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On July 4, 1939, between games of a doubleheader at Yankee Stadium, nearly 42,000 baseball fans sat quietly in the stands waiting for their team’s first baseman to address the crowd. It was Lou Gehrig Appreciation Day, something that sounds like, and perhaps should have been, a happy occasion. But it wasn’t. A few weeks […]

Once a promising right-hander blessed with a blazing fastball and hard overhand curve, Joe Sparma seemed destined to become a mainstay of the Detroit Tigers’ starting rotation when he joined the team in 1964. Though he showed flashes of brilliance over his seven-year career, a frustrating lack of control and a perceived inability to remain […]

For Alec Distaso, pitching was a prelude to helping his fellow man. The righty made only two major-league appearances with the Chicago Cubs in April 1969, but he spent over 30 years providing two basic human needs. As a policeman, he offered safety; as a public housing administrator, he gave shelter. He also served his […]

No compilation of baseball’s all-time top left-handed pitchers is complete without Whitey Ford. Indeed, he is near or at the top of any worthwhile list. His 236 wins made him the winningest pitcher in the storied history of the New York Yankees. He incurred only 106 defeats, giving him a lifetime winning percentage of .690, […]

Late in the evening of May 15, 1973, Amos Otis lifted a Nolan Ryan fastball to Royals Stadium’s spacious right-center-field gap. Angels right fielder Ken Berry “pulled it down,” Otis told the Kansas City Star. “Right there on the warning track. If Bob Oliver (whom Berry had replaced for defensive purposes) had been out there, […]

When baseball fans think about the national pastime and Rhode Island during the Deadball Era, Napoleon Lajoie stands out as the premier sports personality from “Little Rhody.” However, Joseph Connolly, despite just a four-year major-league career (1913-1916), may have had a greater impact on the social, cultural, and baseball fabric of Rhode Island than any […]

Alabaman Leo “Lefty” Townsend is not the same Leo Townsend who was once a Hollywood screenwriter and alleged Communist sympathizer in the 1950s.1 Nor is he the same Townsend as Ira “Texas” Townsend, a right-hander who pitched for the Boston Braves in 1920 and 1921. This Leo Townsend pitched in seven games in September 1920 […]

“I take a great deal of pride in my background and my heritage.”1 That was Ruben Amaro Jr. in 2011, on being a third-generation Latino baseball man. Yet he has often spoken the same way about his maternal side. Altogether, his background is unique in major-league history: Cuban-Mexican/Jewish-American. From this start, a unique career path […]

As of 2021, lefty pitcher John Cerutti is the last man from Amherst College to have played in the majors. Over seven major league seasons from 1985 to 1991, Cerutti posted a winning record in nearly an equal number of starts and relief appearances. Other than his final season with the Detroit Tigers, he spent […]

Baseball fans who watched Chet Lemon during his 16-year major-league career likely recall the speedy outfielder racing across the field at Comiskey Park or Tiger Stadium to track down a line drive headed for the gap. Just as likely, they can still see him diving headlong into first base or getting hit by a pitch. […]

As the first president of the Boston Baseball Association in 1871, Ivers Adams was the father of professional baseball in Boston. The Association’s baseball team was a charter member of the National Association during its inaugural season in 1871, played five seasons in that league, and then became the Braves franchise in the National League. […]

Through the 2012 season the Cy Young Award has been bestowed to relief pitchers on only nine occasions, the first time in 1974. Eleven years before, three relievers were cited as potential candidates for the prestigious honor – “Dick Radatz of the Red Sox, Ron Perranoski of the Dodgers and, perhaps the most surprisingly improved […]

The name Luis Aparicio is closely linked with Venezuela. Both Luis Aparicio Ortega (Ortega) and his son, Luis Aparicio Montiel (Aparicio), had a significant impact on bringing the game of baseball to new heights in Latin America. For that reason, many say that when talking about one, you can’t help but think of the other. […]

Though Thomas Austin Brewer Jr. was a lifelong resident of Cheraw, South Carolina, he was born in North Carolina on September 3, 1931.1 Cheraw lies in the northern part of South Carolina and was a town of a few thousand inhabitants in 1931 so it happens that the nearest hospital was in Wadesboro, North Carolina, […]

Jimmy Stanley was your classic “good field, no hit” infielder who enjoyed a year in the Federal League, spot starting and backing up at second, short, third, and even the outfield. Born Stanislaus (Stanley) Francis Ciolek, December 1, 1887, in Plymouth, Pennsylvania, he was the son of Wojciech (Albert) and Mary (Walega) Ciolek.1 The father, […]

At the time of his death, Fred Roat was remembered fondly as “one of the base ball celebrities of the country” who had “played contemporaneously with Billy Sunday of evangelistic fame and was at one time a protégé of the renowned Captain Anson.”1 Despite the flowery description of his baseball ability, however, Roat’s major-league career […]

Apart from a lackluster stint with the 1910-1911 St. Louis Browns, first baseman Pat Newnam spent his long professional career in the minor leagues, mostly in his native Texas. His principal shortcoming as a player was a common one: marginal ability. The righty batting and throwing Newnam had good size (6-feet, 180 pounds), exceptional foot […]

Cupid Childs was one of the best hitting major league second basemen during the late nineteenth century, not to mention a better-than-average fielder who possessed great range on the diamond. Only four other second basemen in the history of major league baseball have averaged more total chances per game than Childs. His all-around outstanding play […]

Of the players officially expelled from Organized Baseball in the early 1920s, Gene Dale was among the least notorious. A lanky right-handed pitcher, Dale had won 18 games for the Cincinnati Reds in 1915 but was no longer a major leaguer at the time of his banishment. Rather, his disgrace emanated from suspected involvement in […]

Bobby Reeves entered the major leagues like a comet, a famous collegiate star in two sports who skipped the minor leagues entirely. He did not have the career many expected of him, partly due to injuries and circumstances, but also possibly because the talent evaluators of the time might have been overly optimistic about his […]

Julio “Monchy” de Arcos (1922-1966) was a Cuban executive and scout. He was associated with the major leagues as early as 1941, when the Brooklyn Dodgers trained in Cuba’s capital, La Habana. Thanks to his friendship with Leo Durocher, then Brooklyn’s manager, he was the Dodgers’ interpreter and batboy. In the mid-1940s, de Arcos became […]

In June of 1964, the College World Series was rocked by the unexpected arrival of a fearless, giant-killing pack of Black Bears.1 Making their first appearance at the national college championship tournament,2 the University of Maine Black Bears arrived in memorable fashion. The newcomers, ranked 19th in the country, beat seventh-ranked Seton Hall University, second-ranked […]

Baseball fans throughout the country in 1976 had been hearing the scattered chatter, ever since mid-May. Talk of something new and exciting happening in Detroit. Some rookie pitcher with long hair. Didn’t they say he talked to the baseball? Got on his knees before each inning and groomed the mound? Stomped around the field like […]

When an active player or manager dies during the regular season, surviving teammates face a difficult choice: Play the next scheduled game in their honor, or postpone it in their memory? In the twenty-first century the trend has been to stay off the field. Teams – or front offices – that have chosen to postpone […]