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The Milwaukee Braves expected a lot from 21-year-old Wade Blasingame, a “fireballing southpaw” set to start his first full big-league season in 1965.1 Four years earlier, the club had showered the highly-touted prospect from Fresno, California, with an unimaginable bonus of $125,000. Blasingame progressed through the Braves’ farm system, had a cup of coffee in 1963, and […]
For the first time since 1955, the Milwaukee Braves entered the final week of the season with National League pennant hopes out of reach. As they prepared to host the Pittsburgh Pirates on Sunday, September 25, 1960, in their home finale, the Braves’ postseason hopes were already dashed despite their taking the first two games […]
Ferguson Jenkins was not intimidated by many major-league hitters. Jenkins, the reigning National League Cy Young Award winner, respected every man who came to bat, but as one of the best pitchers in baseball in the early 1970s, he was confident in his ability to get outs. Still, there were a couple of players the […]
Hard-changing Minneapolis pulled to within a half-game game of first-place Wichita by sweeping the Braves in a doubleheader at Metropolitan Stadium on May 26. It was a spring day in name only as the cold rain and wind held the crowd down to 2,359. In the first game, Wichita, the Triple-A affiliate of the Milwaukee […]
Orioles pitcher Billy O’Dell was surprised when he was greeted by a host of reporters after the American League’s 4-3 win in the 1958 All-Star Game. Two days earlier, he believed he had no chance of getting into the game, and now he was the All-Star Game’s MVP. “I had good stuff all right,” O’Dell […]
The New York Mets entered the 1969 National League playoffs with their hopes riding on the arms of their young and talented pitching staff. But they won the first game of the series with their bats. After the Braves tagged Mets ace Tom Seaver for eight hits, including two home runs, Seaver’s teammates saved his […]
“I guess it shows they play ball in that other league too.” — National league manager Fred Hutchinson 1 Chicago’s Wrigley Field hosted the best of baseball on July 30, 1962, in front of a crowd of 38,359. The All-Star Games had started back in 1933 when the players congregated on Chicago’s South Side […]
What do you give as a birthday present to a person who already has everything? Well, in Ken Griffey Jr.’s case on the occasion of his father’s 50th birthday on April 10, 2000, the 30-year-old Cincinnati Reds outfielder delivered his 400th career home run. Ken Griffey Sr. was a former major leaguer himself, a three-time All-Star who […]
It was barely the third week of the 1961 season. A meager crowd of 8,518 fans huddled together in the confines of Milwaukee’s County Stadium, braving the cold weather. Their reward was witnessing Warren Spahn’s second career no-hitter. Five days after his 40th birthday, Spahn took the mound and pitched a gem, blanking the Giants […]
He wasn’t kin to former Dodger mound greats Dazzy Vance or Sandy Koufax, but Gene “Sandy” Vance1 was a vital component in manager Walter Alston’s Los Angeles rotation when Bill Singer was lost to unusual circumstances early in the 1970 season. Singer, a 20-game winner for the Dodgers in 1969, was sidelined by infectious […]
Amid the stalemate over a new ballpark between Mayor Robert Wagner of New York City, Brooklyn Dodgers President Walter F. O’Malley, and New York Giants owner Horace Stoneham, during which The Sporting News reported that “Wagner had nothing to offer, and O’Malley and Stoneham had nothing to accept or reject,”1 the games continued at Ebbets […]
It was a Goliath vs. Goliath situation. On July 14, 1967, Eddie Mathews smacked the 500th home run of his career — a three-run shot off fellow future Hall of Famer Juan Marichal. The Baseball Hall of Fame inducted Mathews in 1978, Marichal five years later. Wearing a Houston Astros uniform after a storied 15-year […]
On June 1, 1954, Brooklyn shut out the Braves, 2-0, in the first game of a crucial three-game series at Milwaukee. It was the third straight loss for the Braves, and afterward skipper Charlie Grimm devised a platoon system for the next game and beyond, saying, “I gotta do something to get some hitting.”1 The first-place […]
When the Philadelphia Phillies and Milwaukee Braves played a Sunday doubleheader in Milwaukee County Stadium on August 20, 1961, they were headed in opposite directions. The fourth-place Braves were riding a nine-game winning streak, including the first three games of the series with Philadelphia, which left them eight games behind the first-place Cincinnati Reds. The […]
SABR biographer Alan Cohen argues, “The mention of Alex Rodríguez conjures up images favorable and unfavorable. For almost three decades, his image has been in the public eye, often for all the wrong reasons.”1 In spite of the controversy, A-Rod has transcended baseball and landed on the short list of celebrities who are known by […]
When would-be saboteurs tried to pull distractions on Bob Gibson, it never seemed to diminish his work. Rather, it merely poked the bear. Before pitching the seventh game of the 1967 World Series in Boston, Gibson was disturbed in his hotel room three times in the middle of the night by “mistaken” wake-up calls. And […]
In the fourth inning of the Los Angeles Dodgers-Milwaukee Braves game at County Stadium on the night of May 29, 1963, Braves coach Dixie Walker grabbed a bat and took the field. The former National League batting champion, retired as a player since 1949, wasn’t making an impromptu comeback at age 52. Rather, he was […]
When Roberto Clemente watched a Ferguson Jenkins pitch on the inside corner of the plate pass for a strike on September 13, 1972, young teammate Fernando Gonzalez didn’t understand. The pitch was in Clemente’s wheelhouse, and when Gonzalez questioned his mentor about why he held up on such a pitch, Clemente, an 18-year veteran, told […]
When Warren Spahn took the hill for Game Four of the 1957 World Series, he had started two previous Series games, losing to Bob Lemon of Cleveland in 1948 and to Whitey Ford of the New York Yankees in 1957’s Game One. Would today be his day? He was up against Tom Sturdivant of the […]
Pennant fever for Baltimore Oriole fans was unusually high as the 1966 season began because the newest Oriole, Frank Robinson, had excelled for the Cincinnati Reds the previous 10 seasons. His teammates admired his leadership qualities, hitting, and overall play during spring training, beginning on March 7, and many fans considered Robinson to be the […]
Even after the game, the 1,500 people who watched a meaningless late-season contest between the Red Sox and the Yankees in the last week of the 1914 American League season would have had no idea that they had witnessed a historic hit by a rookie off a reliever nearing the end of his career. In […]
Dick Stuart was fun – as long as you didn’t have to be on the field with him. He ran the bases head down and looking anywhere except at the third-base coach or the outfield or a teammate who might be able to tell him something, often sending his team out of the inning. As […]
Read me some names from a faded box score Culled from the distant ago; Anson, Dalrymple, Williamson, Gore, Flint, Delahanty and Lowe. –Verse, author unknown Maine’s only batting champion as of 2010 was most definitely one of the outstanding performers of his day. That his day was a long, long time ago should not detract […]
Perhaps no Virgin Islander made a greater lifetime contribution to baseball than Elrod Hendricks (1940-2005). The native of St. Thomas also embodied Baltimore Orioles tradition; only Brooks Robinson wore the orange and black for even half as many games. Ellie’s major-league career spanned 12 seasons from 1968 to 1979, but he also spent a remarkable […]