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On Sunday, August 21, 2005, as the New York Yankees (67-54) took the field to play the White Sox (74-46), they were in second place, three games behind the Boston Red Sox in the AL East Division while the White Sox were in first place in the AL Central, 8½ games up on the Cleveland […]

The Racine Belles had a tenuous hold on the fourth and final playoff spot in the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League with six games remaining in the 1945 season.1 When the Belles came to bat on August 30 in the bottom of the ninth, trailing the Rockford Peaches, 3-1, they were on the verge of […]

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 […]

A boisterous crowd of 33,137 filled Fenway Park1 on Friday evening, June 28, 2002, ready to see their homestanding Red Sox take on the Atlanta Braves, invading from the National League. The teams had nearly identical records at this point in the season, both 18 games over .500 and atop their respective divisions.2 But this […]

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 […]

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 […]

In January 1983, NBC television debuted a new action series titled The A-Team. The show followed the exploits of a fictional group of former U.S. Army members with such colorful names as Face, Hannibal, and the brawling, straight-talking, ludicrously bejeweled B.A. Baracus, the fictional embodiment of the character’s actor, Mr. T. Within months of the […]

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 […]

Paul Carter was a late bloomer as a professional pitcher with a career ERA+ of 85, a statistic that appears to denote him as a below-average pitcher. Nevertheless, across the 54 games he pitched for teams of Negro major-league quality, he had a record of 22 wins and 15 losses that resulted in an impressive […]

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, […]

Michael Thomas “Mike” Roarke grew up playing ball in West Warwick, Rhode Island, starred in football and baseball at Boston College before graduating in 1952, built a reputation as a stellar catcher and handler of pitchers in the minor leagues in the 1950s, came to the Detroit Tigers in a multi-player trade with the Milwaukee […]

Paul Doyle toiled in the minor-leagues for a decade before making his major league debut for the Atlanta Braves on May 28, 1969. He helped Atlanta win the 1969 National League West Division. Doyle’s stellar relief pitching for the 1969-70 Ponce Lions was a factor in that team winning the Puerto Rico Winter League title. […]

“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 […]