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Ken Harvey was an NCAA Division I first-team All-American who was drafted by the Kansas City Royals in 1999 and rose to the majors in just two years. A first baseman by trade, he was selected to represent Kansas City in the 2004 All-Star Game. However, Harvey’s injuries and nine surgeries foiled a promising career […]

Stan Benjamin used to say, “If they let you steal first base, I would have batted a thousand.”1 He was easygoing with a great sense of humor, often self-deprecating. His personality must have been forged early in life because a cartoon of the top regional high-school football players in 1932 labeled him “happy-go-lucky” and showed […]

If it were not for bad luck, Creepy Crespi may not have had any luck at all. The infielder with one of baseball’s great alliterative nicknames played parts of five seasons in the big leagues, all with his hometown Cardinals, including the World Series title club of 1942. An ankle fracture sustained while playing baseball […]

As one of six rookies on the Philadelphia Phillies’ 1964 Opening Day roster, John Herrnstein experienced his finest season in a major-league career that would end two years later. The left-handed native of Chillicothe, Ohio, seemed to be a favorite of Phillies manager Gene Mauch, who moved him about his baseball chessboard frequently during the […]

On his 17th birthday, José Valentin got a $22,000 present from the San Diego Padres — a $22,000 professional baseball contract. Sandy Alomar Sr., the Padres’ third-base coach, manager of the Santurce Crabbers and San Diego’s chief scout for Puerto Rican talent, convinced the Padres that the kid from Fernando Callejo High School in his […]

Bobby Hofman spent a lifetime in baseball. Over a career roughly divided into three distinct phases, he played major-league baseball for parts of seven seasons, and then managed and coached at various levels, including Oakland, for the next 20. He transitioned from there into a career as a big-league executive until his retirement in 1989 […]

James Elbert Greene, who went by the first name Joe, was one of the iconic catchers of the Negro Leagues. Greene was born on October 17, 1911, in Stone Mountain, Georgia, an Atlanta suburb. The 5-foot-11, 190-pound Greene was a durable and solid receiver who caught Satchel Paige and the balance of the elite pitching […]

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 […]

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 […]

Johnny Antonelli, somewhat unfairly, is remembered by the incidents he was part of, instead of as an individual who had an impressive pitching career. Labels abound and, of the memories attached to them, controversies. He was, in the minds of many, a “bonus baby” who never paid his dues in the minors. A player on […]

This is the resume: He was the first National League rookie to hit .300 with 30 homers, 100 RBIs, and 100 runs scored. He was the youngest player with back-to-back 50-double seasons. He was the third major-leaguer to drive in 500 runs in his first four seasons.1 He was the major-league leader in runs scored […]

Tom Oliver was a terrific defensive center fielder who played four seasons (1930-1933) in the major leagues with the Boston Red Sox. He had great speed, a very good throwing arm, and what his managers called “baseball instincts”, even being favorably compared to the great Tris Speaker. Oliver was one of the few players at […]

Over the team’s 50-year history the San Diego Padres have played a total of 7,976 regular-season games plus another 34 postseason games. That totals 8,010 games in which the result meant something. Bob Chandler has been at the microphone broadcasting either for radio or television for about 5,100 of those games. This figure does not […]

He was not as flashy as his predecessor, Buck Weaver. But he was as refined and polished as a third baseman as one could find. He had quick and sure hands and outstanding range, and threw perfect strikes across the diamond. Hall of Fame pitcher Charles “Chief” Bender said he was the best third sacker […]

Retired Air Force Lieutenant General William Eckert was named commissioner of baseball in late 1965 from a list of candidates that included more than 150 names. The owners wanted someone from outside the game who would be respected by Congress. Truth was, few even knew who William Eckert was at the time. One sportswriter quipped […]

Trying to throw a baseball as hard as you can from 60 feet, six inches and hitting a target 17 inches wide by approximately 24 inches high is hard enough as it is – but when that target is shrunk down to a height of less than three inches, it’s nearly impossible. That’s the task […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

Todd Hundley had a 14-season career (1990-2003) as a catcher for the New York Mets, Los Angeles Dodgers and Chicago Cubs. He was known for his defense early in his career but the switch-hitter became one of the best offensive catchers of the mid-1990s, setting the (then) single season home run record for that position […]

Ulysses Simpson Grant “Stoney” McGlynn was a legendary pitcher well before he tossed a complete-game victory on September 20, 1906, in his big-league debut with the St. Louis Cardinals at age 34. For more than a decade in independent, amateur, and semipro leagues, McGlynn had established his reputation as a rubber-armed iron man who routinely […]

For the first time in seven years, the Yankees and the Dodgers resumed their World Series rivalry in 1963. In the decade from 1947 through 1956, they had met six times. Since the Dodgers had moved to Los Angeles in 1958, they had missed postseason competition with each other. The New York Yankees entered their […]

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 […]