Search Results

In September 1922, out of pennant contention, the Cleveland Indians mounted a youth drive of remarkable proportions. The team brought in 19 players, so many that it had trouble finding uniforms for them all, and manager Tris Speaker gave them game action as he could.1 The youngsters didn’t bring back memories of the 1920 Indians, […]

Jerry Grote had been out of baseball for two years when a former teammate invited the retired backstop to return for the 1981 season. But it wasn’t automatic—the San Antonio native needed to try out for the Kansas City Royals in spring training.  Billy Connors, a former batterymate on the 1967 and ’68 New York […]

The 1931 baseball season was nearly two weeks old and the eight clubs in the American League were still clustered together in the league standings. Cleveland jumped out first as April drew to a close, leading the New York Yankees and the Washington Senators by 1½ games. Boston was holding down last place, but the […]

Cubs announcer Harry Caray began his WGN-TV broadcast on May 27, 1984, by proclaiming it to be “a beautiful day for baseball at Wrigley Field in Chicago as the Chicago Cubs take on the troublesome Cincinnati Reds.”1 Troublesome, indeed. The Reds won the first two games of the three-game weekend series. The losses put a […]

Late in the Minnesota Twins’ inaugural season of 1961, the team noted that its final Saturday game, on September 30, would be played on the same day as a home game for the Minnesota Gophers football team at Memorial Stadium in Minneapolis. The Twins changed their game time from the usual 1:30 in the afternoon […]

Futility is defined as a “lack of effectiveness or success.” Baseball has had many examples in its history. For one, the Chicago Cubs, who went over 100 years without winning a World Series. The Boston Red Sox endured 86 years without a title. It can also be evidenced in individual performance. A prime example occurred […]

On August 9, 2009, Felix Pie became just the second Baltimore Orioles player to hit for the cycle in a Baltimore ballpark. In the game, Baltimore batters smashed a record nine doubles as part of a 19-hit attack and defeated the Anaheim Angels, 16-6. Orioles rookie Chris Tillman picked up his first career win before […]

Opening Day is often celebrated with significant pageantry and optimism for new beginnings. The first day of a new baseball season carries even more meaning for those overcoming substantial hurdles during the journey back to the diamond. When Herb Score walked to Cleveland Stadium’s mound on Opening Day in 1958, he returned to the same […]

As the month of August 1983 came to a close, the battle for first place in the National League East division heated up. Pittsburgh (68-63) led second-place Philadelphia (67-64) by one game. Montreal (66-64) and St. Louis (65-65) were 1½ and 2½ games back, respectively. The final month of the season promised some exciting baseball […]

There was bad blood between the second-place Atlanta Braves (51-39) and fourth-place Cincinnati Reds (45-39) as they prepared to open a four-game, three-day series with a doubleheader on Tuesday, July 15, 1969, at Cincinnati’s Crosley Field. The teams were fighting it out in a four-team Western Division scramble and beginning their final week of action […]

The 1985 All-Star Game – a 6-1 National League win at the Hubert H. Humphrey Metrodome in Minneapolis – lacked drama. For the crowd of 54,960, that may have been disappointing. But for members of the Metropolitan Sports Facilities Commission, which operated the stadium, it was a relief. In its fourth season as home of […]

On the day of Whitey Herzog’s first game as manager of the St. Louis Cardinals, he found himself, somewhat baffled, in Marietta, Georgia, trying to get to the team hotel in nearby Atlanta. His misadventure began when he was given the wrong departure time for his flight. Then, after catching a later plane to Atlanta, […]

Using the minimum four at-bats needed, Aubrey Huff hit for the cycle on June 29, 2007, becoming the first Baltimore Orioles player to do so in a Baltimore ballpark. Along the way, he collected his 1,000th career hit. Despite Huff’s personal milestone performance, his club squandered a lead late in the game and the Orioles […]

Bob Welch may be most famous for his epic strikeout of Reggie Jackson to end Game Two of the 1978 World Series. He did that as a 21-year-old rookie for the Los Angeles Dodgers. But the tall, lean right-hander enjoyed many other highlights over a 17-year career. He won 211 games, including 27 in 1990, when he […]

Ruth Kramer Hartman played for the Fort Wayne Daisies of the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League during the 1946 and 1947 regular seasons, then with the Grand Rapids Chicks in the 1947 league playoffs. Before playing in the AAGPBL, Ruth was one of the top softball pitchers in her hometown of Reading, Pennsylvania. After baseball […]

Though a renowned power hitter in 12 seasons in the Pacific Coast League and a bit player in a handful of films at midcentury, Frankie Kelleher’s top billing as a slugger and a star is perhaps dubiously enshrined in a one-night performance he sparked on a hot Los Angeles Sunday afternoon in 1953, a scene […]

On April 29, 1995, rookie right fielder Jon Nunnally became the first Kansas City Royals player to hit a home run in his first big-league at-bat. Five years later, on June 28, 2000, Nunnally did it again, when he homered on his first plate appearance as a player for the Orix BlueWave in Osaka, Japan. […]

“Being Irish, he had an abiding sense of tragedy, which sustained him through temporary periods of joy.” This remark has been credited (dubiously) to the Irish poet William Butler Yeats, a contemporary of Boston pitcher Jim Sullivan. This saying could apply to Sullivan starting in the mid-1890s, when he experienced deep sorrow repeatedly. At least […]

As confetti filled the sky within Raymond James Stadium on January 9, 2017, Clemson assistant football coach Bill Spiers soaked it all in. The Tigers — representing his alma mater, and the team of which his son Will was a member — had just beaten the Alabama Crimson Tide 35-31 in a dramatic national championship […]

Fleet-footed Dode Paskert was one of the finest defensive center fielders of the Deadball Era. “It is no exaggeration to say that Paskert is one of the greatest judges of a fly ball in the game today,” wrote Baseball Magazine‘s J. C. Kofoed in 1915. “Those who have seem him circle, hawk-like, turn his back […]

“Giants Slain By Mere Boy,” was the headline of the October 10, 1913 edition of the Boston Globe, reporting on 20-year old Joe Bush’s defeat of John McGraw’s New York Giants and their 22-game winner, Jeff Tesreau, that paved the way for the Philadelphia Athletics’ World Championship that year. Bush, known as “Bullet Joe,” became […]

The son of an All-Star, a two-time All-American at Harvard University, and a first-round draft pick, Mike Stenhouse seemed destined to thrive in the majors. But in a five-year career with three teams that never saw him play in more than half the schedule, Stenhouse never hit. While he did not make the postseason roster […]

Signed as a shortstop by the New York Giants in 1949, Foster Castleman appeared in 170 games with them in four seasons (1954-57). Finally in 1958 the Baltimore Orioles platooned the right-handed-hitting Castleman with switch-hitter Willy Miranda at shortstop. Castleman had begun his pro career as a heralded fielder, but three knee surgeries had taken […]

Here is a list of all known players to have hit four or more home runs in a single professional game, first published by SABR founding member Bob McConnell in The Minor League Research Journal, Volume 2 (1997), updated in Going for the Fences: The Minor League Home Run Record Book (2009), and now maintained […]