Search Results

The baseball fortunes of hard-throwing right-hander Frank Pfeffer turned on a single event: an offseason trade in the winter of 1905. The transaction dispatched Pfeffer from a Chicago Cubs club poised on the brink of National League domination to the sad-sack Boston Beaneaters, arguably the worst NL team of the Deadball Era. Worse yet for […]

With his short arms and legs, long torso, and ample midsection, right-hander Fat Freddie Fitzsimmons may not have looked like a major-league pitcher during his 19-year career with the New York Giants and Brooklyn Dodgers from 1925 to1943. But with one of baseball’s most effective knuckleballs and a deceptive, whirling delivery, he won 217 games. […]

It all started to unravel when they returned from Honolulu. A team of baseball all-stars from the Pacific Coast League had sailed across the blue Pacific for a post-season barnstorming escapade to Hawaii. It was 1914, and the ballplayers were surely enjoying what young men do in the tropics. It’s a wonder they ever came […]

John I. Taylor is one of the most controversial figures in Boston Red Sox history. After Boston won the first 20th-century World Series in 1903, American League president Ban Johnson faced a dilemma. The Boston championship team was owned and operated by Midwestern interests. Johnson wisely decided that the team should be sold to a […]

As he had done many times in recent years, Jimmie Foxx chose to spend the afternoon of July 21, 1967, with his younger brother, Sam. The two men lived close by one another in Miami, and often got together to reminisce about the elder Foxx’s legendary baseball career, in which he slugged 534 home runs, […]

If there had been a draft in the baseball world of 1890, a Chicago-born shortstop likely would have been the number one selection by any of the 24 teams of the three major leagues operating that season. In his prime of the 1890s, and even before, as he made his way toward national stardom, the […]

Gustave “Gus” Getz was perhaps the personification of the “good field, no hit” player. Typical of the Deadball Era, Getz relied on his glove, his ability to make contact with the bat, and his speed on the base paths to make it in professional baseball. Though he never achieved outstanding baseball success, he possessed a […]

“My only regret is that I can’t sit in the stands and watch myself pitch.”1 No one ever accused southpaw Bo Belinsky of being modest. And probably no pitcher in baseball history ever got more mileage out of 28 wins (against 51 defeats) in parts of eight big-seasons as Belinsky. Belinsky took baseball by storm […]

Andy Coakley is remembered most as “Lou Gehrig’s coach” in his 37 years as head of Columbia University’s baseball program. But this overlooks his extensive influence on the game. Once a promising right-hander with Connie Mack’s Athletics in the early 20th century, Coakley was also a labor pioneer, a forward-thinking league organizer, a team owner, […]

Bill McKinley was a steady, dependable American League umpire whose 20-season career, from 1946 to 1965, was marked by numerous highlights and one well-publicized low point. The highlights included four World Series assignments, three All-Star Games, five no-hitters—one behind the plate—and other historic moments. McKinley was working home plate in 1947 when Larry Doby of […]

Prominent in the baseball circles of his time but now forgotten, Bill Watkins spent more than thirty years as a player, manager, front office executive, and team owner of various major and high minor league franchises. His playing career short-circuited by a near fatal beaning in 1884, Watkins thereafter assumed the manager’s post for the […]

Tommy Lasorda. You could almost say he needs no introduction. Famous and familiar for his nearly 20 years as manager of the Los Angeles Dodgers, Lasorda was the personification of the Dodgers and baseball’s best-known ambassador. Profane or charming, pugnacious or proud, outrageous or simply outspoken, Lasorda could be all these and more. Lasorda’s major-league […]

Patrick Edward Dobson Jr. was born February 12, 1942, in Depew, New York, a small village ten miles east of Buffalo. In his youth, Pat often took the bus there to watch his heroes Joe Caffie and Luke Easter, stars of the Buffalo Bisons of the International League. Pat attended Lancaster Central High School, where […]

The Black Sox Scandal shocked the sporting public and led to fundamental changes in the governance of professional baseball. Central to this astonishing fix were eight Chicago White Sox ballplayers, including star center-fielder Oscar “Happy” Felsch. An unpretentious Milwaukee native, the “Pride of Teutonia Avenue” only left his hometown to play ball. Felsch, one of […]

In the foothills of the northernmost Green Mountains, just 16 miles from Vermont’s Canadian border, the village of Enosburg Falls proclaims itself “Dairy Center of the World.” Its annual Vermont Dairy Festival attracts thousands of visitors, but its population of slightly over 2,000 is roughly the same as it was more than a century ago. […]

Few individuals saw more Astros history than Alan Ashby. An Astro for 20 of their first 50 seasons, he spent eleven on the Astrodome carpet, coordinating one of the more challenging pitching staffs of his time. After one year as their bullpen coach Ashby moved to the broadcast booth for another eight, culminating with Houston’s […]

He was known as “The Tall Tactician” and was baseball’s grand old gentleman for more than a generation. Statuesque, stately, and slim, he clutched a rolled-up scorecard as he sat or stood ramrod straight in the dugout, attired in a business suit rather than a uniform, a derby or bowler in place of a baseball […]

When Shufflin’ Phil Douglas arrived on the baseball scene in 1910 at the tender age of 20, he brought with him size and a fastball impressive enough to draw comparisons to Walter Johnson’s. Douglas, a product of Cedartown, Georgia, was a big man, especially for that era, standing 6-feet-3 and weighing 190 pounds, who threw […]

Three Rivers Stadium; if it wasn’t the most picturesque coliseum in American sports history, it was perhaps one of the most perfectly named. In southwestern Pennsylvania, Pittsburgh, the county seat of Allegheny County, lies partly in a hilly region known as the Golden Triangle, the location of the city’s business district. For those unfamiliar with […]

From 1926 through 1976, a wooden stadium stood at the corner of King and Isenberg Streets in Honolulu, Hawaii. It was small, with capacity of only about 25,000.1 It lacked infrastructure. It was called “The Termite Palace” for its infestation. Yet, like so many ballparks of past eras, it had a simple charm. “The first […]

This article appears in SABR’s “Pride of Smoketown: The 1935 Pittsburgh Crawfords” (2020), edited by Frederick C. Bush and Bill Nowlin.   The Pittsburgh Crawfords franchise, one of the most famous in the history of black baseball, was started in 1926 by a group of youths connected to one of Pittsburgh’s neighborhood recreation clubs. For […]

The Washington Senators played at Griffith Stadium from 1911 to 1960 before leaving for Minnesota. The expansion Senators played one year there in 1961 before moving across town to D.C. Stadium, later called Robert F. Kennedy Stadium. (Library of Congress, Horydczak Collection)   When the National League dropped four cities, including Washington, after the 1899 […]

The San Diego Padres celebrated their 50th season in Major League Baseball in 2019. (SAN DIEGO PADRES)   San Diego’s quest for major-league baseball began earnestly in the mid- to late 1950s, around the time California’s largest cities, Los Angeles and San Francisco, ascended to “the bigs.” Home of the Pacific Coast League Padres since […]

Editor’s note: During our Stay Home With SABR initiative, enjoy these light-hearted Dispatches From the Mudville Bureau by Joanne Hulbert of SABR’s Boston Chapter to stay engaged with baseball until the games return. Check out what’s new and keep up with all the news in the Boston Chapter on Facebook at BostonSABR or on Instagram […]