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“New York and Boston finished tiedIn baseball’s roller coaster rideThey played one-hundred-sixty-twoAnd even that was one too few”1       Seemingly, the Boston Red Sox were on their way. At the All-Star break in 1978, the Red Sox enjoyed a healthy nine-game lead over second-place Milwaukee. Behind the Brewers were the New York Yankees (11½ […]

During his eight seasons with the California Angels (1972-1979), Nolan Ryan led the American League in strikeouts seven times, walks six times, and shutouts three times. Signing with the Houston Astros as a free agent for 1980, the hard-throwing Ryan trimmed his season walk total under 100 for the first time since 1970 – but […]

The Pittsburgh Pirates outlasted the Atlanta Braves 17-9 in the rubber match of a three-game series at Atlanta-Fulton County Stadium on May 9, 1979, a game in which the 26 hits, 10 walks, and 26 runs scored (10 unearned) were not the only notable numbers. The sloppy, beanball-marred slugfest also included five errors, three passed […]

Chuck Tanner is a household name in much of Western Pennsylvania, after a 19-year major-league managerial career that included nine seasons with the Pirates and a championship in 1979. He was a much more remarkable manager than he was a player. In eight major-league seasons with four teams between 1955 and 1962, Tanner batted .261 […]

In some sense, it’s always significant news to Boston Red Sox fans when their team beats the New York Yankees. Since the 1918 Red Sox won the World Series, the Yankees had won 26 World Series as of 2004 and the Red Sox had won none. As the 2004 season began, there had been three […]

Game Four was the first day game of the 1979 World Series, but the 42-degree game-time temperature was no warmer than it had been for any of the previous games. The crowd of 50,883 cheered as the Pirates summoned up a bit of their glorious past in the person of former general manager Joe L. […]

If you were looking for one word to summarize Tom Norton’s no-hitter of June 21, 1975, you might choose “imperfect.” Pitching for the Triple-A Tacoma Twins, Norton issued 11 bases on balls to the opposing Hawaii Islanders. But the Hawaii lineup, made up entirely of past or future major leaguers, couldn’t solve him for a […]

It was a “perfect” Saturday night for baseball: 19 degrees and sleeting, winds at 30 miles per hour, gusting to 45. On the eve of the 1982 season, the Minnesota Twins and Philadelphia Phillies were set for an exhibition game to open the Hubert H. Humphrey Metrodome on the edge of downtown Minneapolis. “Dome” was […]

As the second month of the 1920 season opened, the New York Yankees routed the Boston Red Sox at the Polo Grounds, 6-0, behind Babe Ruth’s first home run1 as a New Yorker. The first-place Red Sox, coming into this contest with a record of 10-2-1, had beaten the Yankees (4-7) in their four previous […]

Brock Holt admits he was swinging to hit a home run. And why not? It was the top of the ninth inning and the Red Sox already had a 14-1 lead in Game Three of the American League Division Series. Yankees manager Aaron Boone had conceded the game, inserting a position player – backup catcher […]

“Good field no hit” is a label that can doom any player. When that player is pushed through the system, it can stunt his natural growth into a position. And when he’s competing against several others for the same spot – people who have much more support from the team – the opportunities may just […]

The gap-toothed smile of Dave Henderson is emblematic of the exuberance that he brought to the game and which he displayed unabashedly after slugging a playoff home run for the ages. A native of Merced, California, in the state’s Central Valley, Henderson was born on July 21, 1958, eventually filling out as a strapping 6-foot-2-inch, […]

In his first full season in the majors, Dan Griner lost a big-league-most 22 games with the moribund St. Louis Cardinals in 1913. But few probably gave him a hard time for that dubious feat because “Big Dan,” a chiseled 200-pound former football player, didn’t take kindly to insults. He KO’d three teammates the following […]

Elmer Steele was a baseball team owner even before he took his first job as a player outside the region from which he came. In the long run, both Elmer Steele and his father William seem to have pursued allied occupations associated with delivering the mail, save for Elmer’s foray into professional baseball over an […]

He was a baseball man in the purest and most complimentary sense of the term, at various times in his professional career playing as a pitcher and an outfielder, along with a few occasions at second base, and finally working as a manager over a 26-year professional span. “He was a good contact hitter, had […]

Three great passions shaped Gordon Richardson’s career in baseball: his family, his southwest Georgia farm, and his dream of becoming a big-league pitcher. Richardson (nicknamed Gordie) once characterized his fastball as “not overpowering.” Instead he was a control specialist with good breaking stuff and an excellent change-up.1 He acknowledged that he had to hit his […]

Pittsburgh’s historic Ammon Field was renamed Josh Gibson Field in 2008 to honor the Baseball Hall of Famer who started his semipro career there in 1928. Harold “Hooks” Tinker, the Ammon Field regular who signed Gibson while player-manager of the Pittsburgh Crawfords, once spoke very fondly of a mutual teammate, middle infielder Charlie Hughes: The […]

Although Jack Dittmer may not have achieved the level of major league stardom many predicted for him, he was an outstanding athlete who was liked and admired for both his performances on the field and his cheerful, outgoing personality. He was a nationally recognized athlete in high school and college who played football, baseball, and […]

The day the Yankees won Game Two of the 1953 World Series, 17-year-old Frank Leja was in New York signing a contract that made the sports pages across the country. The second-youngest Yankee ever reportedly received a $100,000 bonus.1 But like many mid-1950s “bonus babies,” Leja was a victim of the revised “bonus rule” of […]

“Nature formed but one such batsman as [Dan] Brouthers and then destroyed the die.”1 — Boston Globe, June 3, 1889 Brouthers “is the best batter that ever faced a pitcher—bar nobody. He is the daddy of all hitters.”2 — Cincinnati Enquirer, October 15, 1893   One of the greatest hitters in baseball history, first baseman […]

Nearly forgotten today amid the pantheon of great Deadball Era hurlers, Earl “Crossfire” Moore–so nicknamed for his unorthodox method of shooting a sidearm pitch from the very end of the rubber–ranked as one of the American League’s most promising young players during the first five years of its existence. Six feet tall, square-jawed, and with […]

To many in the game, Ron Negray’s talent portended something better than a 6-6 lifetime record over less than 200 innings in the majors, scattered over four seasons from 1952 through 1958. Front office executives at times questioned his competitiveness. Maybe he was just too nice a guy. Ronald Alvin Negray was born February 26, […]

He never had a hit, never made an error, and pitched only 32 2/3 innings in 13 major league games, but he was a member of the World Champion 1918 Red Sox. Standard reference books show Vincent Leo Molyneaux as born near Niagara Falls, in Lewiston, New York, on August 17, 1888, although August 17, […]

Ike Butler is a one-year major-league baseball anecdote – a player whose inclusion in a baseball encyclopedia was made possible by an opportunistic telegram sent during a franchise upheaval. However trivial his two-month major-league career was, Butler’s minor-league career, especially the decade spent on the West Coast, included more than 200 professional wins and at […]