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After a stellar high school athletic career at Hill-Murray High School in Maplewood, Minnesota, Tom Quinlan had options. In June 1986 Quinlan, who was named to All-State teams in baseball and hockey and had scholarship offers to play college baseball and hockey, was selected by the Toronto Blue Jays in the 27th round of baseball’s […]

Maybe you can visualize the scene from your own living room: “I’ll take ‘Hall of Fame’ for $400, Alex.” Alex says, “I was an outfielder on a World Series winning team, coached in the Rose Bowl, coached back-to-back championship teams in the NFL and was inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame.” The contestants […]

Mike Maroth may be best known for being the last pitcher to lose 20 games in a season (as of this writing in 2017), but there was much more to his career than what happened in 2003. He toiled for one of the worst teams in history, the 2003 Detroit Tigers that went 43-119, but […]

Fred Toney was a big, strong, temperamental right-handed pitcher who authored two of the best performances in baseball history. Pitching for the Winchester Hustlers of the Class-D Blue Grass League, the 6-foot-2, 195-pounder tossed a 17-inning no-hitter in 1909. But it was his 10-inning no-hitter against the Chicago Cubs on May 2, 1917, that put […]

During Harry Grabiner’s four-decade-long tenure as a front-office official with the Chicago White Sox, he saw the team experience its highest highs and lowest lows. Beginning his career as a scorecard salesman in 1905 and serving for many years as the team’s secretary and vice president, Grabiner was involved with the White Sox’ first two […]

Allan Ramirez was an unsung hero for the 1983 World Series champion Baltimore Orioles. Over a span of more than three months that summer, injuries limited a pair of Baltimore pitchers with a total of four career Cy Young Awards (Jim Palmer and Mike Flanagan) to a single victory between them. Ramirez, a 26-year-old rookie […]

Normally when a pitcher sustains a serious arm injury, it might have a career-ending ramification. But adversity did not seem to bother Ted Abernathy. Instead, he made a habit of treating setbacks like challenges. He adapted by becoming a sidearmer and then a submariner. He appeared in 681 big-league games, saving 148 of them, from […]

Third baseman Andy Carey had a turbulent Yankee career as one of Casey Stengel’s chosen whipping boys and an equally turbulent personal life. The most famous story about Carey, repeated in many books on Stengel’s dynasty, involves his “called shot.” In his favorite place to hit, Fenway Park, the Yankees were trailing the Red Sox […]

Win Noyes was one of several ballplayers for whom service in World War I interrupted a promising big-league career. His brief stint with the 1919 White Sox was merely a footnote in a long, if not especially distinguished, baseball career. Various baseball references say Winfield Charles Noyes was born on June 16, 1889, in Pleasanton, […]

There is documented evidence that baseball in Cleveland goes back to the Civil War era. An 1867 article in the Cleveland Plain Dealer mentions 22 teams practicing on the ball ground. Two of the teams were composed of African American players.1 By 1918, the first professional Black team, the Tate Stars, formed. The Tate Stars […]

We’ve all had job evaluations, those nerve-racking meetings with the boss where he tells you how well, or poorly, you have done and what to work on to reach the next level. Bobby Winkles found out where he stood one day in 1958 from Walker Cooper, his manager with the Indianapolis Indians of the Triple-A […]

“It’s an unbelievable feeling to be able to contribute to a team like this. I see how hard these guys work, and when I come up here from Triple A it’s not a vacation.” — Andy Dominique, after his first major-league hit with the 2004 Red Sox1   Andy Dominique played nine games in the […]

Johnny Murphy was an ace relief pitcher for the 1930s New York Yankees who spent 18 years playing professional baseball. Murphy spent even longer in the front office, first with New England’s obsession—the Boston Red Sox—serving as a scout and then ran the team’s minor league operations. Moving onto New York’s National League expansion franchise, […]

In the 146 years of professional baseball, no team has come close to attaining the legendary status of the 1927 New York Yankees. They were, and are, the symbol of greatness, both individually and as a team. As the prominent baseball historian Donald Honig said, “Never before or since has there been in the game […]

Growing up in downstate Illinois, between Chicago and St. Louis, a midcentury youth was blessed by time and place. By radio, born in 1920, and television’s relatively new wonderwork, baseball could be followed through the art of play-by-play. If you grasped the pastime’s rhythm, the Voices often became as arresting as being at the park. […]

Team pictures of the New York Mets in the 1960s and ’70s showed a shorter, older gentleman wearing glasses and business attire. His face could also be spotted deep within the Mets’ yearbooks. Near the Yoo-Hoo chocolate drink ads featuring Yogi Berra were head shots of club officials and other employees. Devoted Mets fans who […]

William Edward White, from a Brown University team photo   For fans attending the June 21, 1879, game between the Providence Grays and the Cleveland Blues, there didn’t seem anything very special about the day. The only odd note was, perhaps, Providence’s first baseman. Providence’s usual starter, veteran Joe Start, had broken his finger and, […]

Michael “Fancy” O’Neil was a boxer and ballplayer who stepped on the field with four future Hall of Famers in his only major league game. He also had to be institutionalized multiple times and his death details were a mystery until 2019. O’Neil was born in Hudson, New York, to Irish parents Michael and Sarah […]

Father and son teammates are a familiar feature of the slow-pitch softball games played at Fourth of July picnics and on other celebratory occasions. But such pairings are an exceedingly rare event in professional baseball. When future Hall of Famer Ken Griffey Jr. and his dad, Ken Griffey Sr., manned the outfield for the Seattle […]

Jake Brown deserves to be remembered as a profile in courage. A gruesome industrial accident in February 1974 could well have ended his baseball career. Yet even though his left forearm was nearly severed, Brown came back after surgery repaired the limb. A catcher by trade, he could no longer play behind the plate, but […]

The baseball team known as the Braves makes its home in Atlanta, but traces its diamond ancestry back through Milwaukee and to Boston, where it began in 1871. In fact, the Atlanta Braves are the only baseball team that has played every season consecutively since 1871, outdating even the National League itself. While forgotten by […]

Editor’s note: This article continues from Part 1, on the New York Giants team ownership from 1883 to 1957.   Stoneham the Younger The narrative of Giants ownership had changed abruptly and dramatically on January 6, 1936, when Charles A. Stoneham died of symptoms associated with Bright’s disease. The franchise immediately passed into the hands […]

As the New York Yankees arrived at Dodger Stadium for the fourth game of the 1963 World Series, they knew no team had ever come back from a three-game deficit to win. “The knowledge of defeat could not be disguised in the quiet but calm Yankee clubhouse,” wrote the New York Times’s Leonard Koppett after […]

“Boston went baseball crazy again yesterday,” exclaimed the Boston Globe in a front-page story on Monday, August 20, 1934.1 A record crowd of 46,995 watched the Boston Red Sox take on the league-leading Detroit Tigers. This amazing figure “set a new American League attendance record for … young Tom Yawkey’s attractive ball park,”2 eclipsing by […]