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How many kids growing up have dreamed about playing in the major leagues and hitting a home run in their first major-league at-bat to win a game? Danny Sheaffer came close on April 9, 1987, while playing for the Boston Red Sox on the road against the Milwaukee Brewers. Having already passed the milestone of […]

After Fred Thomas of the Boston Red Sox left for the Navy in July of 1918, third base was a tough position for manager Ed Barrow to fill. Catcher Wally Schang played there on occasion, but the hot corner was mostly played by a succession of career minor leaguers. All had strengths and weaknesses as […]

Outfielder Al Shaw played from 1907 to 1909 with the St. Louis Cardinals, for nine end-of-season games in 1907 and for more than 100 games in each of the following two years. For the next four years he played in Single A and Double A, until he came back to the majors for the two […]

George Grosart had a short and tragic baseball career. He played seven games with the Boston Beaneaters in 1901 before joining the Dayton Old Soldiers in the Western Association. He went to spring training with Toledo in 1902 even though he was suffering from typhoid fever, and died on April 18, 1902, just a week […]

Quietly dependable though seldom spectacular for most of his five full major-league seasons as an infielder, Steve Yerkes grasped immortality when he played a central role in one of baseball’s legendary episodes. In the bottom of the 10th inning of the deciding game of the epic 1912 World Series, Yerkes raced home with the winning […]

A competent but colorless right-hander, Joe Lake had the misfortune of pitching for some of the Deadball Era’s worst American League teams. In six big-league seasons, he was never once a member of a winning team, and three of Lake’s clubs finished more than 50 games behind the pennant winner. Through it all, Joe labored […]

Frank Truesdale was the classic journeyman player. Generally a weak hitting switch hitter, he was also something of a stone hand around second base, his usual position. Truesdale possessed enough talent to latch on to several major league teams, yet not enough to stick around long.   Lacking in physical prowess, Truesdale stood 5’ 8” and […]

In 1928, “Big Ed” Morris’s first full season in the major leagues, the hard-throwing right-hander was one of the top pitchers in the game. That year he won 19 games for a woeful Boston Red Sox squad that finished last in the American League, 43½ games behind the pennant-winning New York Yankees. Amazingly, Morris completed […]

Eleanor Callow was more than just the greatest power hitter in All-American Girls Professional Baseball League (AAGPBL) history. On top of being the all-time leader in home runs and triples, Callow was perhaps the league’s best all-around position player. A speedy outfielder with a strong throwing arm, Callow ranks in the Top 10 in career […]

Infielder Bill Narleski may have lost some playing time due to serving more than three years in the infantry during the First World War, but he found that the Second World War gave him a couple of years he probably wouldn’t have otherwise had. His son Ray pitched for six seasons in the majors, winning […]

Native Philadelphian Monte Cross played short for the Phillies and Athletics during a particularly successful era in his city’s baseball history. After several earlier major-league stops, he manned the position for the slugging, first-division Phillies from 1898 to 1901. Then, jumping to the American League in 1902, Cross helped the Athletics to two pennants over […]

“He has nothing but a little curve and confidence,” Giants manager John McGraw said of his rookie pitcher Al Demaree in 1913.1 Yet after a late arrival to the majors, the right-hander contributed to four pennant-winning staffs over an eight-year career. Demaree also chronicled baseball, with humor and insight, as a cartoonist for several decades. […]

Saturday Night Live’s Garrett Morris popularized the line “Béisbol has been berry, berry good to me.” Long before that sketch, pitcher Bob Harmon was living proof of what a baseball career could do for the life of a player. He carefully managed his paychecks and invested in oil fields while still pitching for the St. […]

Jim Johnson may have second thoughts if he grew up in today’s era of millionaire ball players. However, the southpaw who pitched for one season with the 1970 San Francisco Giants, valued family and a desire to become an educator as more important values than remaining in the big leagues. Just as he did by […]

A scrappy outfielder, Nemo Leibold had a 13-year major-league career and played on four World Series teams, winning a championship with the Chicago White Sox in 1917 and another with the Washington Senators in 1924. Later a distinguished manager in the minor leagues from 1928 to 1948, Leibold is best known for passing through the […]

How about batting third in the lineup, between eventual Hall of Famers Max Carey and Honus Wagner, in your first major-league start? Frank Edington could rake, and he gave the second-place Pittsburgh Pirates an offensive shot in the arm for three weeks during the summer of 1912. Yet as it turned out, the 20-year-old never […]

A cursory glance at Jimmy Williams’ record does not capture his colorful 20-year path through minor- and major-league play. His final statistics reflect a slightly above-average player — but his solid career was speckled with historic participation and achievements, including one possibly unbreakable record. James Thomas Williams was born on December 20, 1876, in St. […]

Don Gutteridge always said he had a wonderful life. He was married to his wife, Helen, for 74 years. In his latter years, she was bedridden, but she was always there for him. “She pushed me on to do well,” he said. “She encouraged me and gave me a lot of confidence.”1  His son, Don Jr., […]

Here are the SABR Bookshelf listings for Summer 2014. To get your NEW book listed on The SABR Bookshelf, make sure a review copy is sent to: The SABR Bookshelf, Society for American Baseball Research, 4455 E. Camelback Rd., Ste. D-140, Phoenix, AZ 85018. An e-book file will also suffice; please send the e-book in […]

Mention the corner of Michigan and Trumbull to baseball fans in the Motor City, and they will immediately think of Tiger Stadium. While it is true that the Detroit Tigers played in that storied park, at that location, from 1912 to 1999, the history of professional baseball at “The Corner” actually dates back to 1896. […]

Fans at the Polo Grounds decided that they had seen enough after eight innings of the New York Giants’ 1907 home opener. With the Giants trailing the Philadelphia Phillies, 3-0, thousands streamed onto the field, mingling with the players. Virtually no police officers were in the ballpark to preserve order. Frustrated fans in the grandstand […]

Despite signing with the Chicago White Sox in mid-March, John Skopec had no guarantee of making the Opening Day roster in 1901 – it actually appeared that he would face a daunting uphill climb to do so.1 The White Sox, who won the 1900 pennant when the American League was a Class A minor league, […]

The long, record-setting, and sometimes turbulent career of umpire Joe West began about as quietly as could be imagined, in front of fewer than 1,000 paying customers on a rainy Tuesday evening in Atlanta on September 14, 1976. At age 23, West umpired his first big-league game in the first half of a doubleheader between […]

“You might say I’ve seen some pretty good pitching. But I’ve never seen anything like Smoky Joe Wood in 1912. He won 34 games that year, 10 of them shutouts, and 16 of those wins were in a row. It so happened that that was the same year Walter Johnson also won 16 in a […]