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“Baseball’s clichés remain largely unchanged through the years,” observed the writer Mordecai Richler in a 1986 essay for GQ.1 His first examples were the types of gripes from marginal pitchers and backup fielders: “If only they give me a chance to start, I know I can help this team,” and “I know I’m a .300 […]

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 […]

It took right-hander Johnny Welch more than five years to get his first major-league win for the Chicago Cubs. After 172 big-league games, he was 35-41 with a career 4.66 earned run average, all but two of the wins being for Boston Red Sox teams in the early to middle 1930s. He was born as […]

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 […]

Charlie Small’s time in the major leagues consisted of 22 times he was asked to pinch-hit, twice he was asked to pinch-run, and once he was asked to play center field. He wasn’t particularly successful hitting–he sacrificed twice, walked twice, and hit safely three times in 18 at-bats. One of the hits was for extra […]

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 […]

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 […]

“Timber Like Mapel What Browns Need” — The Sporting News, September 4, 1919 In his major league debut on August 31, 1919, St. Louis Browns left-hander Rolla Mapel held Ty Cobb hitless in five plate appearances. That turned out to be the highlight of his 12-day, four-game MLB career. But “Rollie” Mapel will forever be […]

In only his fifth start in the major leagues, 20-year-old Kerry Wood turned in a pitching performance for the ages on May 6, 1998. Under cloudy, drizzly skies, the Texas native struck out 20 Houston Astros at Wrigley Field and allowed only one hit–a single off Cubs third baseman Kevin Orie’s glove in the top […]

Betsy Jochum was one of the sixty original players, as well as one of the best, in the early years of the All-American Girls Professional Base Ball League, a professional women’s circuit born during World War II and made famous in the 1992 movie A League of Their Own. Sixty years later, she had the […]

Dan Shay was a hard-nosed infielder at the turn of the twentieth century, playing 231 major league games during his long professional career. His style of play can best be imagined by the nicknames he accrued: Scrappy and Hustlin’. His major league resume, though, was scant. He preferred the employment conditions, lifestyle and climate of […]

A paid crowd1 of 28,922 settled in to watch a scheduled doubleheader between the Astros and Mets on a Wednesday afternoon. Less than a week before, Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin, and Michael Collins returned safely in the spaceship Columbia, concluding the Apollo 11 mission and the historic walk on the moon. In 1969 the Mets […]

“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 […]

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 […]

The White Sox players were fighting mad. They had just gotten their first hits of the game to take the lead in the top of the sixth against the Athletics on a wet, sloppy field. A ferocious downpour erupted minutes later and the umpire halted the game. When he declared it official after the required […]

After the 2003 season, which saw the Boston Red Sox and New York Yankees take the fight for the pennant to Game Seven of the American League Championship Series, with New York winning and the Red Sox once again out in the cold, both teams had made moves to bolster their rotations. At Thanksgiving, the […]

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 […]

The pandemic-limited Friday night crowd of 15,2501 at Petco Park on April 16, 2021, was ready to watch the resumption of the National League West Division rivalry between the San Diego Padres (9-5) and the visiting Los Angeles Dodgers (11-2). The Dodgers had won the 2020 World Series after a three-game sweep of the Padres […]

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 […]

The reigning American League champion Tampa Bay Rays began their 2009 season by taking two of three games against the Boston Red Sox at Fenway Park, less than six months after defeating Boston in Game Seven of the AL Championship Series. But the Rays failed to win their next six series in April. When they […]

When Sandy Koufax started his seventh major-league season, in 1961, the verdict was still out on whether he should keep a spot in the Los Angeles Dodgers’ rotation. He had struggled with control issues since the time he was signed as a 19-year-old bonus baby from the University of Cincinnati by the Brooklyn Dodgers. His […]

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 […]

Set amid concrete parking lots and crisscrossing interstate highway overpasses, Louisville Slugger Field seems a bit out of place. The red brick facade and arched windows overlooking Main Street and Preston Street in downtown Louisville, Kentucky, hark back to a time when railroads, not long-haul trucking, fueled the local economy. In the context of baseball […]