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It didn’t take long for St. Louis Cardinals fans to appreciate Bruce Sutter. In the Cardinals’ second game of the 1981 season, the right-handed relief ace pitched three nearly flawless innings to earn the save in a 7-3 victory over the defending World Series champion Philadelphia Phillies on April 12 at Busch Stadium. Sutter, the […]

Sunday, July 2, 1961, was a muggy day at Yankee Stadium, with game-time temperatures in the low 90s. The expansion Washington Senators were finishing a three-game set against the New York Yankees, who were going for a series sweep and seeking to move closer to the first-place Detroit Tigers. This game illustrated the challenges any […]

There was no shortage of outstanding performances in Gary Carter’s Hall of Fame career. Twice he blasted three home runs in a game, and he drove in seven runs in another regular-season matchup.1 In the 1981 All-Star Game, Carter hit two round-trippers to lead the National League to a 5-4 win. Some of his greatest […]

In football they talk about “statement” games, when Team A thrashes Team B, thus sending a message to the opponent and the world that Team A is damn good and don’t you forget it. There are too many games in a baseball season to pinpoint one match as a “statement” game. But the Montreal Expos […]

The 1979 All-Star Game was the first held in Seattle, the largest city in the Pacific Northwest. Played before a sellout crowd of 58,905 in the Astroturf-carpeted Kingdome,1 it was the 50th midsummer classic and the second ever in a domed stadium.2 Home to the American League Mariners – in their third season as an […]

The lineups remained unchanged for Game Three of the 1967 World Series. Two right-handers were assigned mound duties. Boston’s hard-throwing Gary Bell (12-8, 3.16) faced curveballer Nelson Briles, who sparked the St. Louis staff after Gibson’s broken leg. Briles (14-5, 2.43 ERA) finished the year winning nine straight decisions after August 1. Though he’d had […]

With due respect to Ted Williams, for Montreal fans there was only one Kid. And if any player ever bled the colors of a franchise, it was The Kid, Gary Carter, who became the face of the Expos and led it through sometimes faltering steps from being an expansion novelty to a contender in the […]

On the night of August 25, 1980, an armed man described as “screaming” and “ranting and raving” entered Miami Stadium in Miami, Florida, between games of a Class A minor-league doubleheader. He shot one fan in the neck, causing a minor wound, then turned to leave. When two other fans chased him, he shot them […]

A season after dropping its first All-Star Game since 1971, the National League returned to its winning ways by beating the American League, 3-1, in the 1984 midsummer classic at San Francisco’s Candlestick Park, in a game featuring record-breaking strikeout pitching. Eighty-one-year-old Carl Hubbell, ace of the Giants in their New York incarnation who fanned […]

Gary Carter had been The Sporting News’ National League Rookie Player of the Year in 1975.1 He was the Montreal Expos’ sole representative at the 1975 All-Star Game and the recipient of the team’s Player-of-the-Year Award.2 But despite all of the accolades, Carter went into spring training in 1976 battling for playing time at catcher […]

The Baltimore Orioles entered the 1983 World Series on an absolute roll. They took the AL East by six games and dispatched the Chicago White Sox four games to one in the ALCS. The White Sox were a very good team — they had won the AL West by a margin of 20 games — […]

“What it was was not baseball at Derks Field Monday night,” a Salt Lake City, Utah, sportswriter summarized in May 1975, in a phrase that channeled Gertrude Stein1 while expressing more than a little annoyance.2 On the rainy night of May 19, the Hawaii Islanders and Salt Lake City Gulls of the Triple-A Pacific Coast […]

Despite suffering through a miserable 55-107 campaign the prior year, the 1977 Montreal Expos approached the coming season with a new sense of optimism. Most significantly, the team was finally slated to move into its new ballpark, the massive Olympic Stadium, after spending the first eight years of their existence in tiny Jarry Park, capacity […]

Montreal Expos manager Jim Fanning returned to the dugout on September 22, 1982, after missing five games with severe migraines. But it was Expos shortstop Chris Speier who gave the visiting Philadelphia Phillies headaches that night, driving in eight runs in an 11-4 Expos win. Expectations for the Expos ran high at the beginning of […]

An every-other-year major leaguer, Gary Fortune was a switch-hitting pitcher – a right-hander on the mound – who wound up 0-5 in his big-league career. He pitched for the Phillies in 1916 and 1918, and for the Red Sox in 1920. His 0-5 record reflected a 6.61 career earned run average. He wasn’t any better […]

Frank Strong Lary, a talented, hard-throwing right hander for the Detroit Tigers, proved to be one of the American League’s best pitchers from 1955 through 1961. An All-Star hurler in 1960 and 1961, he was best known as the “Yankee Killer.” While fashioning a major league lifetime record of 128-116 with an ERA of 3.49, […]

It simply should not have taken six years for Gary Carter to get into the Hall of Fame. He was one of the best catchers of his era, and many observers put him in the top ten in major-league history. He was an outstanding defender with a strong arm who did all the other things […]

One must wonder just how good Gary Geiger would have been if he hadn’t had so many physical ailments and mishaps. Frank Lane, who was Geiger’s first major-league general manager and knew his abilities as well as anyone, summarized it best: “If God had given Gary a sound body, he might have been one of the […]

In 1886 the 19-year-old rookie set a major-league record with 513 strikeouts, a record that has stood for a century and a quarter and will probably never be equaled. His next season was one of the most dominant ever pitched in the history of baseball. As an amateur he was known as the Boy Wonder; […]

Among the last generation of legendary ivory hunters who covered Southern California in the 1960s to 1980s, no name inspired more fear, trepidation, intimidation, antagonism, and grudging respect than that of Bob Zuk. The cigar-chomping son of Russian immigrants who fashioned a 46-year professional scouting career out of little more than energy, intellect, hustle, and […]

“Pete Hill was the first great outfielder in black baseball history,” suggests baseball historian Lawrence Hogan.1 The left-handed Hill was a five-tool star with several famed independent African-American teams: the Philadelphia Giants (1904 to 1907), Leland Giants (1908 to 1910), and Chicago American Giants (1911 to 1918). He then slugged his way to Ruthian heights […]

John (Jack) Burwell Reed played the outfield in the regular and post-season for the fabled 1961 New York Yankees, and contributed to their pennant-winning efforts in 1962 and 1963. He was Mickey Mantle’s defensive replacement for most of these three seasons.  Jack was a terrific high school/college athlete in Mississippi, winning the state quarter-mile run […]

Gary Waslewski woke in his Peabody, Massachusetts apartment on the morning of October 11, 1967 as the starting pitcher in Game Six of the World Series. “I was reading the papers that morning, and one guy wrote that Gary Waslewski has as much chance of winning as Custer had of beating the Indians,” Waslewski said. […]

Matt “The Scat” Alexander holds an odd distinction: He is the foremost pinch-running specialist in major-league history. Over parts of nine seasons (1973-81), he played in 374 games — yet amassed only 195 plate appearances. A favorite of manager Chuck Tanner, Alexander won a World Series ring with the 1979 Pittsburgh Pirates. Along with his […]