Search Results

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

Hugh “Red” Alexander was a promising 20-year-old, having just hit 57 home runs with a high batting average in two minor-league seasons, and tasting his first cup of coffee in the big leagues. He managed one single in 11 at-bats during his late-season callup and was looking forward to a long career as a player. […]

Esteban Bellán was a pioneer. In 1871, the half-Irish Cuban became the first Latin-born player in a top professional league. Bellán, a pro since 1868, played for the Troy Haymakers in the National Association, which predated the familiar National League. He continued with Troy and the New York Mutuals through 1873. After that season, he […]

When baseball fans reflect on the great Oakland Athletics teams from the late 1980s to the early 1990s, there is a lot to recall. Three straight pennants (1988-1990) and one world championship (1989) is a good start. Teams do not put together those types of seasons without a solid core of players. A starting rotation […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

On June 23, 1931, sportswriter Walter W. Smith encountered George Watkins, the St. Louis Cardinals right fielder, in the lobby of Philadelphia’s Franklin Hotel, where the team was staying for a series against the Phillies. Both men were relatively new to their jobs; Smith had begun covering the team for the St. Louis Star the […]

Jim Bagby Jr. was a second-generation major leaguer, his career neatly echoing that of his father, James “Sarge” Bagby, Sr. Both were right-handed pitchers; both at various times led the American League in innings pitched; and both spent the bulk of their careers with Cleveland. Both compiled some memorable seasons. Twice Jim’s pitching merited his […]

“It would be hard to say I am not a typical minor leaguer.  I’ve spent 11 years in the minors, practically my whole career. It doesn’t feel good to say I am a typical minor leaguer. It doesn’t feel good to say it at all, but I suppose it’s the truth. I still keep hoping […]

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 […]

During his two stints as a broadcaster for the Athletics, Monte Moore covered some of the best teams in their history, and some of the worst.  Beginning his major-league broadcasting career in the final years of the A’s time in Kansas City, he followed the team to the West Coast and broadcast six American League […]

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 […]

Jim Mecir pitched professionally for 15 years, from 1991 to 2005, including all or part of 11 seasons in the major leagues, with a permanent disability that would have kept most people on the sidelines. Mecir (pronounced Mah-sear) was born with a club foot, a condition that was only partially corrected by medical procedures in […]

In May 1949, 23-year-old Bobby Shantz took the mound for the fourth inning of an American League game between his Philadelphia Athletics and the Detroit Tigers, summoned by an 86-year-old manager born in December 1862, seven months before the Battle of Gettysburg. He pitched 10 innings in relief, allowing two hits and one run, and […]

“I’m glad it’s all over with. Now I can go back to my regular swing,” a mentally exhausted Willie Mays groaned.1 “Every day, I’ve been trying to get it over with so I could go back to playing baseball.”2 The 10 days that passed in the spring of 1966 between Mays tying Mel Ott’s National […]

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 […]