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The Chicago White Sox right-hander Big Ed Walsh “slobber-balled along,” gushed Windy City sportswriter Henry David, “his flow of expectoration kept up round after round.”1 Beat reporter I.E. Sanborn of the Tribune was equally excited about the hurler’s wet ones, declaring that Walsh pitched “steadily, deliberately, and carefully with his spitball breaking wonderfully.”2 Big Ed […]

Opening Day 1910 was quite a day for both of Boston’s major-league teams. The city’s National League team (known as the Doves at the time) was at home, the South End Grounds, against the New York Giants. After being held hitless by Red Ames through seven innings and trailing, 2-0, the Doves forced extra innings […]

What happens when the worst team in the American League meets the worst team in the Class B Interstate League for a late-season offday exhibition game? Only 956 people could have told you firsthand, because that was the paltry reported crowd on the night of September 7, 1943, when the Philadelphia Athletics (44-84, 35½ games […]

With Judd Boyce Doyle—known as Slow Joe Doyle—on the mound for the New York Highlanders, perhaps it’s no wonder that this game against the visiting Boston Americans dragged on and on for more than two full hours (!) before it was called due to rain at the end of 10 innings, with neither club victorious. […]

A respectable crowd1 passed through the turnstiles at the Polo Grounds for a Monday afternoon matchup between the top two teams in the National League, the New York Giants and the Chicago Cubs. Included in the audience were sailors from the German Navy,2 whose ships were docked in the Hudson River. Chicago (24-18) came into […]

The third-place New York Giants and the cellar-dwelling Boston Braves had little to play for on the final day of the 1929 season; neither team could finish any higher in the National League standings. The only significant unresolved item was the NL home-run race, where the Giants’ Mel Ott was just one homer behind league […]

As June 1925 began, the race in the National League was close, but not that close. The four-time defending NL champion New York Giants held a 4½-game lead over the Brooklyn Robins. The Pittsburgh Pirates were in third place, and the Philadelphia Phillies were one spot back of the Pirates, tied with the Cincinnati Reds, […]

It looked as though it was going to be a split doubleheader on Tuesday, June 2, 1908, at New York City’s Hilltop Park. The New York Highlanders were hosting the Boston Red Sox, in the first season that Boston’s American League team was named the Red Sox. The doubleheader resulted from a rainout on April […]

In 1928, right-hander Ed Carroll’s six losses did more to win him a major-league berth than the six games he won that same year. He went on to an undefeated rookie year, pitching for a last-place team. Edgar Fleischer Carroll came from Baltimore, where he was born on July 27, 1907, the son of William […]

“Rarely has there been a baseball player as good as George Grantham whom it was so difficult to settle in one regular position.” — James J. Long, Pittsburgh Sun-Telegraph 1   George Grantham, 5-foot-10 and 170 pounds in his prime, was tough and durable. A perennial .300 hitter despite frequent nagging injuries, he had unexpected […]

Dwight Lowry spent the bulk of his four-year major-league career as a backup catcher for the Detroit Tigers between 1984 and 1987, including an extended stay with the 1984 Tigers during their championship run. Aside from his early tragic death after a heart attack, he is best known as one of the relatively few American […]

Though his reign as one of the National League’s top pitchers was short-lived, Howie Camnitz was the undisputed ace of the Pittsburgh Pirates pitching staff during their World Championship season of 1909. That season Camnitz, a right-handed curveball specialist, tied for the NL lead in winning percentage (25-6, .806) and ranked fourth in ERA (1.62). […]

Johnny Marcum was a farm boy from Eminence, Kentucky, the son of Kentucky natives Ben and Grace Marcum. The second oldest of five children, three boys and two girls, he was born on a farm at Campbellsburg, about a dozen miles north of Eminence, on September 9, 1909. When John was three years old, the […]

Dave “Beauty” Bancroft was Honus Wagner‘s successor as the National League’s premier shortstop. A brainy on-field leader with tremendous defensive range, Bancroft was especially adept at scooping up bad-hop grounders and cutting off outfield throws to hang up runners between bases. He believed that “the business of batting and fielding is a contention between minds,” […]

Shortstop Lewis Everett “Deacon” Scott was the steady infield leader of championship Red Sox and Yankee teams of the 1910s and 1920s. Beginning June 20, 1916, and ending May 6, 1925, he played in 1,307 consecutive games, which was the major league record until Lou Gehrig and then Cal Ripken broke it. Not only was Scott an […]

Ben Shields threw left-handed but batted from the right side, rather than the more customary “bats left/throw right.” He was born in North Carolina, but died in South Carolina. He pitched for the New York Yankees and then for the Boston Red Sox. He almost lost his life to tuberculosis between his stints with the […]

After his rookie season in 1918, Chicago Cubs shortstop Charlie Hollocher was hailed in some circles as the next Honus Wagner, one of the first five inductees in the National Baseball Hall of Fame. He was also mentioned in the same breath as another all-time great. “For a time it seemed as though Rogers Hornsby, […]

Art Fletcher was the leader of one of the Deadball Era’s finest infields—Merkle at first, Doyle at second, Fletcher at short, and Herzog at third. “If there be one among the gamesters of baseball who is gamer than the rest, that man be Fletcher,” wrote sportswriter Frank Graham. In the early teens the New York […]

Owen Wilson is most remembered for hitting 36 triples in 1912, which is not only a major league record, but also a record for all of organized baseball. To the modern fan, that fact conjures up images of a speedy leadoff hitter racing around the bases, but that image does not square with Owen Wilson. […]

Adam DeBus was one of many “cup of coffee” major leaguers, spending about six weeks with the 1917 Pittsburgh Pirates. By all accounts he was a marginal player, having played only 2½ previous seasons of professional baseball at the Class C level. His opportunity in the big leagues was probably due more to wartime manpower […]

Left-handed pitcher Ray Dobens graduated as a bachelor of philosophy from Worcester, Massachusetts’ College of the Holy Cross on June 19, 1929 and signed a Boston Red Sox contract that same day. Eighteen days later, he broke in with the Boston Red Sox. College teammate Bots Nekola signed with the Yankees and had to wait nine more days for his first game. They […]

A two-year stint with the Cincinnati Reds, a fight with Honus Wagner, followed by a lengthy career as a successful mid-Michigan baseball man highlighted the career of John Albert Morrissey. Born to Irish immigrant parents in Lansing, Michigan, on May 2, 1876, he was the eldest child of Thomas and Catherine Morrissey. His father was […]

A turn-of-the-century minor-league standout, Joe Bean was among those auditioned at shortstop by the pre-McGraw New York Giants. Sadly, Bean failed to impress, his hitting and fielding being deemed below big-league caliber. After appearing in 50 games, Bean was released by New York in late June of 1902. Thus came to its close the brief […]

With two major leaguers, a third brother, Charles, who coached the Villanova University baseball team for more than two decades, and a fourth, Hugh, who coached the Hazleton High School basketball team to three state titles, the McGeehan family of Luzerne County, Pennsylvania, built a towering sports legacy in the first third of the 20th […]