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“If after five years in the Yankee chain, I still am not eligible for major league baseball, what’s the use of kidding myself?  If I can’t make the big leagues in this war situation, I should go into something that has a better future.”1  Those were the words of Joe Buzas when directed during the […]

Hard-throwing southpaw Dave Koslo was touted as Carl Hubbell’s successor when he debuted for the New York Giants in 1941.Though he never developed into the dominant ace many predicted, he won ten or more games in six of seven seasons (1946-1952) and finished with 92 wins in 12 big-league seasons. His career, however, is defined […]

Miller Huggins was the Hall of Fame manager who led the New York Yankees to their first six American League pennants and three world championships, in the 1920s. He forged unique relationships with both Yankees owner Jacob Ruppert and their star outfielder, Babe Ruth. One newspaperman wrote, “Yankee owner Jacob Ruppert saw in Huggins a […]

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 […]

William Wilcy “Cy” Moore was a right-handed pitcher with a tremendous sidearm sinkerball. In the major leagues for only six seasons, Moore will always be remembered for his memorable rookie year at the age of 30 with the heralded 1927 New York Yankees, earning him the distinction of becoming the team’s first great relief pitcher. […]

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 […]

During the time when so many strong ballplayers were making their way from the Boston Red Sox to the New York Yankees, catcher Al DeVormer was one of those sent to Boston in exchange. Most of the deals had already been done. Babe Ruth was sold in January 1920. Others on the 1922 Yankees who […]

Bobby Valentine played in the majors for 10 years. After his playing career, he became one of the most colorful managers in baseball during the last decade of the 20th century. Valentine was always candid and outspoken throughout his managerial career. Robert James Valentine was born on May 13, 1950, in Stamford, Connecticut. His parents […]

The least known member of the Athletics’ famous $100,000 infield, Jack Barry was a .243 career hitter with little power and average speed, who nonetheless earned the respect and admiration of his peers because he did the so-called “little things” well: pulling off the squeeze play, turning the double play, and hitting in the clutch, […]

Dave Ricketts was a bespectacled catcher who looked as much like a math teacher as he did a professional athlete. Indeed, he was a schoolteacher for several years and nearly gave up baseball to teach full-time. The statistics on the back of his baseball cards may give the impression that Ricketts had little impact on […]

The slider. Mention it and batters’ knees buckle. The pitch helped make Cy Young Award winners out of Clayton Kershaw and Zack Greinke, Randy Johnson and David Cone, as well as Steve Carlton, Ron Guidry, and Bob Gibson. There’s debate about who invented the slider. Chief Bender, the right-hander with the Philadelphia A’s, threw what […]

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 […]

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 […]

More than five decades later, his legend has not faded. The people who saw Harry Agganis play or knew him still talk both of the joy he gave to New England and of the devastating grief brought by his tragic end. Their children might know of him by walking on Harry Agganis Way, by attending […]

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 […]

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 […]

“Of the other new catcher, McCaffrey,” wrote F.W. Arnold in Sporting Life, “not much can be said. He is claimed by his friends to have all the requirements for a successful catcher, a good arm, a good eye and a stout pair of legs that are speedy. We don’t know about this, but will have […]

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 […]

A journeyman in the best sense of the word, Kent Mercker made his name over the course of an 18-season career as a young, hard-throwing left-hander in the Atlanta Braves’ bullpen before moving to the back end of the Braves’ dream rotation in the mid-1990s that featured future Hall of Famers Greg Maddux, Tom Glavine, […]

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 […]

Joe Astroth was a model of consistency for 10 years with an Athletics franchise that moved from Philadelphia to Kansas City, an area of the Midwest that had not enjoyed major league baseball since the nineteenth century. As a catcher, he was a solid defensive player who regularly threw out opposing baserunners and was an […]

“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 […]

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 […]

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 […]