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On Friday, June 13, 1958, the Milwaukee Braves, holding a 1½-game lead atop the National League standings, opened a weekend series in St. Louis. The Braves’ starting pitcher was Joey Jay. Connecticut native Jay had not yet succeeded as a major-league pitcher, but he already held two distinctions: He was one of the original “bonus […]

By his own account, Merv Rettenmund was a “scuffler” more than a ballplayer. He never found his niche as a regular starter with the Baltimore Orioles, but he starred as a super-sub and was a key cog for the Orioles as they won three consecutive American League pennants, from 1969 to 1971. He twice led […]

On October 15, 1946, the St. Louis Cardinals won their sixth world championship with a 4-3 victory over the Boston Red Sox. Enos Slaughter led off the bottom of the eighth inning with a single, and with two outs scored from first base on Harry Walker’s double to left-center field. The play, which later became […]

Andrés Mora was one of Mexico’s greatest sluggers. He could easily have been the all-time home run king south of the border, had he not spent time in the United States. By his own choice, he went back home – still aged just 24 – after four unfulfilling partial seasons in the majors. When he […]

The third pitcher selected by the New York Mets in the 1961 National League expansion draft, French-Canadian Ray Daviault (pronounced dah-vee-yoh) debuted in New York’s inaugural home game, at the Polo Grounds. He walked the first batter he faced, then chased him home with a pair of wild pitches. After two eventful innings, Mets manager […]

Chet Nourse was a native of Ipswich, Massachusetts, and a pitcher for Brown University who shut out Harvard on a two-hitter in 1909 and began to attract attention. In the spring of 1909 it was announced that he would join the Chicago Cubs after he graduated from college – but it wasn’t Nourse who made […]

He was the first amateur player selected by his expansion franchise and became its first home-run champion, alas, when the parent team was in a different city. In his major-league debut, he dropped the first ball hit to him for an error and got his first hit, a triple, in his second at-bat. Nine days […]

Charles Bernard Lear, a pioneering knuckleballer for the Cincinnati Reds, was born on January 23, 1891, in Greencastle, Pennsylvania. He was Frank and Mary Lear’s first-born child; his sister Mildred followed nine years later. Frank Lear worked in the metal trades, with his census professions indicated as moulder and tinner. Greencastle, a small borough nestled […]

Few people have the talent and good fortune to have successful careers in two such diverse fields as professional sports and the film industry. Ernie Orsatti was one of those lucky few. In his nine-year career with the Cardinals (1927-1935), Orsatti hit .300 or better in six seasons, twice hit over .330, and finished with […]

The New Bedford, Massachusetts, area is home to one of the largest Portuguese-American communities in the United States. Known as the Whaling City due to its pre-eminence as a whaling port during the nineteenth century, New Bedford attracted many immigrants from Portugal and its dependent territories to work in the whaling industry and later to […]

“Flint and Corcoran had funny signals for changes of curves,” recalled Tommy Burns, a teammate of catcher Frank “Silver” Flint and pitcher Larry Corcoran of the Chicago White Stockings of the 1880s. “(Corcoran) invariably carried a mammoth chew of tobacco in his mouth, and when he chewed he shifted it about with a movement that […]

On a crisp, sunny autumn afternoon, the 1970 World Series began in Cincinnati’s brand-new Riverfront Stadium. The Reds and the Baltimore Orioles had breezed through their respective League Championship Series to meet at the apex of the baseball season. For the visiting Orioles, the taste of bitter disappointment lingered like castor oil on their tongues […]

Jack Harshman appeared in ten major league seasons in three decades, primarily as an American League starting pitcher. He started 155 games, recording 69 wins against 65 losses, logged a workmanlike, journeyman career, much of it with the Chicago White Sox, at a time when “men were men and contracts weren’t guaranteed,” and once threw […]

On a cold, rainy Valentine’s Day in 1962, several newspaper reporters brazenly walked through the open driveway gates of a mansion on Maryland’s Eastern Shore looking for the United States spy-plane pilot Francis Gary Powers. Powers, who had been shot down over Russia in 1960, had been recently returned to the U.S. in a prisoner […]

There was Rip Collins and there was Ripper Collins. Rip Collins–the subject of this biography–was a right-handed American League pitcher who won 108 games over 11 years in the majors from 1920 through 1931. Ripper Collins was a first baseman and right fielder (and three-time All-Star) who played for nine years in the National League, […]

Dana Fillingim used the wet pitch to his advantage from 1912 to 1928, as one of the last legal spitballers in the majors. His 47-73 overall record in the majors was as deceptive to the passing eye as the spitball was to an opposing batter. The right-hander won 20 games twice in the minors and once […]

Javier Torres “Javy” Lopez was born on November 5, 1970, in the city of Ponce, Puerto Rico. Lopez was a right-handed-hitting catcher who played for the Atlanta Braves, Baltimore Orioles, and Boston Red Sox over his 15-year major-league career, though he is primarily known for his time with the Braves. Lopez was a three-time All-Star […]

During his three seasons in the National League, from 1898 to 1900, Walter Woods was a highly flexible utility player, playing seven of the nine field positions (all except first base and catcher). In his 91 games played in the major leagues, Woods appeared 60 percent of the time as a pitcher (54 games) and […]

Earle Combs began a string of Hall of Fame players who were starting center fielders for the Yankees. After Combs, who played from 1924 to 1935, was Joe DiMaggio, who played from 1936 to 1951, and after DiMaggio was Mickey Mantle, who played in center field from 1952 until 1966.1 Combs became the regular center […]

The 1924 World Series marked the fourth straight post-season appearance for the New York Giants and the first for the Washington Senators. Despite having Walter Johnson, who is still regarded today as one of the greatest pitchers of all time, the Senators had experienced limited success since the American League became a major league in […]

One of the doubleheader’s several previews in the New York Tribune said the games were part of the “Little World Series.” Interestingly, the two paragraphs did not mention the race of Rube Foster’s Chicago American Giants and the Atlantic City Bacharach Giants, much less note that the Chicago club was the champion of the Negro […]