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Excepting some otherwise brief ventures as a young man, this 14-year-old runaway spent nearly 60 years in professional baseball as player, manager, owner, innovator and groundskeeper. In this latter capacity, Henry Fabian was considered “one of the great masters of his craft.”1 St. Louis Browns owner Bob Hedges tried to entice him from the Texas […]

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 […]

The story is almost apocryphal, existing somewhere on that boundary between real and remembered. As it is most often told, a 10- (or perhaps 11-) year-old Art Pennington was on an afternoon fishing trip with his mother. As they began the trip home, one of the Essex’s balloon tires went flat. Art hopped out of […]

A switch-hitting reserve catcher (.228 career batting average) who came up in the Red Sox farm system, Tim Blackwell had his best season at the plate as a Chicago Cub, hitting .272 and catching full-time in 1980. Blackwell grew up in San Diego and participated in Little League baseball. A star in two sports at […]

On September 27, 1920, suspicions about the integrity of the previous year’s World Series between the Chicago White Sox and Cincinnati Reds were given substance by a self-admitted fix insider named Billy Maharg. In an interview first published in the Philadelphia North American and syndicated nationwide immediately thereafter, Maharg maintained that a number of Chicago […]

“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: […]

Jim Brewer called himself a screwball, and he threw one. It saved his career. After three years of trying, the left-hander mastered the delivery with help from a Hall of Famer. Beginning when he was 30 years old, he fashioned a six-year run as the Los Angeles Dodgers’ late-inning fireman. Brewer became most famous for […]

Although Marty Castillo appeared in only 70 games for the 1984 Detroit Tigers, he is best remembered for his clutch postseason production. Not only did Castillo knock in the winning run to clinch the pennant in the third game of the American League Championship Series, but he also put the Tigers ahead to stay in […]

On May 5, 1943, the Chicago Tribune was chock-full of news. For a cost of 3 cents, one could absorb 48 pages from the Trib, self-described as the “World’s Greatest Newspaper.” With the United States nearing its 17th month as a combatant in World War II, the bulk of the front page centered on military […]

As members of the Society for American Baseball Research descended on the Sheraton West Palm Beach Hotel for SABR’s 30th annual convention, the Chicago Cubs came to town in a “circus-like” atmosphere to face off against the Florida Marlins. The South Florida Chapter of SABR was busy preparing for the first-ever SABR convention in Florida, […]

A beautiful Labor Day 2006 matinee in Washington, DC, seemed unlikely to produce a pitching masterpiece. The National League Central Division-leading St. Louis Cardinals were at Robert F. Kennedy Stadium to face the Washington Nationals, who were last in the NL East Division. The Cardinals had won seven of their last nine games, while twice […]

No matter your perspective, the 1919 Patriots Day opening day doubleheader at Braves Field just didn’t feel the same as those previously played in the twentieth century. Many things swirled in the festive atmosphere that April 19, including the lingering sweet aroma of the January 15 molasses tank explosion/flood tragedy in the North End that […]

The Cleveland Indians were still reeling from a wretched nine-game losing streak from August 15 to 24 when they traveled to New York City for a three-game series with the Yankees starting on August 31, 2004. On August 14 Cleveland defeated the Minnesota Twins 7-1 for their sixth consecutive victory, and pulled within a single […]

On the afternoon of June 10, 1944, just 3,510 individuals came out to Crosley Field for a contest between the Cincinnati Reds and the league-leading St. Louis Cardinals, who were working toward a third straight pennant. Cincinnati was tied for second place, percentage points behind the Pittsburgh Pirates and 3½ games behind St. Louis. The […]

The Chicago Cubs led the National League in home runs in 1986, and their game against the San Francisco Giants on July 19 was one of six times during the season in which they hit four round-trippers. Their home-run outburst was the difference in a comeback win against the first-place Giants. All-Star second baseman Ryne […]

Being a left-handed pitcher at Fenway Park can be difficult. After all, the Green Monster stands as an awe-inspiring, 37-foot-high target for any right-handed batter who dares to take advantage of the short distance to left field. In fact, before the 2002 season, it had been nine years since a Boston Red Sox lefty had […]

A transformation of baseball’s fandom in St. Louis was undeniably apparent in 1998. Crowds pouring into Busch Stadium had shifted their fans-in-the stands appreciation moments from stolen bases, pitching skill, and defensive gems of the 1980s to batting practice, the booth announcer, and home-run derby. Despite the fact that a disappointing season in the standings […]

The team that was the last to integrate had been – 26 years earlier – the first to field a native of Mexico in the major leagues. The team was the Boston Red Sox, who took until 1959 to field a Black ballplayer – Pumpsie Green. In 1933, however, when Baldomero Melo “Mel” Almada took […]

On April 6, 1970, the Cincinnati Reds were a club transitioning from one era to another. By midseason the Reds would leave their longtime home at Crosley Field for the brand-new Riverfront Stadium. Without necessarily knowing it, the Reds stood on the brink of the most successful era in team history. Expectations were raised. Cincinnati […]

This is a tale of two 24-year-old right-handed starting pitchers, two lefty relievers, and a Tuesday night matchup at Pittsburgh’s Three Rivers Stadium that produced what the New York Times called a game of “classic pitching and outrageous contrasts,” as José DeLeón of the Pittsburgh Pirates and Ron Darling of the New York Mets rewrote […]

The Mets have an unusual affinity for finding themselves in notable marathons. Take that late May 1964 game at Shea Stadium, for instance — a nightcap of a doubleheader that went on for 23 innings and nearly 7½ hours and ended in a San Francisco Giants victory behind Gaylord Perry’s 10 frames of relief. Fast-forward […]

Ralph Kiner’s 301 home runs, the product of an unparalleled slugging spree in the late 1940s and early 1950s, ranked first in Pittsburgh Pirates franchise history when Willie Stargell made his big-league debut in 1962. Blossoming into a prodigious, consistent power threat over the next decade, Stargell overtook Kiner in 1973 with his 302nd career […]

Christian Vázquez’s home run into the Green Monster seats atop Fenway Park’s left-field wall on October 10, 2021, off Luis Patiño of the Tampa Bay Rays, was the sixth walk-off home run in Boston Red Sox playoff history.1 That it came in the bottom of the 13th inning made it the latest-ever Red Sox walk-off […]

On June 21, 1967, the fourth-place Boston Red Sox faced the ninth-place New York Yankees in the second game of a two-game set at Yankee Stadium. The Red Sox had easily won the previous game, 7-1, behind the five-hit pitching of Gary Bell and home runs by Joe Foy and Carl Yastrzemski. The loss was New […]