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From the late 1970s through the early 1990s, few players were as feared with the bat or possessed the brashness of Jack Clark. Twice he powered teams to the World Series. Four times he played in the All-Star Game. His prowess at the plate moved his manager to call him “the greatest fastball hitter of […]

(On arriving at Kauffman Stadium for the first time) “As we drive up we see the Crown. There was a little mist and I’m thinking ‘this is an unbelievable sight.’ The lights are on. It doesn’t get any better than that. Then all of a sudden we pull in, we go into the clubhouse, and […]

“What do [you] think of Tommy Henrich?”“I don’t know, he’s dependable, I guess.” This bit of repartee, from Philip Roth’s novella Goodbye Columbus, just about sums up Henrich’s career with the New York Yankees during the late 1930s and 1940s. If Lou Gehrig, Joe DiMaggio, Joe Gordon, Bill Dickey, Phil Rizzuto, and Yogi Berra were […]

Rocky Bridges an All-Star? “They were close to launching an investigation,” he said after being named to the 1958 American League All-Star team.1 Bridges made the squad as the token representative of the last-place Washington Senators, but for most of his 11-year big-league career he was the designated comedian for seven teams, a utility infielder […]

The game of baseball attracts all types of personalities, from the angry to the stoic to the eccentric to the comedic and everything in between. William M. “Big Bill” Brown, who played in the majors from 1887 through 1894, definitely falls into the comedic category, though he was also quite serious about the game. Though […]

Lou Finney was a tough man to strike out. A fast, feisty left-handed hitter with line-drive power, Finney made contact often enough and was versatile enough in the field to play an important role first for Connie Mack’s Depression-era Philadelphia Athletics and later for Joe Cronin’s World War II-era Boston Red Sox. A scrappy, curly-haired Alabaman […]

Even the most casual baseball fan is familiar with Eight Men Out, the book (and the movie) that tells the story of the eight members of the Chicago White Sox who were forever banished from organized baseball for fixing the 1919 World Series. Joe Gedeon was the “ninth man out.” The regular second baseman of […]

Fresh out of St. Mary’s College in Kansas, right-handed pitcher Frank Bushey became the 25th and final player on the Boston Red Sox roster on June 14, 1927. He’d won nine of the 10 games he’d pitched for St. Mary’s during his senior year that spring, stood an even six feet tall and weighed 180 […]

Traded for Ted Williams. That’s the sort of distinction one could well dine out on for years. The trade occurred in December 1937. Al Niemiec’s major-league career was over at the time, though he was only 26 and naturally hoped to get back to the big leagues. He played five more years in the Pacific […]

“Carmen Fanzone always led a double life.” That’s how Jerry Crowe led a story about the former ballplayer and trumpeter that ran in the Los Angeles Times.1 Primarily a third baseman on the diamond, Fanzone played in parts of five seasons (1970-1974) for two major-league teams that suffered nearly century-long droughts between World Series wins: […]

On April 24, 2004, the Boston Red Sox came to the plate 26 times with runners in scoring position and were hitless each time. Nonetheless, they beat the New York Yankees, 3-2 in 12 innings, on the strength of three sacrifice flies and staunch relief pitching. Most games are noted for what did happen during […]

Baseball’s All-Star Game was played at Griffith Stadium in 1937 and 1956, and now it was time for another generation of local baseball fans to gather at the new District of Columbia Stadium to watch the feats of the greats. History told us later that the 1962 All-Star Game featured 18 future Hall of Famers.1 […]

Entering the 2024 season, the Los Angeles/California/Anaheim Angels had tied only three games in their 63 seasons of play and had gone 50 years without a deadlock. The team’s most recent tie game to that point took place on the chilly, snowy fourth day of the 1974 season.1 Changes to major-league rules, as well as […]

When baseball’s stars convened in Pittsburgh for the 1994 All-Star Game, emerging pennant races and milestone quests shared headlines with labor-management discord. A strike shuttered the majors a month later, relegating the unfinished campaign to an ignominious place in the game’s history, but the National League’s 8-7 win over the American League in 10 innings […]

On July 23, 1912, Boston Braves pitcher Otto Hess elected to pitch to Honus Wagner in the bottom of the ninth with a base open and the winning run in scoring position. Two pitches later, Wagner, the reigning (and eight-time overall) NL batting champion, singled home the game-winner for the Pittsburgh Pirates.1 Eight days later, […]

Before there was David Ortiz, there was Dave Henderson. Before Big Papi thrilled Red Sox fans with his October heroics, the man they called Hendu brought Boston back from the dead in Game Five of the 1986 ALCS. With the Angels one strike away from winning the pennant, Henderson — a backup outfielder obtained from […]

San Diego Padres hurler Steve Arlin could hardly be classified as a headhunter. Coming into his August 17, 1971, start against the Montreal Expos, he had hit only four batters in 197 big-league innings. That didn’t stop the pugnacious Ron Hunt, who was usually fine with reaching base on a hit-by-pitch, from grumbling when Arlin […]

Both starters worked into the ninth inning, and it seemed like a game the Red Sox didn’t want to let get away. Three times they had to take the lead, even in those first nine frames. And then they had to do it once again in the 12th, with one swing from their venerable left […]

“On a muggy, overcast night in Chavez Ravine,” the Pittsburgh Pirates defeated the Los Angeles Dodgers 11-3, a game highlighted by Willie Stargell’s home run in the seventh inning that was the first ever hit out of Dodger Stadium. “It appeared to be Apollo 12,” one observer noted as the baseball landed in the parking […]

The Boston Red Sox clinched their 10th American League pennant by winning their third straight elimination game — overcoming a one-game-to-three deficit and advancing to the World Series for the first time in 11 years. Roger Clemens, working on short rest for the second time in the series, pitched seven innings, allowing only one run […]

On May 6, 1915, New York Yankees pitcher Jack Warhop threw a pitch that gave him an unwanted place in baseball history. In the third inning of a game against the Boston Red Sox, Warhop surrendered a home run to rookie pitcher Babe Ruth. It was the first of Ruth’s 714 career round-trippers, a big-league […]

This was a bizarre game on Labor Day weekend in 1990 in which the visiting New York Yankees lost their left fielder and then their right fielder in the same inning, both of them hurt by running into the wall in their respective areas of the Fenway Park outfield. It was also the game in […]

The Boston Red Sox won both halves of the Memorial Day doubleheader against the visiting Philadelphia Athletics, 10-2 and 4-3, but Ted Williams hadn’t helped much until the eighth inning of the second game. In the first game, he had gone 0-for-3, hitting into two double plays, grounding out 3-1, and walking a couple of […]

When Mike Piazza was traded to the Florida Marlins on May 14, 1998, he had no idea how long his South Florida sojourn would last. The Los Angeles Dodgers, Piazza’s team since the 1992 season, may have been underachieving, just 19-21 when they traded Piazza and Todd Zeile to the Marlins for Gary Sheffield, Manuel […]