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Jim Derrington’s major-league career was brief, but historic. When Derrington took the mound for the Chicago White Sox at the age of 16 years, 306 days on the final day of the 1956 season, he became the youngest pitcher since Willie McGill in 1890 to start a major-league game. Derrington, who singled off Kansas City […]

For 40 years, the Chicago White Sox wandered in the wasteland of baseball as the Israelites had once wandered in the Sinai desert. Was it punishment for their sinful dealings in the 1919 World Series? No one can say for sure, but in 1959, absolution was at hand. A member of that 1959 White Sox […]

One night at Toots Shor’s restaurant, Edward Bennett Williams was asked what he wanted to do when he grew up — an odd question for a man in his mid-30s who’d already gained a reputation as a distinguished trial lawyer. “I want to own a ball club and be president,” said Williams,1 who as a […]

The minds and memories of casual baseball fans often recall the names and exploits of pitchers who have performed brilliantly during a career peak or even a single shining season. Hall of Fame careers have been built around a few great years in succession and the awards and buzz that accompany these successes. At the […]

In June 1959, International League secretary and longtime baseball historian Harry Simmons was ecstatic about the 24-year-old Montreal Royals right-hander making the jump from the Three-I League (Class-B) to Triple-A ball. “[Ed] Rakow could be the best pitcher to come along since Don Drysdale,” Simmons exclaimed. “He can throw hard and is … completely fearless […]

Andrés Jose Padovani Galarraga was known as the Big Cat, or El Gran Gato, during his 19-year major-league baseball career, a career in which he became the Colorado Rockies’ first big star. He looked like a slugger but what made him so popular, and helped secure his nickname, was his quickness around the first-base bag. […]

On a cold September day in 1914, Richard Luther Crutcher Jr. pitched the most significant game of his brief major-league career. The stands of the ancient South End Grounds were sparsely populated with a thousand hardy souls for whom the warmth of the pennant race outweighed the discomfort of the November-like weather.1 The Boston Nationals […]

It was Boston’s eighth trade since the end of the 1965 season. In 1964 Billy Herman, about to become the Red Sox manager, had vowed, “If I am ever made manager of this team and we have a losing club, I promise you one thing: We’ll lose with new faces.”1 Herman lived up to his […]

Dick Fitzgerald’s left arm should be put on display in a glass case, if not donated to science. It’s known as the ultimate innings-eater. It has Satchel Paige wear-and-tear. It has an expiration date on it somewhere, doesn’t it? Doing a complete inventory, the Pennsylvania native has served up more than a million pitches, encompassing […]

Charles Radbourn’s pitching achievements were hailed by contemporaries and sportswriters for decades as some of the greatest feats of nineteenth century baseball. Little known today, many considered an 18-inning game in 1882 as the finest athletic contest ever seen on a baseball diamond. That game was won, not by the pitcher Radbourn, but by the […]

Dusty Baker has spent a lifetime in baseball. After a productive career as an outfielder for four teams over a 19-year career, Baker joined the managerial ranks. As a major league manager over most of the period since 1993, he developed a reputation for helping teams win, although it took him until 2022 to capture […]

Overcoming potentially career-ending shoulder injuries in the early 1950s to develop into one of the most feared sluggers of his era, Roy Sievers became just the 18th player to hit 300 home runs. With a powerful and graceful swing that Casey Stengel called “one of the sweetest,” 1 Sievers, known as Mr. Clutch for his […]

Robin Mark Ventura was one of the outstanding third basemen of the last decade of the 1900s. After a stellar college career, Ventura played integral parts in the success of the Chicago White Sox and New York Mets during his career. Ventura was born on July 14, 1967, in Santa Maria, California, to John and […]

In art, a painter may create masterpieces on canvas. In baseball the verb “paint” applies to a craft no less skillful. The Dickson Baseball Dictionary defines the verb as “… To throw pitches over the edges of the plate, which appear to be dark or black because of the contrast of the white rubber plate […]

Which New York Yankees player had the highest batting average in 1964? Mickey Mantle hit .303 and Elston Howard .313 – but nobody topped Elvio Jiménez’s .333 mark. “Look it up,” he said.1 Despite batting .309 over 13 seasons in the minors, however, Jiménez appeared in just one major-league game, going 2-for-6. Following a 17-year […]

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 […]

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. […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

The history of Rickwood Field is a story worth telling and retelling. Its origins are compelling as is the story of its evolution throughout its 77-year existence as a functional minor-league baseball park. Perhaps of greater interest is the story of how it has survived the past 23 years as an obsolete old ballpark. Rickwood […]

The first regular-season game at Jacobs Field was played on April 4, 1994. Through seven innings the Indians were down 2-0, and it looked as though the storyline would center on Randy Johnson’s dominant pitching performance. The Indians finally got to the lanky southpaw in the bottom of the eighth, when Manny Ramirez doubled to […]

This article appears in SABR’s “Pride of Smoketown: The 1935 Pittsburgh Crawfords” (2020), edited by Frederick C. Bush and Bill Nowlin.   Introduction “Since the August Day in 1933, when ‘King’ Cole of Chicago, Gus Greenlee of Pittsburgh, and Tom Wilson of Nashville, saw a dream, which originated in the minds of Roy Sparrow and […]