, he seems devoid of confidence.”1 Emerging on the major league stage in […]

Between the two of them, the baseball-playing Bender brothers embodied much of the popular turn-of-the-century American Indian stereotype, both positive and negative. Tall, dignified, and stoic, Charles “Chief” Bender epitomized the Noble Savage. He was also one of the finest pitchers of the Deadball Era. Never the staff workhorse, Chief Bender was manager Connie Mack’s […]

Bert Blyleven’s career statistics speak for themselves: 287 victories, 4,970 innings pitched, 3,701 strikeouts, and 60 shutouts accumulated over the course of 22 seasons in the big leagues (1970-1990, 1992). However, some sportswriters questioned whether the Dutch-born right-hander, whose curveball was regarded as the era’s finest, was Hall of Fame material when he retired. In […]

Tris Speaker of the world champion 1915 Boston Red Sox declared Carl Weilman of the St. Louis Browns to be one of the six best pitchers he ever faced.1 “If you ask the Detroit Tigers,” said sportswriter L.C. Davis, “the six best pitchers in the American League are Carl Weilman.”2 The Tigers were the best […]

From 1950 to 1955, Robin Roberts was the top right-hander in the National League while pitching for the Philadelphia Phillies. For most of the remainder of his 18-year career, he was a crafty veteran who had a remarkable resurgence with the Baltimore Orioles. Either way, he would go out, take his turn on the mound […]

When two last-place teams face each other in mid-September, the stage might not seem set for great achievements, but that’s exactly what happened when the Anaheim Angels and Kansas City Royals played the second game of a doubleheader on September 14, 1999. The Angels were wrapping up a disappointing season that had already seen their […]

While the starting pitchers in Game One of the 1963 World Series had been the obvious choice of staff aces, the second-game starters were dictated by the configuration of Yankee Stadium, a venue that rewarded left-handed batters and punished right-handed pitchers. Right-handers Jim Bouton of the Yankees and Don Drysdale of the Dodgers were clearly […]

When the Florida Marlins and Chicago Cubs met for the second game of a late June three-game series, both teams were far off the pace in their respective divisions. Each had come into the season projected to finish fifth, the Marlins in the five-team NL East, the Cubs in the six-team NL Central. Approaching the […]

Before Game One of the 1987 American League Championship Series between the Detroit Tigers and Minnesota Twins, Tigers manager Sparky Anderson made a statement about Pat Sheridan. Although the Tigers outfielder ended the season 5-for-68 and spent most of the last three weeks on the bench during a tight race for first place, Anderson had […]

“This may be the worst game I’ve ever seen … the best worst game I’ve ever seen.” – Tim McCarver, in the top of the seventh inning.1 The Boston Red Sox had dropped a close 8-7 game to New York the night before, despite Kevin Millar’s three homers. This was more or less the same […]