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The man who hit the first home run at Fenway Park was a native of North Grafton, Massachusetts: Hugh Frederick Bradley. Bradley’s parents were Joseph A. Bradley and Sarah Nutting Bradley and they celebrated his birth on May 23, 1885. Hugh had one brother, John E. Bradley, 11 years his junior. The first time we […]

After graduating from Duke University in 1974, John Poff made it to the majors for 31 games in 1979 and 1980. He hit .218 in 91 plate appearances. The first baseman-outfielder retired after the winter of 1981-82. “My career in baseball was frustrating,” he later said. “I wanted and felt I deserved a lot more […]

R C Stevens, said one of his minor-league managers, was “capable of breaking up a game anytime he took his bat in hand.” He hit 191 home runs in 12 minor-league seasons, but didn’t meet the test in the major leagues, and played only briefly in four seasons, three of them (including 1960) with the […]

Ponchatoula, Louisiana, in the 1930s was a small town that had suffered a number of lumber mills closing in the previous decade. By the 1930s, it was known primarily as a strawberry farming region. It was into this area that on October 2, 1934, Earl Lawrence Wilson was born. He later changed his name to […]

Frank Thomas played during an era when team owners looked upon their players as chattels. By their standards, Frank Joseph Thomas was considered a rebel. Much of his career was spent bickering with management over his worth to them. In his early career with the Pittsburgh Pirates, Thomas’s adversary in such battles was the man […]

“Turkey Stearnes — that cat could play and hit. He could’ve made it.” — Thomas “Monk” Favors1 Over the years, the Baseball Hall of Fame’s research department routinely requested retired baseball players to submit a form whose details painted a picture of the player’s birth, family, and early years, and a sketch of his playing […]

Hershell Freeman was a right-handed pitcher who started his career with the Boston Red Sox in 1952, but had his best years with the Cincinnati Reds, in particular 1956, when he led the majors in closing games and posted a record remarkable for a relief pitcher: 14-5. He was later named a member of the […]

One of the most influential figures in the history of the sport, Charles Comiskey had a 55-year odyssey through professional baseball that ran the gamut: captain of one of the greatest teams of the nineteenth century; league-jumper during the 1890 players’ rebellion; one of the chief architects of the American League’s emergence in 1901 as […]

Chick Hafey was one of the first position players in the major leagues to wear eyeglasses. Problems with his eyesight did not prevent him from winning a National League batting title and being elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame.   Hafey broke into the major leagues with the St. Louis Cardinals in 1924, and most […]

On October 27, 1900, the steamship Havana carried 20 American baseball players to Cuba for a series of eight games against the island’s best. Among the players were two from the Pittsburgh Pirates, Jesse Tannehill and Tom O’Brien.1 En route to the island, all but two players suffered from seasickness. Kid Gleason of the New […]

Jack Chesbro of the New York Highlanders won 41 games in 1904 by throwing a “spit ball,” and the pitch became the talk of the baseball world. Chesbro’s teammate Brose Puttmann said, “They talk about that spit ball as if it were a new wrinkle. I saw it in use on the Pacific Coast when […]

Ask any serious Tigers fan over a certain age and they’ll tell you that the sound of Tiger Stadium was always a little bit louder than normal when Gates Brown was announced as a pinch-hitter. And why not? After 13 seasons in Detroit, not only did the “Gator” retire as the American League’s all-time pinch-hitting […]

“These are the saddest of possible words: ‘Tinker to Evers to Chance.’” Thus begins the iconic eight-line poem written in 1910 by Franklin Pierce Adams. Joe Tinker was a rookie in 1902. That was the year that Ed Glenn, whose only major-league hit had come four years earlier, was called up by the Chicago Orphans/Cubs […]

Hugh High’s brother, Andy, himself a 13-year big leaguer, once succinctly summarized big brother Hughie’s career: “He played center field in place of Ty [Cobb] for about six weeks one year when Ty held out,” then “he went to New York to help the Yankees out, but the Yankees got to the point where they […]

The obstacles a rookie follows to become a major leaguer are daunting. Add to that the pressure of being described as a can’t-miss prospect or the next Joe DiMaggio and that process can be overwhelming. Johnny Groth faced such a situation with the Detroit Tigers in the spring of 1949. He would become and remain […]

For over half a century, Charles “Doc” Barrett (1877-1954) was a trainer, first at Williams College and then at Columbia University. Although Barrett was involved with many sports, he formed a strong and distinctive connection with major-league baseball. While at Williams he did double duty as a scout for the New York Highlanders. He also […]

Hooty Phillips, father of Lefty Phillips. (Courtesy of the Nashville Metro Archives)   The John William “Lefty” Phillips story begins with another ballplayer, his father, John “Hooty” Phillips.1 Father and son played for their hometown Nashville Elite Giants, among other teams. Neither Hooty nor Lefty Phillips is especially well-known, although Hooty Phillips had a longer […]

Neither team was in contention when the Milwaukee Brewers and Cleveland Indians played a Labor Day doubleheader at Milwaukee County Stadium in 1973. In fact, both were under .500 and bringing up the rear in the American League East Division. Perhaps the biggest attraction was Gaylord Perry’s presence on the mound for Cleveland. The reigning […]

It would have been fitting if Rod Serling had gone to a baseball game in Geneva, New York, on August 22, 1961, and found himself trapped in some kind of twist ending – hit in the head by a foul ball, perhaps, to wake up alone in a deserted ballpark. After all, the danger of […]

This is a tale of two 24-year-old right-handed starting pitchers, two lefty relievers, and a Tuesday night matchup at Pittsburgh’s Three Rivers Stadium that produced what the New York Times called a game of “classic pitching and outrageous contrasts,” as José DeLeón of the Pittsburgh Pirates and Ron Darling of the New York Mets rewrote […]

Wet, wild, and weird — with a dash of pine tar. So went the third game of the 1988 National League Championship Series at Shea Stadium on a damp, frigid Saturday afternoon in October. There were players stumbling and skidding all over the field — recorded in the official box score as “soaked.”1 In the […]

In 2003 the Boston Red Sox were in the postseason for the first time since 1999. Back then, the New York Yankees had eliminated them in the American League Championship Series, but Red Sox fans were hoping that this time would be different. The ’03 Red Sox, who finished six games behind the Yankees with […]

The Los Angeles Dodgers were having a weird week. Two nights earlier they had forfeited a game to the St. Louis Cardinals when their fans threw souvenir baseballs onto the field to protest the umpire’s strike calls.1 It had been 16 years since a major-league game had been forfeited (the infamous Disco Demolition Night game). […]

In 1888, Athletic Park replaced the Wright Street Grounds as Milwaukee’s primary baseball park. Not only did Athletic Park enjoy two separate lives, but it housed a major league team (1891), a Negro National League club (1923), and an All-American Girls Professional Baseball League team (1944). During its second term, Athletic Park, most often remembered by Milwaukeeans […]