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When Jeff Montgomery took the mound for the Cincinnati Reds on August 1, 1987, he was living out the storybook baseball tale. A three-sport athlete from small Wellston, Ohio, Montgomery grew up a couple of hours down the road from Riverfront Stadium in the era of the Big Red Machine. His idol, Reds manager Pete […]

From 1902 through 1911, Walter Schlichter owned the Philadelphia Giants, the finest African American team of the era. Schlichter was white, the Philadelphia Item’s sporting editor, and had previously managed boxers, not ballplayers. Yet with Sol White he formed a persevering, successful partnership. Competition, alignment with more powerful forces, an ill-advised secondary baseball venture, and finally a break […]

George McQuillan was the Doc Gooden of the Deadball Era. In 1908 he enjoyed one of the best rookie seasons in history, going 23-17 for the mediocre Phillies with a sparkling 1.53 ERA in nearly 360 innings of work (in 1985 the young Gooden posted an identical ERA). An unusually fast worker even in an […]

Two words: Señor Smoke. Hernandez/Lopez. Things Change. Take your pick of the trio of descriptions that defined Aurelio Lopez’s baseball career. Things change. That’s a truism that, in its pithy wisdom, fails to reveal that perceptions of the past — even the recent past — can vary so widely from those of contemporary observers. Ask […]

“I’m Willie Mays,” one might imagine a kid in New York City in 1955 calling out as he came to the plate in a midsummer day’s game of stickball. For kids growing up in Kansas City in the late 1980s, maybe it was Bo Jackson. There are players who occupy a certain time and place […]

Right-handed reliever Larry Sherry captured the 1959 World Series Most Valuable Player award after he appeared in all of the Los Angeles Dodgers’ four post-season wins, receiving credit for the last two. Four years previously, the then 19-year-old considered quitting after a miserable season in the Piedmont League (Class B). He was talked out of […]

Often compared to his teammate Rod Carew, Lyman Bostock was second only to Carew as a hitter in the eyes of his Minnesota Twins manager Gene Mauch. Mauch once said he had no doubt that Bostock would eventually win batting titles. With Bostock having hit .323 and .336 during his first two full big league […]

“Studley made a powerful and reliable hand at the bat; was agile and prompt in the field, and a good runner…”1 In the 1860s and 1870s, Seymour (Sy) Studley was a member of Rochester, New York’s and Washington D.C.’s pioneer amateur and professional baseball clubs. He briefly played with the Washington Nationals of the National […]

Pitcher Gene Stechschulte made 116 appearances for the St. Louis Cardinals from 2000 to 2002, all in relief. In fact, he started just once in his entire professional career, which lasted from 1996 through 2002, plus brief stints in the independent Atlantic League in 2004 and 2005. As described by The Sporting News in 2002, […]

Rube Foster was the star of the 1915 World Series, pitching two complete-game wins for the Boston Red Sox in a five-game series against the Philadelphia Phillies and going 4-for-8 at the plate. His ninth-inning single won Game Two. Foster played pro ball for just one team in the big leagues, the Red Sox, with […]

In the 1970s Gary Holle was a dual-sport phenom (baseball and basketball) from upstate New York who had a six-year minor-league baseball career and a two-week stay with the Texas Rangers in 1979. Born in Watervliet, New York, on August 11, 1954, to Charles and Jean Holle, Gary carved out a successful business career after […]

It was a career that included playing minor-league baseball, owning a minor-league club, scouting for the New York Giants, doing political work, running a business, and taking part in a legendary fistfight at the side of John McGraw. He was also said to be an amateur violinist. He built the first ballpark in Springfield, Illinois. […]

The October 3, 1929, issue of the Sporting News printed a sampling of observations of beat writers from around the Major Leagues with their predictions on who would win the World Series between the Philadelphia Athletics and the Chicago Cubs. Of the 106 writers polled, 53 picked Philadelphia, 42 liked the Cubs, and 11 others […]

It took five major-league seasons for Gary Peters to have a breakout year in his career; but when he finally did, he made the most of it by winning Rookie of the Year honors in the American League. One of the first games that propelled him into the spotlight was a 13-strikeout one-hitter, a near-perfect […]

The New York Mets were struggling to stay in contention in the National League East in July 1989. After winning six games in a row in the middle of July, they closed out the month by losing seven straight. At the trade deadline on July 31, Mookie Wilson was traded and Frank Viola joined the […]

When the Montreal Expos and the Los Angeles Dodgers headed to Stade Olympique to play the second game of a four-game series on June 9, 1978, they were going in seemingly opposite directions. Skipper Dick Williams, in his second year at the Expos’ helm, had his club playing its best ball of the year. They […]

The Chicago Cubs overcame two ejections and the first-place New York Mets in the opener of a five-game series at Wrigley Field on August 4, 1986. Dennis Eckersley earned his second win over the Mets in six days and Ron Cey drove in two key runs, leading the Cubs to a 4-2 victory. After surging […]

The Philadelphia Phillies’ modern, circular, multipurpose, Astroturfed playing field, Veterans Stadium, 19 years old in 1990, had at least one thing in common with Connie Mack Stadium, the more traditional grass and grandstand ballpark where they played from 1938 to 1970.1 Neither ballpark had ever seen a no-hitter by a Phillies pitcher. In fact, no […]

Here’s Bill McCurdy’s recap of the Larry Dierker Chapter meeting of December 10, 2012, in Houston, Texas: On a night when most Houston sports fans were out there falling off a cliff with the football team we know locally as the Houston Texans, 19 of us completely, or mainly, baseball souls were downtown at the […]