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The champagne was ready in the Astrodome. With a two-games-to-one lead in the best-of-five National League Championship Series, the Astros were one win away from their first trip to the World Series. Considering the obstacles that both they and their opponents, the Phillies, had overcome, no one was apt to be counting on an easy […]

Roberto “Bobby” Ramos was born in Cuba in 1955. Emigrating to Miami, Florida, as a child, he caught for the Jackson High School baseball team. At the end of his senior year, he was named to the All-City team and selected in the seventh round of the June 1974 amateur draft by the Montreal Expos.1 […]

Baseball is a humbling game. On any given day, even one of the league’s best hitters can look lost at the plate and fail miserably in the clutch. That’s exactly what happened to New York Mets first baseman Keith Hernandez against the Philadelphia Phillies on August 14, 1985. Hernandez, the National League’s batting champion and […]

One of the more exciting days on the baseball calendar is the trade deadline on July 31.1 Networks and sports talk shows fuel the speculation and rumor mill about who could be on the move. Team officials must determine if their club is a pretender or a contender, a buyer or a seller. With the […]

For a player who had excelled so consistently for the prior three seasons, Don Mattingly’s 1987 was unusually streaky. After leading the American League in hitting in 1984 and finishing first and second respectively in the 1985 and 1986 MVP voting, Mattingly got out of the gate slowly, batting .175 without a home run in […]

The revamped St. Louis Cardinals were off to a rousing start in 1981, winning six of their first eight games, when Lary Sorensen took the pitcher’s mound for the finale of a three-game series with the Chicago Cubs at Busch Stadium on Wednesday, April 22. Coming off a disappointing fourth-place finish in the National League […]

“That’s ridiculous,” exclaimed Mets slugger Dave Kingman. “Do you have to hit it out of the stadium to be ruled a home run?”1 Kingman had good reason to be annoyed after the June 1, 1977, game at Montreal’s Olympic Stadium.2 He had just become the first player to hit a ball off the concrete service […]

Larry Bowa and Joe Hoerner crossed paths for the first time as teammates on the 1970 Philadelphia Phillies. Bowa, signed and developed by the Phillies’ organization, was a 24-year-old rookie shortstop batting leadoff for a mainly veteran team. Hoerner, a 33-year-old lefty reliever, was acquired in an offseason trade with the St. Louis Cardinals to […]

The expansion Montreal Expos had finally developed their first Canadian player. In an attempt to find a major gate attraction, the fledgling team had signed 18 Canucks − 14 of whom were pitchers − in their first six years.1 None of them panned out until 21-year-old Larry Landreth walked out to the mound on September […]

Wes Ferrell is perhaps the best-hitting pitcher in baseball history. Over his 15-season major-league career, Ferrell hit .280 with 38 home runs, 57 doubles, and 12 triples.1 Ferrell put together his best season in 1935, with the Boston Red Sox. Based on the combined strength of his pitching and hitting, his 10.6 Wins Above Replacement, […]

There was a possibility that first baseman Paul Campbell’s major-league career might last only one game and, at that, might have been without an at-bat. He was a pinch-runner for the Boston Red Sox in the first game of the 1941 season, on April 15. In the bottom of the seventh, the Red Sox were […]

One of the most charismatic players of his era, Bill Monroe starred for several leading African-American professional teams from 1899 until his untimely death in 1915. In the field, he excelled at third, short, and second. At the plate, his speed and power enabled him to shine either as a lead-off man or in the […]

On September 19, 1988, the Pittsburgh Pirates paid tribute to the Homestead Grays by hoisting a black-and-white commemorative flag over Three Rivers Stadium. The occasion commemorated an event from 40 years earlier, when the Negro National League’s Grays defeated the Birmingham Black Barons, champions of the Negro American League, four games to one in the […]

“Who is the only person enshrined in both the Pro Football Hall of Fame and the National Baseball Hall of Fame?” Cal Hubbard first earned acclaim as a bone-crushing tackle, then as a formidable umpire, and finally as an exceptional baseball executive. For nearly half a century his name was known by every self-respecting football […]

The most coveted player in the September 1907 minor league player draft was 23-year-old Bill Lattimore. All 16 National and American League clubs placed the name of the Toledo Mud Hens lefthander on the player wish lists submitted to the National Commission. The winner of the Lattimore lottery was the AL Cleveland Naps, a stroke […]

During his days with the Baltimore Orioles at the end of the 1970s, Pat Kelly talked a lot with skipper Earl Weaver. While Weaver spoke about baseball strategy, Kelly – who became a born-again Christian in 1975 – persisted in talking about Jesus Christ. In one of those dialogues, Kelly proposed to Weaver, “Why don’t […]