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It was one of the most famous trades in baseball history. On December 11, 1959, the Kansas City Athletics sent Joe DeMaestri, Kent Hadley, and Roger Maris to the New York Yankees for Hank Bauer, Don Larsen, Norm Siebern, and Marv Throneberry. For Hadley, the trade effectively ended his major-league career. Kent William Hadley was […]

The boy loved baseball. As a teenager he was the best baseball player in his hometown. But Charlie Gould probably never dreamed of playing baseball for a living. His future career was more likely as a clerk or perhaps as a bookkeeper. At that time, there were no openly all-professional baseball clubs, where a young […]

Most baseball fans are aware of “The Shot Heard ’Round the World,”  Bobby Thomson’s dramatic ninth-inning home run off Ralph Branca that won the 1951 pennant for the New York Giants. Fewer may be cognizant of Whitey Lockman’s role in setting the stage for that climatic event. Had Lockman not made a crucial hit before […]

In the American League’s first-ever season-ending tiebreaker, the Cleveland Indians’ rookie sensation, Gene Bearden, faced the Boston Red Sox on October 4, 1948 at Fenway Park. At stake was who would face the Boston Braves in the World Series. Bearden’s last two starts had been shutout victories, giving him a 19-7 won-lost record for the […]

Emery Adams pitched during 11 years in the top Negro Leagues, from 1932 to 1947, with military service during World War II explaining one break in his statistical record. Two earlier gaps seemingly resulted from run-ins with the law, but a jury acquitted him of the serious charge that might have cost him the entire […]

John Arthur “Long John” Johnson played briefly with the 1939 Baltimore Elite Giants. He had a professional baseball career, in the second Negro National League, that spanned nine seasons from 1938 to 1946. A pitcher – starting and relief – he threw right-handed and batted left-handed; he stood 6-feet-3 and weighed 182 pounds. Johnson’s career […]

As a rookie with the 1947 Chicago American Giants, Johnny Ritchey won the Negro American League batting title. The following year he broke the Pacific Coast League color barrier playing for his hometown San Diego Padres. In 1951, he became the first Black professional baseball player in Vancouver, British Columbia, and won the Western International […]

After a highly successful playing career as both a slick-fielding infielder and a slugger, Davey Johnson went on to an even more decorated career as a manager. His winning percentage of .562 is 10th all-time among managers with 1,000 victories, and is surpassed by only Earl Weaver among pilots who began their career after 1960. […]

Played out before the empty seats of Washington’s Griffith and D.C. Stadiums in the early 1960s, the “breath-takingly impressive”1 launch of Ken Retzer’s career was nearly “invisible to the [national sports]writers … [to the point that he was] mistakenly identified as Dick Retzer” in a Sporting News article about the rich crop class of rookie […]

Candy Cummings, at first glance, appears to be one of the least qualified pitchers in the Baseball Hall of Fame. His major-league won-lost record is usually listed as 21-22, because most career totals begin with the formation of the National League in 1876. Cummings earned his stardom in amateur play during the late 1860s and […]

Tom Ferrick was a baseball lifer. The right-hander won Game Three of the 1950 World Series, pitching in relief for the Yankees, a high point of a playing career in the majors that spanned 12 years. He served three years in the Navy in World War II and pitched for five teams from 1941 to […]

Al Blanche pitched only 33 1/3 innings in the major leagues, all in relief for the woeful Boston Braves/Bees of 1935-36. A star at Providence College who attracted no major league scouts, the tall, slender Italian right-hander pitched batting practice for the Braves until given his own opportunity. While having a short baseball career, Blanche […]

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 […]

  Montréal Expos’ owner Charles R. Bronfman, wearing his familiar uniform number 83 at spring training, West Palm Beach, Florida, March 1969. (McCord Museum, Montréal)   For 22 years, the name Charles Bronfman was synonymous with major-league baseball in Montréal. As the son of immigrants who made their fortune in the whiskey trade, Charles made […]

Few teams in baseball history have had the luxury of all but clinching their division as early as April. The 1986 New York Mets knew this better than most, having fought to 98 wins in 1985 only to miss the playoffs at the hands of their bitter National League East rivals, the St. Louis Cardinals, […]

It was an epic pitchers’ duel between the Philadelphia Athletics’ Jack Coombs and the Chicago White Sox’ Big Ed Walsh. “Sixteen scoreless innings of desperate pastiming with dusk the winner,”1 declared the Philadelphia Inquirer, while the Chicago Tribune opined, “[N]either side had the shadow of a right to win against such pitching.”2 Windy City sportswriter […]

Norm Bass got a surprise when he arrived at Municipal Stadium in Kansas City before an early-season game in 1961. Ray Herbert had been scheduled to start for Kansas City that night against the Minnesota Twins, but Athletics manager Joe Gordon told Bass he would be on the mound. Gordon wanted to spring the starting […]

After a breakout 1961 season during which he won 18 games and struck out a National League modern-day record 269 batters,1 Sandy Koufax was even better during the first months of the 1962 campaign. Prior to a Dodgers’ mid-June three-game series in Milwaukee, the 26-year-old had compiled an 8-2 record (3.02 ERA), with 131 strikeouts […]

If the baseball fans of Seattle had understood the significance of April 12, 1969, they might have arranged a parade, or perhaps a municipal celebration at Seattle Center with plenty of free-flowing Rainier beer.1 And certainly, more than 8,319 of them might have come out to Sick’s Stadium for the evening’s Seattle Pilots-Chicago White Sox […]

Legendary San Diego Padres closer Trevor Hoffman recorded 601 saves over the course of an illustrious 18-year major-league career, a mark that as of 2020 stood as the second-most saves by a major-league pitcher, behind only Mariano Rivera. The California native saved 40 or more games nine times, with two separate four-year stints of doing […]

Boston Red Sox first baseman Kevin Millar was apparently seeing the ball well in this Friday night game against the New York Yankees at Fenway Park. He homered three times, off three different pitchers, but all three came with the bases empty and were not enough to overcome an uncharacteristically poor start by Curt Schilling, […]

On Tuesday, June 15, 1965, majestic Tiger Stadium held 9,624 spectators who witnessed one of the most historic pitching accomplishments in Detroit Tigers history. The pitching matchup pitted Dave Wickersham (1-4) of the Tigers against Earl Wilson (4-4) of the Boston Red Sox. Wickersham, a 19-game winner in 1964, took the hill to start the […]

“A colleague and I were discussing whether there has been a modern-era athlete who meant more to his city than Gwynn. Some might say John Elway in Denver, or Cal Ripken in Baltimore, or Michael Jordan in Chicago. But were any of those legends their city’s sole source of greatness? No. … Were any of […]

Olive Little wasn’t particularly interested in joining the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League (AAGPBL) for its inaugural 1943 season – at least initially.1 She had a good teaching job in Poplar Point, Manitoba, and had been recently married. “Then they offered me twice as much in a week as I had been making in a […]