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Though standing just 5′ 6″ and weighing as little as 135 pounds at the start of his career, “Wee” Tommie Leach was nonetheless one of the better “power” hitters of the first decade of the 20th century. Over the course of a 19-year career in the National League, Leach finished in the top ten six […]

A “short, stocky, active, aggressive” second baseman, Otto Knabe teamed with shortstop Mickey Doolan to provide the Phillies with one of the most notorious double-play tandems of the Deadball Era.1 After seven years in Philadelphia, Knabe jumped to the Federal League in 1914 to lead the Baltimore Terrapins. But in Baltimore and two later minor […]

June 19, 1911, was Trace Baker’s debut in professional baseball, and the last day of his playing career. So it would appear. And he didn’t really do anything wrong, but he wasn’t invited back to play again. Baker played for the Boston Red Sox that day, for manager Patsy Donovan. The Red Sox were in […]

The game at Griffith Stadium was pretty much a lost cause, after Walter Johnson’s Washington Senators had scored eight times in three innings off starter Danny MacFayden and relievers Jim Brillheart and Big Ed Morris. Walter Murphy was the fourth pitcher in the game, and he threw a scoreless bottom of the eighth, facing four […]

Pitcher James “Doc” McJames was a refined renaissance man during a rough-hewn era of our national pastime. The colorful and well-spoken Southern gentleman was considered to be one of the most intelligent men in baseball. McJames’ rapid if brief ascent into stardom and eventual decline took place during the late 19th and early 20th century. […]

A smooth-fielding, hard-hitting first baseman, Kitty Bransfield helped form the nucleus of the juggernaut Pittsburgh Pirates that dominated the National League from 1901 to 1903. Yet in the great tradition of baseball superstitions, his departure from Pittsburgh after a dismal 1904 season left such a void that the club’s decades-long quest for another adequate first […]

It was Smoky Joe Wood vs. Jeff Tesreau once more in Game Four of the 1912 World Series, and once more Wood came out on top. Tesreau got off to a shaky start in the top of the first, when Harry Hooper singled through the box and catcher Chief Meyers pounced on Steve Yerkes’ bunt […]

At the close of the 1908 baseball season, Cleveland pitcher Addie Joss in a syndicated newspaper column called Honus Wagner “one of the greatest players baseball has ever produced.” It was a commonly held belief in and around baseball that the 34-year-old was the game’s best player. Joss talked about Wagner’s “size and build,” his […]

Pittsburgh’s Chief Wilson set the major league single-season triple records by stroking his 36th three-bagger during the Pirates’ final game of the season, an away contest in Cincinnati. On the same day but in St. Louis, Cleveland’s Shoeless Joe Jackson raced around the diamond for his 26th triple of the season, establishing the American League […]

The Cincinnati Reds’ Fred Toney was a big, 6-foot-2, rugged 200-pound pitcher, but even he didn’t expect to take the mound twice on a hot summer day in the Queen City. The Reds were in the midst of a grueling stretch of games when they prepared for a Sunday- afternoon twin bill with the Pittsburgh […]

The Boston Red Sox had finished 14 games ahead of the Washington Senators in the American League standings. The New York Giants had finished 10 games ahead of second-place Pittsburgh. Though the 1912 Red Sox had won 105 games, the Giants weren’t going to be pushovers. They’d won 103 themselves. They had driven in more […]

The Pittsburgh Pirates, two-time defending National League champions, opened the 1903 season with four games at Cincinnati, which they swept, outscoring the Reds 27-11.1 The second four-contest series between the two clubs started on May 7, this time at Pittsburgh’s Exposition Park. Pittsburgh had won eight of the 14 games since the initial series and […]

 Boston’s Tris Speaker, described in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch as “the greatest center fielder playing the game today,”1 led the Red Sox in a 9-2 romp over the St. Louis Browns, as he hit for the cycle, collecting a single, double, triple and home run in the same game. The 1912 American League Bostonians were […]

The Boston Red Sox played their first game under that name on April 14, 1908, at the Huntington Avenue Grounds in Boston. After the franchise was launched in 1901, they had gone through seven seasons without a formal name, but they were often known as the Boston Americans, since they played in the American League […]

Charles Lindbergh’s nonstop solo flight across the Atlantic in May of 1927 brought him overnight worldwide acclaim. No more than a thousand well-wishers saw the former stunt pilot take off from Roosevelt Field on Long Island, New York, but as many as 150,000 were on hand when his Spirit of St. Louis touched down in […]

The 1911 Boston Red Sox were nothing to write home about. They finished tied for fourth place with the Chicago White Sox, both 24 games behind the pennant-winning Philadelphia Athletics. Any Red Sox fan who happened to be in Detroit’s Bennett Park, though, on this Saturday afternoon might have written back to Boston about this […]

Elected to the National Baseball Hall of Fame in 2025, left-handed reliever Billy Wagner had a career 2.31 earned-run average in 853 games over 16 major-league seasons. He was a seven-time All-Star with 422 saves, eighth-most in big-league history through the 2024 season. He pitched for five different teams, working the longest with the Houston […]

Smoky Joe Wood was truly beginning to blossom as a Boston Red Sox pitcher in 1911. After reaching double-digits in wins in both 1909 (11-7) and 1910 (12-13, but with a 1.69 ERA), the 21-year-old right-hander came into his July 29 start in the first game of a doubleheader against the St. Louis Browns with […]

Honus Wagner was one of the greatest players in baseball history. Bill James’s 2001 New Bill James Historical Abstract listed the Pennsylvania native and longtime Pittsburgh Pirates shortstop as the second best player of all time, with only Babe Ruth ranked ahead of him.1 Elsewhere, James wrote, “Wagner was a legendary figure in that era, […]

The 1915 Red Sox won 101 games and the American League pennant, and needed only five games to beat the Philadelphia Phillies in the World Series, but they didn’t really get going until June. They had a losing record in April and were 15-15 entering the final day of May. The Red Sox were 3-3 […]

With baseball nearing the end of its second season of play since the United States declared war on Germany and entered World War I, the game’s continued operation was being called into question by high-ranking military officials, particularly the provost marshal of the US Army, General Enoch Crowder, who was in charge of the military […]

Boston’s Fenway Park is pictured in 1912, the year it opened as home of the Boston Red Sox. (LIBRARY OF CONGRESS)   The first regular-season game ever played at Fenway Park took place on April 20, 1912.1 The Boston Red Sox hosted the New York Highlanders (often already being called the Yankees).2 Construction had been done […]

Prior to the start of Game Two of the 1918 World Series, Fred Mitchell, manager of the National League pennant-winning Chicago Cubs, recalled George “Lefty” Tyler’s previous World Series appearance. Mitchell earned his current position at the helm of the Cubs from successful work with his pitchers, especially Tyler, during his tenure in Boston. During […]

When Chicago Cubs rookie Vic Saier stole second base against the Cincinnati Reds in the second game of a doubleheader on September 7, 1911, few recognized the significance of the event. Reds catcher John “Larry” McLean was unable to throw out the fleet-footed Saier, snapping his streak of 14 baserunners caught stealing.1 As of the […]