Search Results

Arizona Diamondbacks left-hander Tyler Gilbert (0-1, 0.00 ERA1) was making his first major-league start. His family was among the 16,716 fans at Chase Field enjoying the comfortable 75-degree temperature with the roof closed.2 The 27-year-old California native had been drafted by the Philadelphia Phillies in 2015, then traded to the Los Angeles Dodgers, then selected […]

Today’s ballplayers and their union would be aghast, but Great Depression-era club owners responded to the new economic reality with doubleheaders – lots of them. On Wednesday, September 17, 1930, the Boston Braves were playing their 30th twin bill of the season and sixth in an extended Wigwam stand that had begun on September 1. […]

The World Series had come down to the winner-take-all game for the 33rd time.1 The two teams had alternated wins throughout the series. Now 67,204 fans filled Pro Player Stadium to see who would take home the championship trophy. Cleveland had not won a World Series title since 1948, falling short against the New York […]

Jim Leyland spent more than two decades in professional baseball as a minor-league catcher and manager and major-league third-base coach before getting his first big-league managing job with the Pittsburgh Pirates in 1986. In the third game of a career that spanned 22 seasons and resulted in his 2024 selection for the National Baseball Hall […]

The New York Yankees on November 4, 2001, were one game from winning their fourth consecutive World Series and their fifth in six years.1 With New York City still shaken by the events of September 11, the Yankees had fought their way through the postseason, providing their city and fans some relief from the devastation. […]

To Boston Red Sox management, it must have seemed like an ordinary Tuesday in August 1909. The Detroit Tigers were in town to play five games over three days, including two makeup games from earlier in the season. It was ladies day, so perhaps a few additional fans might cross the turnstiles at the Huntington […]

George “Bo” Strickland was the starting shortstop on the 1954 Cleveland Indians team that won the American League pennant and compiled one of baseball’s finest records ever, 111-43. He went hitless (0-for-9) in that season’s World Series, the only one he ever played in, as the Indians were swept by the New York Giants. Strickland […]

Lewis Henry Meacham’s place in baseball history is linked to that of his friend, Chicagoan William Hulbert (1832–82).1 In 1870, Hulbert purchased a share of stock in the city’s newly formed White Stockings organization (a team now known as the Chicago Cubs).2 Five years later he was elected president of the Chicago Base Ball Association, […]

In the baseball record books, Bob Neighbors was originally without a date of death but a “date of loss.” Now, most have the August 8, 1952, date of death but provide no indication of where he died. For books or sites that offer information on the place of burial or cremation, there is often a […]

Steve Balboni played for the New York Yankees and the Kansas City Royals before he bookended brief stints with the Seattle Mariners and the Texas Rangers around a second tour with the Yankees. He owns four World Series rings, one as a player with the Royals and three as an advance scout with the San […]

In various ways, the life of right-handed pitcher George Pechiney typified the existence of the late-nineteenth-century journeyman player. Pechiney’s abilities were modest, and his major-league career was a relatively brief one, abbreviated by abuse of alcohol. Once his playing days were over, Pechiney returned to the arduous everyday working life from which he had sprung, […]

Jeff Heath was 33 years old and in his 13th big-league season in 1948 when he surprised his critics and helped lead the Boston Braves to the National League pennant. Playing in just 115 games under manager Billy Southworth’s platoon system, he hit 20 home runs, drove in 76 runs, and batted a resounding .319. […]

Remembered mostly for his more famous older brother Ed, Jim Delahanty was a fine player in his own right, and one of the most well-traveled hitters of the Deadball Era. During a professional career that lasted nearly two decades, the free-swinging right-hander played for fifteen different clubs, including eight in the major leagues. Despite his […]

“(Curt) Motton has been Baltimore’s best pinch-hitter ever since I’ve been managing this club. He was an automatic choice in this spot.” — Orioles manager Earl Weaver after Motton’s game-tying double helped Baltimore come from behind to beat Oakland’s Vida Blue in the 1971 American League Championship Series1   Curt Motton grew up in the […]

On page 1,444 of the fourth edition of The Baseball Encyclopedia published in 1979, Joe Staples nestles in obscurity between journeyman outfielder Leroy Stanton and Hall of Famer Willie Stargell.1 The scant entry is the reflection of a rather unremarkable career. He appeared in seven games with the 1885 Buffalo Bisons, recorded just one hit […]

Though his major-league career was limited to parts of four seasons, Rod Gaspar was anything but a footnote player. While he played in only one full year in the majors, it was as a World Champion. Gaspar led National League outfielders in double plays while scoring a pivotal run in the 1969 World Series. Six […]

Pitcher Vicente Romo won well over 400 games as a professional player from 1961 through 1986.1 Just 32 of those wins came in the majors, where he played during eight seasons (1968-74; 1982) for five teams. Yet many experts in his homeland consider this man the finest right-handed pitcher that Mexico has ever produced — […]

Frank Whitney was a reserve outfielder for Boston in 1876, the first year of the National League. Playing in only 34 games in his career, Whitney was better known in the Boston area for playing on the popular Lowell, Massachusetts, amateur team. His name rarely appears in newspaper accounts of the time, other than to […]

Eight major-leaguers died while serving in World War I.1 The third of these casualties, Eddie Grant, had the longest playing career and is also well remembered because he received a plaque in center field at the Polo Grounds. The shortest career on this list belonged to Alexander Thomson Burr, a pitcher who played just one […]

Shortstop Jackie Hernandez glided behind second base, smoothly picked up Merv Rettenmund’s ground ball and with one easy motion flipped it across the diamond to first baseman Bob Robertson for the final out of the 1971 World Series. “[The] catcher is running toward the camera at full speed, his upraised arms spread wide. His body […]

A teammate of Allie Reynolds in their college days, James G. “Jimmy” Cleghorn was a full-blood Indian pitcher. He was born on December 18, 1916, on the Otoe/Missouria tribal reservation at Red Rock, Oklahoma. Cleghorn was three-quarters Otoe and one-quarter Sac & Fox, descending from his full-blood Otoe father, Grant Cleghorn, and his Otoe/Sac & […]

“[T]he first major-league pitch I ever called for [was] a curve ball to Wally Moon,” recalled catcher Chris Cannizzaro. “I didn’t catch it. Moon hit it over the left [field] screen of the Coliseum in Los Angeles.”[fn]“’Young Ideas’ by Dick Young,” The Sporting News, June 30, 1973, 14.[/fn] Despite this inauspicious debut, Cannizzaro would go […]

Walter John Gilbert was born December 19, 1900, in Oscoda, Michigan, a small town on the Au Sable River where an Air Force base and the lumber industry are the major sources for the local economy. His father, a lumberjack by trade, moved his wife and only child to Duluth, Minnesota, when Wally was just a […]

Immersed in a pennant race that would go down to the wire, the first-place Los Angeles Dodgers took the field at Busch Stadium in St. Louis on September 28, 1966, in hopes of putting distance between themselves and their two closest competitors. The St. Louis Cardinals had no intention of making this endeavor any easier […]