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The accolades surrounding Philip Daniel Bradley place him among stars of Blackball’s Deadball Era. “For second catcher, Phil Bradley of the (Brooklyn) Royals is easy (sic) the second-best catcher in colored baseball. He is a better hitter than Bruce Petway, and has a head along with a true snap throwing arm,” according to reporter Harry […]

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 […]

“The integrity of the game is the umpires. Nobody else. The entire integrity of the game is the umpires.” — Doug Harvey1   It was the late 1980s. The Cincinnati Reds had replaced the Big Red Machine with the Nasty Boys, and the Nastiest of the Nasty Boys was Rob Dibble. In the beginning of […]

Charles Ernest Brinkman spent parts of six seasons as a backup catcher in the major leagues, all but four games of the last season with the Chicago White Sox. Despite a .172 career average, he remained in the majors as long as he did on the strength of his stellar defense. As a collegian at […]

“He has a brain in his arm.” – Syd Thrift1 That high baseball IQ was a critical part of Rick Reuschel’s success. It led him to trust a pitch-to-contact approach that was not flashy but required supreme control and unwavering confidence. He defied the stereotypes of a star pitcher. “Big Daddy” was unathletic-looking, with an […]

Good things come to those who wait. Patience is a virtue. Those aphorisms were more than just empty clichés to right-hander Orie Arntzen, who debuted as a 33-year-old for the Philadelphia Athletics in 1943. Nicknamed “Old Folks” for obvious reasons, Arntzen won only four of 17 decisions for one of the worst teams of the […]

Through the 2021 season, Brady Anderson is the only player in the history of Major League Baseball to amass at least 20 home runs and 50 stolen bases in one season, and at least 50 homers and 20 steals in another. Anderson usually batted leadoff over a 15-year career (1988-2002) spent almost entirely with the […]

Bringing Cliff Garrison on board was an experiment which didn’t work out all that well. The 1928 Red Sox weren’t in too much of a position to be highly selective, though. They’d finished in eighth place — last place — for five of the prior six years, and were seventh the one year they weren’t […]

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 […]

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 […]

After finishing the 1971 season with a 3-12 record in his first season with the San Diego Padres, journeyman starting pitcher Fred Norman1 developed a slider to try to boost his fortunes in 1972. His newest pitch did its job – Norman improved to 9-11 and fired a career-high six shutouts – but the 29-year-old […]

In 1980 Minnesota’s Gary Ward wasn’t even in the majors long enough to use up his rookie status. (His official rookie season took place in 1981.) Even so, against the Milwaukee Brewers on September 18, 1980, Ward accomplished what fewer than 200 other major-leaguers – and only 12 actual rookies – did when he hit […]

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 […]

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, […]

When 41-year-old Steve Carlton faced the Pittsburgh Pirates on April 27, 1986, the Philadelphia Phillies’ left-hander led all active major-league pitchers with 315 career wins and ranked second only to Nolan Ryan in all-time strikeouts – but an early-season 7.25 ERA reflected struggles uncharacteristic of his Hall of Fame career. Carlton’s bid to regain normalcy […]

The Cleveland Indians hosted the Boston Red Sox for a doubleheader on the first Sunday in August 1958. The two teams were pretty much neck-and-neck in battling with four other teams for second place in the American League standings, with the Yankees far out in front of the tightly-bunched pack. The Indians were 17 games […]

“I didn’t even slide. I’m very proud of that.”1 This was Boog Powell’s description of his first-ever inside-the-park home run, nine seasons and nearly 200 homers into a career better known for clearing fences than dashing around basepaths. Yet it was his running that put an exclamation point on the Baltimore Orioles’ 15-run shellacking of […]

At 6:30 A.M. on July 14, 1969, Bill Stoneman was a private first class in the Vermont National Guard, fulfilling military obligations to his country at Camp Johnson in Colchester, just north of Burlington. At 4 P.M., with the day’s duties complete, Stoneman got into his car and headed to another job in another nation […]