Search Results

Osborne Llewellyn Timmons, better known as Ozzie Timmons, learned to love baseball when he grew up watching some of the terrific hometown players. After his playing career, Timmons joined the coaching ranks to continue to share his knowledge and love of the game with the young players just starting their careers. Timmons was born on […]

“Fred Wenz Provides Red Sox Mysticism” — how can the reader resist responding to a newspaper headline like that? The article in a 1969 issue of Boston Herald Traveler discussed “the Wenz enigma — a situation which has found Fireball Fred blinding minor league hitters and then getting bombed in the majors.”1 It wasn’t the […]

Situated between UPMC Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh and the much larger Allegheny Cemetery is a patch of land that feels out of sync with the rest of modernity. With large stone walls at its entrance and brick roads, St. Mary Catholic Cemetery harks back to the late 19th or early 20th century. Along one of […]

Catcher/first baseman Don Pavletich broke into the big leagues on April 20, 1957, but had to wait until April 29, 1962 — a little more than five years — before he got his first base hit. He was only 18 at the time of his debut with the Cincinnati Redlegs. Just a couple of months […]

At the peak of his career, John Joseph “Black Jack” Burdock was considered to be the premier second baseman of 19th-century professional baseball. An article in Harper’s Weekly on May 16, 1885, about that year’s baseball season featured “the nine men universally acknowledged as the most expert players in their respective positions in the field,” […]

Brooklyn–born Gennaro Joseph Casale, better known as Jerry, played 11 seasons in professional baseball beginning in 1952 and concluding in 1963. During a five-year stretch, from 1958-1962, he pitched for three major-league teams, a hard-throwing right-hander and recorded his best season in 1959 as a 13-8 rookie with the Boston Red Sox. Casale was a […]

The Philadelphia Phillies’ World Series victory in 1980 was the culmination of a long rebuilding process. From 1968 to 1974, the Phillies suffered through seven straight losing seasons and had six different managers. While things seemed grim, the Phillies had a plan. They drafted well and stocked their farm system with good players, many of […]

“He was a beautiful person. Yes he was. Cool Papa Bell. He was a lovable person. And still is. And always has been. I love him. My goodness, that’s one beautiful man.” – Dave Barnhill (hard-throwing ace pitcher and all-star of the New York Cubans)1 “He had time for everybody. Never hurried. Signed autographs, talked […]

Red Sox right-hander Gordie Mueller was in the big leagues for a little more than three months in 1950. He worked a total of seven innings, over eight games, without a decision, facing 45 batters. He walked 13 of them and struck out only one. Eleven of the batters secured base hits off him, one […]

A master of the one-liner, Billy Grabarkewitz once claimed that “Abner Doubleday dreamed up this game [of baseball] to drive people crazy.”1 Perhaps no one knew this more than the diminutive right-handed hitting infielder whose entire career pivoted on injuries. It was injuries that slowed Grabarkewitz’s march to the big leagues; injury to fellow infielder […]

Despite missing two of his prime seasons while serving his country during World War II, Marlin Carter played professional baseball for nearly a quarter-century in major and minor Negro Leagues. Nicknamed “Pee Wee,” the 5-foot-7, 160-pounder threw right-handed and batted lefty. Primarily a third baseman, he also saw action at second base and shortstop, and […]

Baseball is a game of inches, but it is also a game of numbers. On April 8, 1974, Number 44 hit Number 715. Every baseball fan in America knew what that meant: Hank Aaron had just surpassed Babe Ruth to claim the career home-run record. The Atlanta Constitution showcased Aaron’s feat on its front page, […]

John Caruso’s short-lived professional career was not packed with highlights, but he knew how to pick his spots. The third baseman played a single season in the Pittsburgh Pirates’ organization in 1971, as a member of the Niagara Falls (New York) Pirates of the short-season Class A New York-Penn League. In 54 games and 142 […]

It was an unlikely time for the best game in Bill Monbouquette’s career. An emerging star and fan favorite, the Boston Red Sox’ 25-year-old right-handed local boy from Medford, Massachusetts, entered the 1962 campaign with a 38-36 career slate but hit a rough patch in July after earning his second All-Star berth. “I’ve been lousy […]

Home runs came frequently in Mike Piazza’s career, resulting in 399 homers as a catcher, a major-league record, and 427 homers overall. Triples were much rarer; in 16 big-league seasons, the lumbering Piazza had three separate droughts of at least 487 games without a three-base hit and wound up with a total of eight triples. […]

In the world of digital photography, a pixel is the smallest element of a picture represented on the screen. A high-resolution 8-by-10-inch photograph comprised of 7.2 million pixels (2,400 by 3,000 pixels).1 Up close, a single pixel — or even one square inch of pixels — of the most captivating image is unrecognizable and unremarkable. […]

A Sunday afternoon doubleheader at Comiskey Park pitted the hometown Chicago White Sox against the visiting Boston Red Sox. A crowd of 37,281 was on hand to watch the White Sox attempt a four-game sweep of last-place Boston. Just one week earlier (June 19), “the White Sox were encased in gloom”1 after a four-game losing […]

Jim Hutto may be best remembered among baseball trivia buffs for a game in which his biggest accomplishment was simply not getting hurt. On May 2, 1970, when the Phillies lost catchers Tim McCarver to a broken hand and Mike Ryan to a broken finger in the same half-inning, rookie utilityman Hutto was called on […]

For the Boston Red Sox team, it was a nice way to even up a new season. For Carroll Hardy, it was a great way to start a new season. By virtue of being shut out, 4-0, at Fenway Park on Opening Day 1962, the Red Sox were tied for last place in the American […]

The New York Mets were at the end of a brief but miserable road trip. They had lost four of the previous six games and were ready to return home to Shea Stadium. Their time on the road was marred by Vince Coleman’s misdeed on July 24 when he threw a powerful M-100 firecracker out […]

Mike Piazza had come a long way since 1988 when the Dodgers drafted him in the 62nd round of the June draft. He was only drafted when Dodgers manager Tommy Lasorda urged the team to take a chance on him at the request of Piazza’s father, who was a friend of Lasorda’s. At the time, […]

Among more than two dozen men credited with at least 3,000 career base hits, the first to do it is also easily the most controversial. Cap Anson broke through the 3,000-hit barrier in 1897. Or did he? More than any other achievement in the statistically obsessed game that is baseball, Anson’s hit totals are subject […]

SABR’s Bud Metheny/Virginia Eastern Shore Chapter met on Sunday, September 15, 2019, at the Williamsburg Library. Thanks to Paul Boren and Alexis Collins for their great presentations yesterday. 1) Scouting the Mind – Alexis Collins With the rise of analytics and video in the scouting of players, is it possible to develop a quantifiable method […]