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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 […]

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 […]

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. “That year Lown and (J)erry Staley formed baseball’s most brilliant bullpen combination,” […]

Ray Chapman is remembered as the only player to have died as the result of being hit by a pitch during a major-league baseball game. Chapman’s death in 1920 did not, however, make him the first major-league alumnus to suffer such a mortal injury. Infielder John Dodge, who played 97 games in the majors in […]

Urban “Red” Faber, one of the last pitchers to legally throw a spitball, persevered through illness and injury, a world war, and the Black Sox Scandal to win a place in the National Baseball Hall of Fame. The right-hander played his entire 20-year major-league career with the White Sox, one of the league’s strongest teams […]

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, […]

In 1964 columnist Dick Young cracked, “Battered plate umps will insist upon double Blue Cross coverage if Jesse Gonder continues to do all the catching for the Mets.”1 The humor in the reference to Gonder’s league leading 21 passed balls was lost on the African-American backstop. Until later in life, when he appeared to come […]

Right-handed pitcher Eddie Stack was a collegiate and semipro standout who never played a minor league game but underachieved as a mid-Deadball Era major leaguer. Stack had ample size, a strong arm, and first-rate intellect. His debut in the big leagues in May 1910 was spectacular: a three-hit shutout of a Chicago Cubs team headed […]

George Zuverink was a side-arming sinker-baller who topped the American League in relief appearances in consecutive years, including 1956, when he was retroactively recognized as the circuit’s saves leader.1 The righthander pitched parts of eight major league seasons. After breaking in with the Cleveland Indians (1951-1952), he hurled for the Cincinnati Redlegs (1954) and Detroit […]

“There is a tide in the affairs of men. Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune; Omitted, all the voyage of their life is bound in shallows and in miseries,” wrote William Shakespeare in Julius Caesar. The line, spoken by Brutus, might well have been spoken about Al Weis. The self-described “journeyman ballplayer” […]

One of the most controversial figures of the Deadball Era, Charles W. Murphy owned the Chicago Cubs from 1906 to 1913, the period during which they reached their greatest heights. The Cubs won four National League pennants and two World’s Championships under his ownership, making Chicago the center of the baseball universe. But instead of […]

For nearly 80 years, this stumpy catcher was the only man from the Hawaiian island of Maui to make it to the majors. Even more curious is that Tony Rego was born during the brief period (1894-1898) when Hawaii was an independent republic. The “active little pepperbox” (as the Los Angeles Times described him) got […]

A speedy line-drive-lashing lefty with a strong arm, veteran Wally Moses joined the Red Sox midway through the 1946 season, shored up right field during Boston’s run to the American League pennant, and batted .417 in four World Series games. A well-liked and respected Georgian who spent 41 seasons in the majors, 17 as a […]

Dick Williams was regarded as one of baseball’s premier managers and turnaround artists. He was only the second skipper to win pennants for three different teams — Boston, Oakland, and San Diego.1 As a rookie manager in 1967, Williams led the Red Sox from ninth place the year before to the World Series. Both personally […]

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 […]

They made an odd couple on Opening Day 1923 at Braves Field – a scowling, upright Midwesterner who had sat behind a federal judge’s bench, and a beaming, roguish Boston Irishman who had stood before one. Commissioner Kenesaw Mountain Landis, the Midwesterner, had a cold personality and a reputation for probity. Since taking office in […]

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 New York Mets finished the 2006 season with a 97-65 record, tied with their crosstown rivals, the Yankees, for the best record in baseball. Now they were set to face the Los Angeles Dodgers, who entered the postseason as the National League wild-card team. The Dodgers finished the season tied with the San Diego […]

South Bend Blue Sox manager Karl Winsch was having none of it. After his team had lost Game One of the 1952 All-American Girls Professional Baseball League (AAGPBL) championship series in Rockford, Winsch went out and measured the distance of the recently-shortened right-field fence at Beyer Stadium.1 Sure enough, it was 21½ feet short of […]

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 […]

Jason Kubel of the Minnesota Twins entered spring training in 2009 with a two-year contract that guaranteed he wouldn’t face arbitration. He had an air of calm confidence. “This is the first year I don’t have any pressure,” he said in late February.1 Drafted out of high school in 2000, Kubel showed promise at each […]

The Philadelphia Phillies returned home on September 21, 1964, holding first place in the National League after winning six games on a three-city road trip. With 12 games to play, Philadelphia’s lead was 6½ games over the second-place Cincinnati Reds and St. Louis Cardinals. The city and team were looking forward to the World Series. […]