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A fleet-footed flycatcher with a rifle arm, World War I-era outfielder Walter Mattick had his major-league career abbreviated by a common failing: the inability to hit top-quality pitching. Weakness with the bat limited his big-league time to parts of three seasons. Still, Mattick parlayed other assets into a long association with professional baseball, mostly as […]

Most baseball careers are filled with a number of ups and downs, but few players experienced the extreme highs and lows of nineteenth-century pitcher Dad Clarke. In a professional career spanning more than 20 years with at least 17 teams in more than a dozen leagues, he twice won 30 games in a season in […]

“The fascinating thing about baseball is that everyone knows that it is a business and you have to win and you have to draw fans to be successful, but you still have fun along the line doing all that,” Bill Rigney once said. “I don’t think I ever woke up one day in my life […]

Nick Young’s baseball career illustrated important aspects of the game’s early development. He was a cricketer who took up baseball during Civil War service; afterward he joined a club of amateurs that grew increasingly competitive and came to include paid players. This evolved into helping organize the National Association of Professional Base Ball Players, which […]

Leon “Boogie Wolf” Childress is one of many obscure “ghost players” of the Negro Leagues, a player skilled enough to make it onto the rosters and even into group photographs of some very good teams, but never earning regular playing time or appearing in any statistical record. Leon was born on June 23, 1910, in […]

While Red Sox fans remember Dave Morehead mostly for the no-hitter he threw in 1965, Morehead played a role on the ’67 dream team by contributing five wins in the August-September stretch drive. Although he had a career major league record of only 40-64 with a 4.15 ERA, he showed flashes of brilliance, particularly early […]

Director Sergio Leone would have loved Joe DeSa’s face. Swarthy, with tiger-stripe eyebrows and mustache, the Hawaiian had the forbidding look of a Western movie villain. Yet he was a friendly and popular figure everywhere he played — though that included just 35 games in the majors. His uncle, former big-leaguer John Matias, said, “He […]

The small community of Vinegar Bend, Alabama, provided an unusual nickname to major-league pitcher and US Congressman Wilmer “Vinegar Bend” Mizell. Contrary to the belief that he was born in Vinegar Bend, Wilmer was born in neighboring Leakesville, Mississippi, and graduated from high school there in 1949, but the little town of fewer than 200 […]

John Edward Kennedy was born in Chicago on May 29, 1941, the 24th birthday of future President John Fitzgerald Kennedy. John Edward came to the major leagues with the Washington Senators during John Fitzgerald’s administration. A love letter to baseball’s Kennedy from his fiancée once was sent to the White House (where that type of […]

Andy Karl was one of those ballplayers who were able to benefit by the departure of many established ballplayers during the Second World War. He broke into Organized Baseball in 1937, playing for the Boston Red Sox affiliate in Rocky Mount, North Carolina. Karl was a right-handed pitcher who stood 6-feet-1 and weighed 175 pounds. […]

A baseball lifer, Mel Stottlemyre burst on the scene as a midseason call-up for the New York Yankees in 1964, helping the club win its fifth consecutive pennant and starting three games in the World Series. One of the most underrated and overlooked pitchers of his generation, Stottlemyre won 149 games and averaged 272 innings […]

Star player, manager, general manager, league president—only one man in baseball history has followed a career path like this one. Joe Cronin, one of the greatest shortstops in the game’s history, spent 50 years in the baseball without being fired or taking a year off. Every job was a promotion, and he came within a […]

It was long believed that on June 19, 1846, the first baseball game was played on the Elysian Fields in Hoboken, New Jersey, though this has come into question in more recent years.1 However, back in 1946 the belief persisted, and to commemorate the centennial, the state of New Jersey placed a marker at the […]

Edmund Hearne enjoyed two cups of coffee in 1910, one on June 9 and one on June 10. That was the sum total of shortstop Hearne’s experience in the major leagues. Two games, two at-bats. “Hearn, a California recruit, played shortstop for Boston, and performed well in the field.” So read the wire-service note in […]

In retirement, former major leaguer Johnny Romano took up flying radio-controlled model airplanes near his retirement home in Florida. He liked to fly them high and far. There was a time, though, when those terms — high and far — also referred to his ability as a hard-hitting All-Star catcher for the Cleveland Indians and […]

The story of Jack Lohrke is the type of tale that would be rejected by Hollywood producers and major publishers if you were to make it up. The odds are too long, the events too improbable, the luck a little too good. The fact that a man born in the 1920s lived to be 85 […]

World War II interrupted Ed Chandler’s dream of pitching in the Major Leagues; but the time he spent in the service proved to be a blessing. It was there, with the guidance of two Major League pitchers, Chandler truly learned to pitch. The scouts were interested, but it was unlikely they would sign a twenty-nine-year-old […]

Jack Powell, a stocky righthander who pitched for the St. Louis Browns in ten of his 16 major league seasons, was labeled a “nothing” pitcher because neither his fastball nor his curve impressed many people. He threw the ball with an easy sidearm motion that caused many fans to say, “I could hit Jack Powell,” […]

On September 2, 1969, Phil Hennigan made his major-league debut in Minnesota’s Metropolitan Stadium in relief of Cleveland Indians starter Luis Tiant. Entering the sixth inning with his club trailing 5-1 and the Twins threatening more, Hennigan retired the always-dangerous Rod Carew on one pitch by inducing the future Hall of Fame famer to fly […]

In 1886, John “Jocko” Flynn was 22 years old and the toast of Chicago, a formidable starting pitcher on a pennant-winning team. In 1887 he was 23 years old and forgotten with a sore arm and a troubling taste for liquor. In 1907 Flynn was dead at 42. Who was this man? John A. Flynn […]

A long-time left-handed pitching ace for one of baseball history’s best staffs, Dave McNally was also a legend and hero in his native Billings, Montana, where he lived his entire life outside of baseball. Though a World Series pitching (and hitting) star, he might be best known in some circles for the role he played […]

The World Series is baseball’s Big Stage. Of necessity, a Big Stage requires stars, and the history of the World Series abounds with them – Ty Cobb, Babe Ruth, Willie Mays, and so many more. The New York Yankees’ Mickey Mantle was one such star.1 Considered by many the game’s greatest player during the 1950s, […]

Editor’s note: This essay is from SABR’s “Pitching, Defense, and Three-Run Homers: The 1970 Baltimore Orioles” (University of Nebraska Press, 2012), edited by Mark Armour and Malcolm Allen. The seed that sprouted into the powerful Baltimore Orioles teams of the 1960s and ‘70s was planted by two baseball lifers who despised each other. Together they […]

Baseball fans, tune in this season to SABRcast with Rob Neyer, a new weekly podcast hosted by award-winning author and longtime SABR member Rob Neyer. SABRcast will feature insights and analysis of what’s happening in modern baseball on and off the field, plus compelling interviews with figures from around the game — and music from […]