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An 11-year major-league infielder, Darrel Chaney stayed in the game due largely to his versatility and positive attitude. After a career that included appearances in three World Series, Chaney became a successful announcer, businessman, and motivational speaker. Darrel Lee Chaney was born on March 9, 1948, in Hammond, Indiana, the second of Carlos and Eleanore […]

On October 20, 1988, the Los Angeles Dodgers were on the verge of winning it all. They held a comfortable lead over the Oakland Athletics in the World Series, three games to one. LA was in a good spot for sure as its ace, Orel Hershiser, was the starting pitcher. After Kirk Gibson’s dramatic pinch-hit […]

The son of a brilliant but combative Hall of Fame baseball executive, Lee MacPhail inherited his father’s intelligence and a love of baseball, but a wholly different personality. While Larry had a short and somewhat mercurial baseball career colored by both triumph and controversy, his son Lee spent four decades in baseball and earned the […]

Eccentric behavior, particularly when it came to fast cars, a disdain for off-season training, and bad luck with injuries limited Fred Carisch to parts of eight major-league seasons as a backup catcher in the early 20th century. However, he remained in the game for more than two decades – indeed, his first and last games […]

If God had not created Hustling Dan O’Leary, Damon Runyon would have. O’Leary is not well known today but he was well appreciated by the sportswriters of his time, as he was usually involved in something that would make an amusing story. He danced on the edge of fame and infamy, and even The National […]

“[Joe] Taylor has such a vile reputation that I guess I couldn’t have the remotest interest in him, but he impressed me very much as a player.” – Branch Rickey1 “When Taylor is ‘right’ he is definitely a Major League hitter. He has great reflexes, terrific wrist action and tremendously quick hands. He has as much […]

Matt Williams combined power with precision during his 17-year career in major league baseball. An All-Star third baseman, Williams hit 20 or more home runs for 10 consecutive seasons, winning four Silver Slugger awards. Defensively, he was a smooth fielder displaying a wide range and an accurate throwing arm, winning four Gold Glove awards. His […]

Ornery, rambunctious, and immensely talented, Leslie Nunamaker became one of baseball’s stoutest hitting and best throwing catchers during the last decade of the Deadball Era—and one of the game’s colorful personalities. Cut from the same temperamental cloth as contemporaries Ty Cobb and John McGraw, Nunamaker was prone to explosive on-field behavior that resulted in an […]

A major-league ballplayer gets called a lot of things during his career, and a manager probably more so. In the case of Edgar Frederick Yost III, some of those things include taxidermist, catcher, grinder, idiot, app developer, survivor, twitter hashtag (#yosted), clothier, pot scrubber, and hunter. Oh, and one more thing — World Series champion […]

Frank Skaff’s big-league playing career spanned a mere 38 games and 75 at-bats in 1935 and 1943. That was far fewer than observers projected when the talented athlete emerged on the stage. However, Skaff spent six decades in Organized Baseball as a player, coach, manager – including 79 games with the 1966 Detroit Tigers – […]

It could be a good question in a serious trivia contest: “Who was the first African-American ballplayer honored by the Hall of Fame?” Rather few people would correctly guess Grover Jones. “My real name is Grover William Jones, Junior,” Deacon Jones explained in a 2008 interview. “Everybody started calling me Deacon because my father was […]

After hitting his dramatic walk-off home run in the bottom of the ninth inning in Game Seven of the 1960 World Series, Bill Mazeroski excitedly circled first and then second base, waving his arms with his cap in his hand. As he reached third base he was greeted by Pirates third-base coach Frank Oceak, who […]

In a nine-year career spent with three teams, outfielder Tito Landrum never received more than 205 official at-bats in a season. Yet he earned two World Series rings and was a League Championship Series hero for both the 1983 Orioles and 1985 Cardinals. Terry Lee Landrum was born on October 25, 1954 in Joplin. Missouri. […]

Don Lock was a strong defensive center fielder who twice placed in the top 10 in homers in the American League. He played in 921 major-league games from 1962 to 1969. Lock was originally signed in March 1958 by New York Yankees scout Tom Greenwade, the same scout who signed Mickey Mantle. Greenwade signed Lock […]

As the manpower needs of World War II drained the baseball talent pool, major league ball clubs resorted to stocking their rosters with those available: veteran players overage for military service, the physically unfit, and others unlikely to be conscripted, including a handful of high school students. One of these was Ralph Kraus, a 17-year-old […]

Don Gile was a catcher and first baseman for the Boston Red Sox who, almost exactly two years to the day after Ted Williams did it, hit a home run in his final at-bat in the major leagues. Unlike Williams’ home run, Gile’s won the game in a walkoff. The date was September 30, 1962, […]

Johnny Morrison had one of the deadliest, most knee-locking curveballs baseball had ever experienced. “You simply couldn’t see it,” raved contemporary Pat Duncan. “The ball came in like a fast ball and it dropped so fast that it fell completely out of your vision unless you were looking for such a hook.”1 That pitch became […]

When the Washington Senators arrived in Pompano Beach, Florida, for spring training in 1971, manager Ted Williams couldn’t help but gush over his first overall pick in the January draft a year earlier. “That kid has major leaguer written all over him,” the Hall of Famer said of 20-year-old Detroit native William Roger “Bill” Fahey. […]

Four men named Dave Roberts have played major league baseball. David Leonard Roberts, who appeared in 91 games in the 1960s for the Houston Colt .45s and Pittsburgh Pirates, is probably the least known, at least in the United States.1 But across the Pacific in Japan, that Dave Roberts is by far the best known […]

 “LaMarque was probably the most unassuming of all the Monarch players. … He didn’t stand out. And he liked it like that. Lefty quietly went about his business.”  – Ray Doswell, curator, Negro Leagues Baseball Museum1   Jim LaMarque, who like so many southpaws was nicknamed Lefty, said he almost quit in 1942, his first year […]

The obstacles a rookie follows to become a major leaguer are daunting. Add to that the pressure of being described as a can’t-miss prospect or the next Joe DiMaggio and that process can be overwhelming. Johnny Groth faced such a situation with the Detroit Tigers in the spring of 1949. He would become and remain […]

Game Seven of the 1968 World Series between the Detroit Tigers and the St. Louis Cardinals ranks among the greatest of all time. Screenwriters could not have created more drama. The two historic franchises had last met 34 years earlier, in 1934, in a bitter World Series battle that ended in a painful Game Seven […]

This article was published in The 2005 World Champion Chicago White Sox: Grinders and Gamers (SABR, 2025), edited by Eric Conrad, Mark Morowczynski, Bill Nowlin, and Don Zminda.   Driving along the oft-congested Chicago expressways in 2005, one might occasionally pass a wayside billboard that featured a White Sox player in full uniform with a […]