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In an entry for a Philadelphia Phillies blog, Tim Johnson wrote, “Tully Sparks pitched in baseball’s earliest days, a time when hitting was as poor as the players themselves.”i A good line, though one can quibble as to how early in baseball history 1895-1910 truly was, or how poor some of the hitters may have […]

Professional football or professional baseball? That was the choice for pitcher Steve Renko. At 6-foot-5 and 230 pounds, Renko also starred as a basketball player at the University of Kansas. He was the school’s last three-sport letterman. The big right-hander ultimately chose baseball. Renko had an up-and-down career in the major leagues from 1969 to […]

James Gilmore, left, and Charles Weeghman of the Federal League, circa 1914 (LIBRARY OF CONGRESS)   In the early 1890s “Lucky Charlie” Weeghman descended on Chicago as a teenager seeking fame and fortune. A natural salesman, he soon became one of Chicago’s best-known restaurateurs and a celebrity man about town. Then the baseball bug bit. […]

Cal Ripken Sr. spent 36 years in the Baltimore Orioles organization as a player, manager, coach, scout, and minor league instructor. Hundreds of Oriole prospects benefited under the tutelage of the man who once said, “Don’t just practice. Practice right, and you’ll do things right in the game. Practice doesn’t make perfect. Perfect practice makes […]

José Luis Meléndez García was born on September 2, 1965, in Naguabo, a small town on the eastern coast of Puerto Rico. The municipality is famous for its empanadillas de chapín, a tasty fried turnover stuffed with cowfish. Blessed with a powerful right arm, Meléndez was destined to toil not as a fisherman, but rather […]

Sparkplug shortstop Freddy Parent, the “Flying Frenchman,” led the Boston Americans with MVP-type seasons to the first modern World Series championship in 1903 and the American League pennant in 1904. An early American League star, Parent (along with teammate Buck Freeman) was its first ironman, playing in 413 consecutive games from the April 26, 1901, […]

In the 1930s and 1940s famed New York City restaurateur Toots Shor hosted many of the greats of sports and show business. But in the winter of 1947 Shor’s attention focused on a baseball prospect little known outside the environs of New York – Larry Miggins. Informed that the St. Louis Cardinals had snatched the […]

If somebody claimed that a person could simultaneously throw three baseballs with one hand accurately to three different catchers, or, with one hand could throw two balls, one a curve and one a fastball, accurately to two catchers, it would sound too weird to be believed. How about a claim that a person, suspended upside […]

Fittingly, pitcher Leroy Matlock was called “the Black Carl Hubbell” in press releases promoting a 1937 barnstorming tour.1 Hubbell, who entered the Hall of Fame in 1947, had completed a high-profile streak of 24 wins in a row earlier in 1937 for the pennant-winning New York Giants. Matlock, also a lefty, had 26 straight victories […]

“It’s a thankless job, this catching business,” sighed Charley Schmidt in 1908.1 The stocky Tiger was not one of the era’s more dexterous backstops, but instead demonstrated an often overlooked physical bravery in helping his team to three memorable American League pennants. Yet, more so than many of his Detroit teammates, Schmidt is better remembered […]

Marty Krug appeared in only 20 games in 1912, his rookie season, mostly as a pinch-hitter, or a late-inning replacement. He watched the World Series from the superior but disappointing vantage of the winning team’s bench. He never once stepped onto the field against the New York Giants in those eight dramatic games. The knock […]

As a 22-year-old Bill DeLancey caught every inning of the 1934 World Series for the St. Louis Cardinals as the club won its third championship. Later, he was named by Branch Rickey as one of the best three catchers he had ever seen, alongside Roy Campanella and Mickey Cochrane. However, DeLancey accumulated only 686 plate […]

When you review how professional baseball integrated, it is easy to begin and end with the story of Jackie Robinson’s struggles. Scant attention is given the fact that African Americans faced tremendous resistance to their presence throughout the 1950s and 1960s, especially in the Deep South. One such player who experienced this was Blue Moon […]

Marvin Eugene Throneberry was born to be a Met. His very initials — MET — said so. As a member of the original 1962 New York Mets, Marv Throneberry’s colorful exploits (both good and bad) earned him the nickname “Marvelous Marv.” While remembered as much for his gaffes as his clutch performances, Throneberry carved out […]

Signed by the Minnesota Twins in 1961, left-hander Jim Roland debuted as a 19-year-old in a September call-up the following season and tossed a three-hit shutout in his first big-league start, in 1963. “[He] has a blazing fast ball and is effectively wild,” wrote Twins beat reporter Arno Goethel.1 Battling injuries and control issues throughout […]

Charles Bernard Lear, a pioneering knuckleballer for the Cincinnati Reds, was born on January 23, 1891, in Greencastle, Pennsylvania. He was Frank and Mary Lear’s first-born child; his sister Mildred followed nine years later. Frank Lear worked in the metal trades, with his census professions indicated as moulder and tinner. Greencastle, a small borough nestled […]

Baseball fans and historians have doubtless wondered about the mystery woman in Cubs team photos of the late 1920s that often show her sandwiched between Cubs owner William Wrigley, Jr. and Cubs president William L. Veeck. There was good reason why the woman was front-and-center in the team family. If Rogers Hornsby, Hack Wilson, Wrigley, and Veeck were the […]

A Deadball Era outfielder, Frank Delahanty rated middle-of-the-pack among the ballplaying Delahanty brothers. The accomplishments of his six-year major league career were decidedly modest. Frank was little more than a journeyman, nowhere near the player that his Hall of Fame brother Ed had been. Nor was Frank in the same baseball class as his brother […]

Gary Waslewski woke in his Peabody, Massachusetts apartment on the morning of October 11, 1967 as the starting pitcher in Game Six of the World Series. “I was reading the papers that morning, and one guy wrote that Gary Waslewski has as much chance of winning as Custer had of beating the Indians,” Waslewski said. […]

Casey Stengel, an eccentric man himself, called Moe Berg “the strangest man ever to play baseball.” Dark, handsome, erudite, fluent in many languages, charming and shadowy-just who was this man who was a professional baseball player and a so-called master spy? Who is the real Moe Berg? He epitomizes frustration for any biographer. Moe Berg […]

The baseball team known as the Braves makes its home in Atlanta, but traces its diamond ancestry back through Milwaukee and to Boston, where it began in 1871. In fact, the Atlanta Braves are the only baseball team that has played every season consecutively since 1871, outdating even the National League itself. While forgotten by […]

Fidel Castro records the ceremonial first hit of Cuba’s baseball season on January 14, 1962 against Azucareros starter Jorge Santín at Gran Stadium in Havana. (Courtesy of Peter C. Bjarkman)   As the International League’s Rochester Red Wings prepared to play a doubleheader with the Montreal Royals on July 4, 1959, some of them might […]

Michael Haupert was the keynote speaker at the 2024 SABR Frederick Ivor Campbell Nineteenth Century Baseball Conference at the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum in Cooperstown, New York. Below are his prepared remarks, which were published in the committee’s October 2024 newsletter.   In the fall of 1870 the Boston Herald hurled what […]

East Field as pictured in 2021.   Over the course of a month and a half in March and April 1980, East Field in Glens Falls, New York, went from an unremarkable city-owned baseball field notable mainly for its swampiness to a showcase for some of the Chicago White Sox’ top prospects.1 It happened this […]