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Late in his major-league career, Bill Singer pitched a complete-game victory despite throwing in pain the entire game. His postgame comments accurately described much of his career. “It was so bad when I was warming up that I almost quit,” said Singer. “It was killing me. But then it’s easy to quit. Too easy. I […]

Mike “King” Kelly was professional baseball’s first matinee idol: the first ballplayer to “author” an autobiography, the first to have a hit song written about him, and the first to have a successful acting career outside the game. A handsome man with a full mustache and a head of red hair, Kelly through his fame […]

Curt Schilling’s father, Cliff, served in the United States Army for 22 years, a master sergeant with the 101st Airborne Division who was stationed at Elmendorf Air Force Base adjacent to Anchorage, Alaska, when his son Curtis Montague Schilling was born on November 14, 1966. Curt was the middle child of Cliff and Mary Schilling. […]

Could a friendly poker game among minor-league teammates lead to a Hall of Fame career for a 29-year-old who had been pitching in professional baseball for nine years, never had won a major-league game, and seldom had put together two good years back to back in the minors? Perhaps. Arthur Vance had earned the nickname […]

“What is one to say about June — the time of perfect young summer, the fulfillment of the promise of the earlier months, and with as yet no sign to remind one that its fresh young beauty will ever fade?” — Gertrude Jekyll1   On the afternoon of June 23, 1984, at Wrigley Field, the hometown Chicago […]

On June 1, 1986, 31-year-old pitcher Chris Welsh made his debut for the Cincinnati Reds, the hometown team he grew up rooting for. “I had my family and my friends there,” Welsh said years later.1 But trouble started right away. He walked the leadoff man, and not just any leadoff man. He then proceeded to […]

 Clarence Waldo Blethen was an “eternal busher” who spent 19 years pitching in the minor leagues, well into his 40s but never higher than Class A baseball, highlighted by two very brief stints in the majors – five games for the 1923 Boston Red Sox and two appearances for Brooklyn in 1929. He was a […]

Gene Garber parlayed a unique wind-up and delivery and an effective sinker into a 19-year career as a major-league reliever. Though he never pitched in the World Series or made an All-Star team, the righty used perseverance and an agrarian work ethic to overcome various setbacks and become one of the best among the first […]

Although he was overshadowed by four future Hall of Famers on the same team, shortstop Don Kessinger played an integral role on the pennant-contending Chicago Cub squads of the late 1960s and early 1970s. After a short stint with the St. Louis Cardinals afterwards, he ended his career on the South Side of Chicago as […]

The appellation applied by baseball to turn-of-the-century right-hander George Lewis Cross was largely a matter of time and place. When he entered professional ranks in 1891 with a team from his hometown of Manchester, New Hampshire, he was called Lew Cross, the name that he had grown up with. During mid-1890s tours of duty with […]

At age 25, Bob Elson had the ideal attributes to appeal to a fledgling radio industry. With a clear voice, an engaging personality, and the innate skill to immediately convert the action before him into words, he was able to parlay a radio contest in St. Louis into a broadcasting career in Chicago covering more […]

Sammy Vick was noted as the only player to ever pinch-hit for Babe Ruth. Vick had been the regular right fielder of the Yankees in 1919, but New York had purchased Ruth from the Boston Red Sox over the winter and Vick lost his starting job. But he said he had an opportunity to pinch-hit […]

Baseball history was made at Boston’s Fenway Park on Friday afternoon, September 14, 1951. In the top of the second inning, in his first major-league at-bat, Bob Nieman of the visiting St. Louis Browns hit Mickey McDermott’s low-and-away 1-2 pitch into the screen above Fenway’s Green Monster. An inning later, in his next trip to […]

Eugene Desautels, a right-handed-batting catcher and protégé of Crusaders coach Jack Barry, jumped directly from Holy Cross College to the major leagues in 1930 without a stop in the minor leagues. He’d been a high school football star and was admitted to Holy Cross on an athletic scholarship, but his plans to play college football […]

A bright future appeared to lie ahead for Boston Braves outfielder Max West after he became a major-league regular in 1938 at the age of 21 and was the team’s top offensive performer a year later. Following a memorable appearance in the 1940 All-Star Game, when he hit a home run to win the contest, […]

When Garrett Atkins made his major-league debut with the Colorado Rockies on August 3, 2003, the sky appeared to be the limit. The young corner infielder had progressed through the Rockies’ minor-league system in three years and appeared to be Colorado’s heir-apparent to third baseman and fan favorite Vinny Castilla. The unassuming Atkins rose to […]

Utility infielder Luis “Pimba” Alvarado never hit much in the majors, but he forged a career with solid defense. He ran well and was known for his quick hands and release. One press guide said, “The ball seems to bounce from his glove to his throwing hand as if on a string.”1 Alvarado served four […]

John Wright was the “owner of a blazing fast ball and a sharp-breaking curve and plenty of control”1 and his sinker brought “despair (to) opposing batsmen.”2 To many who saw him, “He dominated batters.”3 Wright will forever be linked in history with Jackie Robinson as the first two players to break the color line in […]

June 15, 1977 is a black day in the history of the New York Mets. On that date, in what came to be known as The Midnight Massacre, M. Donald Grant, the team’s chairman of the board, traded away Tom Seaver, a/k/a “The Franchise,” to the Cincinnati Reds for Pat Zachry, Doug Flynn, Dan Norman, […]

In 1923, the Birmingham Black Barons were dominating the Negro Southern League;1 in May, their record was 16-2 and their pitchers had thrown 68 consecutive scoreless innings.2 But by July, the league’s financial woes, along with a lack of competition, convinced Black Barons owner Joe Rush to apply for admission into the Negro National League. […]

The New York Yankees are in town! According to Forbes, they were worth $7.55 billion in 2024, more than any other major-league team.1 Their business reach is international in scope, matched on the playing field with 27 World Series championships, more than any other franchise. That this August evening brought a large crowd (34,334) to […]

As the 1924 season progressed, fans of the Negro National League and the Eastern Colored League began wondering why the two leagues didn’t have an end-of-season playoff, or as the press referred to it, a “Negro World Series.” (The Black press alternated between calling the proposed competition a Negro World Series and a Colored World […]

Lou Criger batted .211 for the Boston Americans in 1904 — which was nearly a 20-point improvement over the prior year. He managed an OPS+ greater than 100 only once in his 16-year career and never made more than 377 plate appearances. No, Criger was not in the big leagues because of his bat, but […]