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Mike Rochford pitched in eight games over parts of three very good seasons — 1988-1990 — for the Boston Red Sox. The team finished in first place in 1988 and again in 1990, and in third place in the year in between. It was a tough time for the left-handed native New Englander to try […]

In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, many young men turned to baseball to escape the drudgery and dangerous occupations that awaited those without a family fortune. The mines and mills were dangerous and deadly and the prospects of making it out unscathed were low. Taking to the diamond was a way to avoid […]

On April 11, 1912, the New York American League club opened its season at Hilltop Park in New York City with a new official team nickname, the Yankees. For the first time in the club’s history, the players wore pinstriped home uniforms. The team also welcomed a new manager, Harry Wolverton. He preferred the team’s […]

After the landmark Messersmith-McNally decision was handed down by arbitrator Peter Seitz in December 1975, the California Angels quickly engaged in what some pundits referred to as “checkbook baseball,” a process in which financially well-off teams like the Angels and the New York Yankees sought to bolster their rosters by bidding for the best free […]

Scrap Iron: the punchy, evocative nickname fit Phil Garner well in the 1970s and ’80s — but it fit catcher Clint Courtney even better a generation before. The punchy part was one reason. Journalist Bob Addie wrote in 1959, “Clint put his aggressive temperament to work several times and was involved in some notable fisticuffs […]

Nobody in Hollywood would have tried to produce a script that would end like this,” said New York Yankee manager Bob Lemon after his charges came back from a two-games to none deficit to defeat the Los Angeles Dodgers in the 1978 World Series. Having reached the Fall Classic on the broad shoulders of sluggers […]

Eddie Plank fidgeted. On every pitch, Plank went through a seemingly endless ritual: Get the sign from his catcher, fix his cap just so, readjust his shirt and sleeve, hitch up his pants, ask for a new ball, rub it up, stare at a base runner if there was one, look back at his catcher, […]

A “flashy infielder” known for his fancy defensive work rather than his bat, Tom Carey played eight major-league seasons with the St. Louis Browns and the Boston Red Sox, retiring with a .275 batting average, 2 home runs, and a .972 fielding percentage in 466 games. According to St. Louis sportswriter J. Roy Stockton, the infielder […]

A 6-foot-3, 220-pound right-hander with a prominent chaw of tobacco in his right cheek, Al Severinsen pitched parts of three major league seasons. In 1969 he relieved in a dozen games for the Orioles and earned one of Baltimore’s franchise-record 109 victories. Severinsen finished his career with the San Diego Padres, making a total of […]

Earl Williams’ career was one marked by achievement and controversy. During his newsworthy career, spanning parts of eight seasons, Williams reached the heights of a 1971 National League Rookie of the Year season, and the low of leaving baseball as persona non grata at the age of 29. Born July 14, 1948 in Newark, New […]

During the summer of 1954 the Cleveland Indians visited New York to play a three-game series against the Yankees with both teams in contention for the American League pennant. The story of the second game wasn’t the Yankees’ 4-1 victory, or Eddie Lopat outdueling Mike Garcia, but the 12-year-old batboy in the Cleveland dugout, Mike […]

A native of Eau Claire, Wisconsin (born on May 4, 1888, according to both the 1900 Census and his World War I draft registration), Ralph Benjamin Pond became a star  baseball player for the University of Maine, and seems to have joined the Boston Red Sox on the road in Chicago in 1910 right after […]

With two minor-league seasons under his belt and the 1969 Midwest League campaign rapidly approaching, Leo Mazzone, then a starting pitcher with the Decatur Commodores, sought clarity about his short-term pitching prospects. The young hurler split his first two seasons in the San Francisco Giants system, a total of 56 appearances, between the Medford Giants […]

When Hub Hart, backup to regular catcher Billy Sullivan, sustained an ankle injury in mid-July 1906, the Chicago White Sox found themselves in need of another backstop. Team owner Charles Comiskey acquired an untested rookie named Babe Towne from Des Moines of the Western League to “hold the fort” until Hart recovered. Before Hart’s ankle […]

4,256. 755. 5,714. 511. .366. As baseball has often been described as a game of numbers, fans, reporters, and students of the game would most certainly recognize the preceding list of significant digits. These were the career accomplishments forever linked to the respective immortals Pete Rose, Hank Aaron, Nolan Ryan, Cy Young, and Ty Cobb. To that list, another […]

Charlie Hautz was a man of modest baseball talent but much baseball enthusiasm. He parlayed his limited abilities into a long career as a first baseman and outfielder during the pioneering years of nineteenth-century baseball in St. Louis and other Western locales. While he spent only parts of two seasons with major-league clubs, he always […]

On the morning of July 16, 1969, the Apollo 11 spacecraft was launched from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, bringing the United States one step closer to putting a human being on the moon. That evening in Montreal, Willie Stargell of the Pittsburgh Pirates nearly hit a baseball into orbit. The ball sailed over […]

Pirates are swashbuckling types, commanding submission from those they conquer. On April 16, 1971, however, their baseball namesake from Western Pennsylvania suffered a reversal of this paradigm in an effort that proved as ineffective as a clipper with no sails – 14 strikeouts against ace Tom Seaver in 1971’s first matchup between the defending National […]

A crowd of 45,157, the largest in the history of the young Washington Nationals franchise1, gathered at RFK Stadium on a warm, breezy Father’s Day. The Nationals (31-39, on their way to another last-place finish in the NL East) were facing the Yankees (38-28, on their way to winning the AL East). After the Yankees […]

The Minnesota Twins looked for better times as they moved into the Hubert H. Humphrey Metrodome in 1982. Their final 11 years at Metropolitan Stadium had mostly been mediocre to morbid with the team drawing more than 1 million fans in only two of those seasons. Twins owner Calvin Griffith was known as a tightwad, […]

Leo Durocher managing the New York Giants made as much sense as department store mogul R.H. Macy shopping at Gimbel’s. Or so thought fans of the Brooklyn Dodgers. From 1939 to 1946, Durocher helmed the squad from the Borough of Churches. Then the unthinkable happened. Beloved by Brooklynites for his fiery persona – which sometimes […]

Shane Victorino, “the Flyin’ Hawaiian,” was one of several new additions to the 2013 Boston Red Sox. Hailing from Wailuku on the island of Maui, he had broken into the big leagues in 2003 and hit .279 over eight seasons with the Philadelphia Phillies, earning three Gold Gloves for his defense and holding down center […]

“What followed that year [2005] – after the new Nats brought baseball back to the District ending a 33-year drought – was an unexpectedly fun joyride, a 100-win pace through half a season that helped Washington re-embrace the sport that abandoned it.” – Barry Svrluga, Washington Post1     Baseball is a game of numbers, […]

On September 26, the Washington Nationals travelled to Miami to finish the 2011 season with a three-game series against the Florida Marlins. These were the final games to be played in Sun Life Stadium, described by Dan Le Batard as a “kind of a sad dump for baseball now, truth to be told, too empty […]