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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 […]

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 […]

Meat seems to have been the family business, and working with meat was apparently more in Dutch Lerchen’s skill set than baseball. Still, he tried his hand at playing ball, making the major leagues at least briefly as a shortstop for the Boston Red Sox. The year was 1910. He was born Bertram Roe Lerchen, in […]

In 1909 Joe Bernard was a bookkeeper for Springfield Marine Bank in Illinois, playing baseball two or three games a week for local amateur teams and a semipro club in Gillespie, Illinois. The 27-year-old, 6-foot-1, 175-pound righthander had never played a game in the minor leagues. His chances of ever pitching in the major leagues […]

Frank Mulroney came from Mallard, Iowa, a right-hander. He was born 12 days before the Boston Americans opened the 1903 season, on their way to winning the first World Series ever played. On April 8, 1903, John P. Mulroney, a retail merchant of groceries, and his wife Alice (Cullen) welcomed their second child to the […]

A versatile fielder who could play second, third, or short, Heinie Zimmerman rose to prominence with the Chicago Cubs during the early teens as a lovable eccentric whose aggressive batting style won the loyalty of fans and the respect of opposing pitchers. But despite winning the National League’s Triple Crown in 1912, the lifetime .295 […]

Bob Quinn was a baseball man for more than 60 years. He started as a player in the 1880s, although he never made the majors, and then became a business manager/general manager. At various points from 1917 through 1945, he held this role at the big-league level with the St. Louis Browns, the Brooklyn Dodgers […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

It was just past the midpoint of the 1901 season.1 Pittsburgh had been in first place in the National League since June 11. At the close of play on July 22, the Pirates held a slim, two-game lead over the St. Louis Cardinals. The next day, Pittsburgh began a three-game series against the seventh-place Cincinnati […]

The Pittsburgh Pirates came home from a six-game road trip to St. Louis and Cincinnati with excitement in the air on Tuesday, June 29, 1909. A new ballpark was about to be opened to much fanfare and the guests for the occasion were the 37-21 Chicago Cubs, led by manager Frank Chance. Over the past […]

The Chicago Cubs were clinging to a slim lead atop the National League standings in July 1915 when they hosted the Cincinnati Reds in a two-day, four-game series. Two sets of doubleheaders had been scheduled on consecutive days. The two teams had met the previous week in Cincinnati, where they had faced off for five […]

Cy Young pitched the first no-hitter of his career on September 18, 1897, for the National League’s Cleveland Spiders. His second was a perfect game for the American League’s Boston Americans on May 5, 1904. His third no-hitter was against the New York Highlanders on June 30, 1908 – and it was the second time […]

In The Science of Hitting, Ted Williams wrote, “I had a higher percentage of game-winning home runs than Babe Ruth.”1 Research shows that Ted Williams had 110 game-deciding home runs, among the 521 he hit (21.11 percent). Ruth hit 126 game-winners of his own total of 714 (17.65 percent). A “game-winning home run” is defined […]

George McQuinn led the offense as the Browns swept the Boston Red Sox, 9-3 and 4-3, in a doubleheader at Sportsman’s Park on July 19, 1941. McQuinn’s 4-for-5 performance in the first game included the only batter’s cycle of the 1941 season. McQuinn, considered the best defensive first baseman in the American League at the […]

Philadelphia resident George McFadden was there bright and early. There would be 6,055 games played in the history of Shibe Park (renamed Connie Mack Stadium decades later), and no one knows how many games Mr. McFadden attended. His claim to fame is that he was the first fan to enter the sparkling new and innovative […]

The sixth game of the 1912 World Series was the one that produced the most controversy. Rube Marquard was the obvious choice for the New York Giants, after his 2-1 victory over Boston in Game Three, but there was some concern that “Marquard’s arm has gone awry.”1 If so, John McGraw would probably turn to […]

After 15 seasons of pitching for the New York Giants, many of them dominant, Christy Mathewson was clearly not himself as the 1915 season began. The revered “Matty” lost his first three starts, posting a 4.50 ERA over that span. He was reported to have taken up the spitball for the first time – though […]

On September 17, 1898, Bill Phyle of the National League’s Chicago Orphans became the first Native American to pitch in a major-league game, whitewashing the Washington Senators, 9-0 at Boundary Field in Washington. In so doing, Phyle also became only the second Native American to appear in a major-league game, a season after Louis Sockalexis […]

This article was published in the 1996 Baseball Research Journal (Volume 25).   While there have been 565 1-0 major league games won by a home run since 1876 (Ted Williams did the honors five times), diligent research into the last 100 years has uncovered only sixteen 1-0 games won by a steal of home. […]