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A pair of rare events were accomplished by a pair of future Hall of Famers at the Hubert. H. Humphrey Metrodome on August 1, 1986. The Minnesota Twins were spending the weekend celebrating their 25th anniversary, beginning with this contest against the Oakland A’s. In a rout of the Athletics, the Twins’ Kirby Puckett and […]

It was like old times in New York City. Both of Gotham’s professional baseball teams were in late-season division races. A quirk in the schedule had both the Mets and Yankees as home teams on September 12. And both clubs were hosting their closest adversary in their respective divisional races. The Mets had a matinee […]

Most Phillies fans have Father’s Day 1964 etched in their hearts and minds. In the first game of a doubleheader against the New York Mets in Shea Stadium, Jim Bunning pitched the seventh perfect game in major-league history and the first in the National League since 1880. Acquired from the Detroit Tigers in the offseason, […]

It looked like the best-of-five National League Championship Series was going to be a short one. The Montreal Expos had outhit Los Angeles in Game One, but they couldn’t get the big hit when they needed it. The frustrating loss was their 10th in a row at Dodger Stadium and the 19th in their last […]

The New York Mets were in a bad mood. After bolting out of the gate and looking seemingly invincible with a 20-4 record to start the 1986 season, they had appeared all too human, posting just a 6-5 record on their recently concluded 11-game road trip. Manager Davey Johnson, in his third season as the […]

Larry Walker’s hold on a major-league job was slowly slipping away. His first full season in the big leagues had gone reasonably well; in only 419 at-bats he nearly posted a 20-20 season.1 Walker was even named to the 1990 Topps’ All-Star Rookie team. But a 1991 spring-training slump had carried over into the regular […]

The July 7, 1974, game between the Oneonta (New York) Yankees and the Newark (New York) Co-Pilots of the Class A New York-Penn League had to be delayed for 27 minutes while the sun set behind center field at Newark’s Colburn Park.1 Before and after that interruption, Oneonta pitcher Greg Diehl left Co-Pilots hitters completely […]

The 1968 Chicago White Sox opened the season with 10 straight losses; they then followed up the disastrous start by winning 11 of their next 17 games. An astute fan might not have been surprised by either set of events.1 The previous season’s team had finished in fourth place, three games behind the league-leading Boston […]

A sellout crowd packed Fenway Park and then waited 20 minutes for the rain to subside. Not a long wait to honor a man who had spent 23 years donning a Red Sox uniform. When he started in 1961, Carl Yastrzemski was just a kid charged with the unenviable task of replacing Ted Williams in […]

Unlike Leo Durocher, the man he replaced as Brooklyn Dodgers manager for the 1947 season, Burt Shotton was no gruff, umpire-baiting field general. He was instead a calm, serious baseball lifer who, like the more illustrious Connie Mack, wore his street clothes in the dugout during his tenure in Brooklyn. His quiet demeanor did not […]

Nino Espinosa was a right-handed pitcher with good control whose career ended prematurely because of a shoulder injury. After that, he became a scout in his native Dominican Republic until his tragic death from a heart attack at age 34. Arnulfo Acevedo Espinosa was born on August 15, 1953, in Villa Altagracia, about 30 miles […]

From 1955 through 2003, Clearwater’s Jack Russell Stadium served as the spring-training home of the Philadelphia Phillies. (After he died in 1990, it became Jack Russell Memorial Stadium.) One would surmise that Russell, a right-hander who pitched in 557 games over the course of 15 seasons in the major leagues, must have been quite a […]

Baseball is a difficult game to play well for those with two good arms but Pete Gray did it with one. Gray played only one season in the major leagues, 1945, but that was enough to have a lasting positive influence on people with disabilities. His accomplishment enlightened those of us who are perfectly formed, […]

Bill Cissell went from a farming community in Perry County, Missouri, to becoming “baseball’s costliest player.” The right-handed multi-position infielder played nine seasons in the major leagues from 1928 to 1938. He was found in 1949 “painfully ill and penniless in a gloomy one-room Chicago apartment” living with his 13-year-old son Gary. He’d been there […]

Two days in the major leagues – back to back. Swede Carlstrom’s big-league career began on September 12, 1911. He wrapped up his career on September 13. He didn’t enjoy an auspicious debut with the Boston Red Sox. The Boston Globe noted that Carlstrom, “late of the Lawrence [Massachusetts] club,” had a difficult game at shortstop. “The young […]