Search Results

Pitcher Carl Ray was a soft-spoken but hard-throwing country boy from North Carolina. Using a submarine delivery, the southpaw delivered a live fastball and sweeping curve. In the minors he racked up many strikeouts and gave up few hits. He threw four minor-league no-hitters, one each year from 1913 to 1916, and earned a brief […]

Henry Chadwick, the esteemed “Father of Baseball,” observed William Selden in 1889 and called him “an excellent strategic pitcher.”1 Selden was an ace of the Cuban Giants, a pioneering African-American team. Two years later, he pitched a shutout with President Benjamin Harrison looking on.2 Selden had come a long way since his days as the […]

Ponchatoula, Louisiana, in the 1930s was a small town that had suffered a number of lumber mills closing in the previous decade. By the 1930s, it was known primarily as a strawberry farming region. It was into this area that on October 2, 1934, Earl Lawrence Wilson was born. He later changed his name to […]

“Handsome Hal, the Hoboken Hercules” – such was said to be the Brown University characterization of Hal Neubauer.1 Once he had his Ivy League degree in hand, the young graduate went almost straight to work for the Boston Red Sox. The right-handed pitcher debuted in the major leagues on July 12, 1925, pitching in relief […]

Sometimes the best deals are those that aren’t made. In the spring of 1908, Boston was so impressed by a pitcher they faced in an exhibition game at Toledo they offered the Mud Hens $5,000 for him. Toledo Manager Bill Armour asked a reported $7,000 for the contract of Jack Bushelman – so he remained […]

It’s not every part-time player with a brief major-league career who takes part in a historic baseball event. However, when Emil “Hap” Huhn of the Cincinnati Reds crouched behind the plate in the bottom of the first inning at Chicago’s Weeghman Park preparing for Fred Toney’s first delivery, that is exactly what was about to […]

When Mike Sandlock signed his first professional baseball contract, in 1938, he could not have envisioned that he would become a major-league teammate of no fewer than six Hall of Famers – Warren Spahn, Paul Waner, Ernie Lombardi, Pee Wee Reese, Billy Herman, and Ralph Kiner. Nor could he have imagined that during his five […]

Baseball history is filled with stories of Irish American players, particularly in the 19th century, whose promising careers were derailed by alcohol abuse. Few stories are more tragic than that of Dan Lally. Called “Handsome Dan,” Dapper Dan,” and “the Adonis of the diamond” during his playing days, Lally was a consistent .300 hitter during […]

For eight years after World War II, Doris Jane “Sammye” Sams, an excellent fast-pitch softball player from Knoxville, Tennessee, enjoyed an outstanding career in the pro All-American Girls Base Ball League (now known as the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League). By the time her final season ended in 1953, Sammye, as friends called the right-handed […]

Bill Merritt was a backup catcher during the 1890s, appearing in 401 games in eight seasons with five major-league teams. Needed for his glove and throwing arm, Merritt could also at times find his way with the bat, even leading the league in hitting at various times during the seasons in which he played, despite […]

His teams won more games than any team in the annals of organized black baseball. “Candy Jim” Taylor’s professional baseball career began in 1904, well before Rube Foster’s first Negro National League was formed, and his managerial tenure ended abruptly, just before the 1948 baseball season began, due to Taylor’s sudden death. In between, Taylor […]

When you ask people to name Blue Jays starting pitchers of the 1980s and ’90s, they might answer with Jack Morris, Dave Stieb, Roger Clemens, and David Cone. Big arms accompanied by prominent personalities, pitchers who threw hard and had secondary wipeout pitches. Pitchers who were expressive on the mound, often showed emotion and, in […]

Scholar-athlete George “Iron” Davis was the secret weapon of the Miracle Braves’ pitching staff. Manager George Stallings had used the 24-year-old right-hander just three times during the first five months of the 1914 season, but when he turned Davis loose, the Harvard Law School student responded with his career highlight: a no-hitter, on September 9, […]

A baseball lifer, Al Widmar spent almost six decades playing, managing, coaching, and developing players in the major and minor leagues. Widmar, who was the pitching coach for the 1964 Phillies, pitched for the Boston Red Sox, St. Louis Browns, and Chicago White Sox with a 13-30 career record and 5.21 ERA in parts of […]

Jack Slattery was the only man on the 1901 Boston Americans who was born in Boston (and, as of 2010, one of only 16 natives of the city to play for Boston’s American League team.) Slattery just barely qualified, only getting into a game on the very last day of the franchise’s first season. In […]

Hank Thompson, a New York Giants mainstay from 1949 to 1956, is the answer to a host of trivia questions about black players. He was the first acknowledged black player to play for the Giants. He was also the first acknowledged black player to take the field for the St. Louis Browns, having received a […]

A life in baseball is how one might best describe the life of Fred Mitchell. He pitched in the very first game ever played by the Boston Red Sox franchise (an exhibition game in Charlottesville, Virginia), and 18 years later managed the Chicago Cubs against the Red Sox in the 1918 World Series. His major-league […]

There were two major-league ballplayers named Joe Harris, and both played for Boston’s American League team. They had very different records. One had two middle names – the pitcher named  Joseph Lionel White Harris, who pitched only for Boston (1905-07) and racked up the astonishing record of 3-30, despite a 3.35 earned-run average. This biography […]

Yeah, who needs a .300 hitter? Especially if you’re a perennially last-place ballclub. Outfielder Ike Boone hit .337 for the Boston Red Sox in 1924 and .330 the following year, with on-base averages of .404 and .406, respectively. The Red Sox finished in last place nine years in row, excepting only 1924, when they finished […]

Donald Paulson, a slender, hard-throwing, right-handed pitcher from a small town in Minnesota, could hardly realize how successful he would become by learning to “paint the corners” of home plate. But the talented, eager, and hard-working minor leaguer – better known today as the painter Buck Paulson – used baseball to learn how to succeed […]

Rufus “Sonnyman” Jackson was born on May 1, 1900, in Columbus, Georgia, to Rufus Jackson Sr. and Rosa Bell Dixon, both Georgia natives.1 Rosie and her son remained close enough throughout his life that in 1940, when he was already a successful businessman and often-time courthouse visitor, she was still living with her grown son. […]

Described as “an idealist, a dreamer, and a lover of solitude and nature,” Harry Pulliam was an eccentric dresser (one reporter wrote that “all the colors of the rainbow were utilized by him in the color scheme of his fancy waistcoats”) and fabled storyteller who put all around him at ease, rising to high places […]

In conjunction with SABR’s Eight Myths Out project, here are specific examples of factual errors or misinformation that appear in Eight Men Out, both the 1963 best-selling book written by Eliot Asinof and the 1988 film directed by John Sayles. Certain entries on this list may seem like pedantic nitpicking: surnames misspelled, Abe Attell’s boxing […]

“You Called That a What . . . ?”The Newsletter of the Official Scoring Committee Society for American Baseball Research (SABR) April-May-June (Daisy Duck Family Edition) 2020, Volume 5, Number 2 Past newsletters   Editor: Stew Thornley From the Co-Chairs Conundrum of the Month (or Quarter or Whatever) Profile: Dennis Hetrick Guest Column: Sarah Johnson […]