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Early Deadball Era outfielder George Barclay crammed significant achievement into a sadly abbreviated life. He first gained prominence as captain and star halfback for an 1896 national champion football team at Lafayette College. He later found success coaching college and pre-NFL professional elevens. Barclay is also generally recognized as the inventor of the football helmet. […]

A celebrated base ball character” was A. G. Spalding’s succinct description of Bob Addy, who was his teammate on three separate clubs.1 Others who knew Addy well referred to him as a philosopher or as a wag or as the “Honorable Bob.” The reasons behind that last tag remain unknown, but it certainly sounds like the sort […]

Right-handed pitcher Chick Brandom reached the pinnacle of his professional career at the tender age of 22. A promising but little-used member of the 1909 World Series champion Pittsburgh Pirates, Brandom fared poorly the following spring and was promptly relegated to the minors by the pitching-rich Pittsburgh club. He remained there until reprieved by the […]

San Francisco’s Mike Finn was a pioneer professional as a California baseball player and manager. A versatile performer, he was an adept infielder, outfielder, and catcher, but was, in the Oakland Tribune’s opinion, “a pitching star of magnitude.” His managerial legacy was five championships during the California League’s formative years (1886-1893), more than any other pilot. An established […]

In his short major-league career, Albert Edward Kaiser played only 155 games and batted only .216. Yet from 1909 through 1914, he was known in the Midwest as an exceptionally fast outfielder, daring baserunner, and somewhat reckless player. In fact the Indianapolis Star, reviewing the 1913 season, said that “his great speed enabled him to […]

Chicago Cubs fans who are old enough will remember Walt Moryn as the blond, 6-foot-2, 205­-pound Minnesota native who roamed the Cubs outfield from 1956 to 1960. The burly, left-handed-hitting slugger, known affectionately as “Moose,” averaged 20 home runs a season for a team that never won as many games as it lost. For most […]

You’d be hard pressed to find two more disparate back-to-back seasons than the ones Charlie Pittinger put together in 1902 and 1903. Pittinger, an imposing, fireballing right-hander, won 27 games in 1902 for the Boston Nationals, second only to Hall of Famer Jack Chesbro that season. He was also second in the league in complete […]

If one wished to find the spiritual reincarnation of prototypical renaissance man Leonardo Da Vinci within the all-time register of major league baseball players, they would do well to consider one William Grover Slayback. Slayback, who walked with the gods of baseball during the summer of 1972 while pitching for the Detroit Tigers, would most […]

At age 17 he signed his first professional baseball contract. Several years later he helped the Cincinnati Reds win two National League pennants. For a while, Jim McGlothlin was one of the best pitchers in baseball. However, a series of injuries and a debilitating illness brought his career to a premature close. At the age […]

“Jerry Lynch scares you with everything he does in baseball. He scares you when he tries to catch a fly ball. He scares you when he runs the bases. He scares you when he throws the ball. But most of all he scares you when he comes off the bench as a pinch-hitter with a […]

George Kaiserling was born to a German immigrant couple, Frederick and Johanna (Becker) Kaiserling, on May 12, 1893, in Steubenville, Ohio. He was the sixth born of eight, six sons and two daughters. His father worked as a millhand in the basic steelmaking industry and his mother was a homemaker.1   There is only data […]

Bob Turley was a rich businessman who once won a Cy Young Award pitching for the Yankees. “Bullet Bob” was one of the hardest-throwing pitchers of the 1950s and one of the wildest of any generation. Turley’s business success far surpassed his baseball accomplishments. His top baseball salary was $35,000, but he earned millions in […]

Victor Starffin’s life reads like a Hollywood novel and, in a way, so do his pitching statistics …” — Richard Puff   It is highly probable that no professional baseball player — from any era, country or league — ever lived a more erratic, dramatic, and in the end tragic life than did the pitcher […]

On a cold, rainy Valentine’s Day in 1962, several newspaper reporters brazenly walked through the open driveway gates of a mansion on Maryland’s Eastern Shore looking for the United States spy-plane pilot Francis Gary Powers. Powers, who had been shot down over Russia in 1960, had been recently returned to the U.S. in a prisoner […]

During the Great Depression of the 1930s, a time when black baseball was wide open and strapped for cash, Curtis Harris was in his element. Arriving in Kansas City as a 29-year-old rookie out of Texas in 1931, the good-looking Harris hacked his way from one end of the circuit to the other, leaving opponents, […]

“Wish we had him. He is not colored.”1 Those were the words that Frank Bancroft, the Cincinnati Reds’ business manager, wrote to team president and National Commission Chairman Garry Herrmann in 1911 about Rafael Almeida. The Reds were in the midst of acquiring Almeida and fellow Cuban player Armando Marsans, and, as the first two […]

A few guys populate Baseball’s Hall of Fame who deserve the title of “hard luck hero.” Addie Joss comes to mind, a superb right-handed pitcher from the first decade of the 20th century who died of tuberculosis at the age of 31 after nine seasons, 160 wins, a perfect game, a no-hitter, seven one-hitters, and […]

No one chooses to become a professional widow, and Eleanor Gehrig derived little satisfaction in being called one. Yet few ballplayers’ wives maintained a level of such prominence so long after their husband’s death as they had when he was alive. Mrs. Lou Gehrig was married less than eight years; she was a widow for […]

Although many baseball fans may believe otherwise, Bill Buckner was not exiled from Boston after his infamous 1986 World Series miscue. He appeared in 75 games for the Red Sox in 1987 before the team released him, looking to rejuvenate its outfield by shifting Dwight Evans to first base, freeing up playing time for Todd […]

Though their demanding fans may disagree, the 1980s Red Sox were successful by most measures. While they lost a heartbreaking World Series in 1986 and suffered a League Championship Series sweep two years later, the team enjoyed eight winning seasons against only two losing ones. Their hitters outscored their opponents by an average of 42 […]

If laughter is the best medicine, then Lou Costello should have won a Nobel Prize. Costello’s legacy of laughter rests on a body of work encompassing burlesque, Broadway, radio, films and television. Its anchor is a baseball comedy sketch derived from a burlesque staple — straight man explaining to a friend that words known primarily […]

Although he answered to a variety of nicknames – Rub-Dub-Hub, Hurling Hub, the Tennessee Cyclone, the Untamed Son of Sumner County, the Gallatin Squash – his family, friends, and baseball fans simply called him Hub. Herbert Rodney Perdue was one of the most personable and exciting pitching prospects to emerge from the hills of Middle […]

What spices up a late-season pennant chase quite like a no-hitter? Try two of them on the same night, involving the league’s top two teams. Fans of the Class A Eastern League1 witnessed those fireworks on Saturday, September 1, 1956, when the first-place Schenectady Blue Jays entered the day 2½ games ahead of the second-place […]

This article is part 1 of a planned multi-part series on the history of the Chicago Cubs franchise. This chapter covers the journey from the White Stockings to the Cubs from 1876 to 1919.   The 1885 National League champion Chicago White Stockings. 1-George Gore, 2-Silver Flint, 3-Cap Anson, 4-Sy Sutcliffe, 5-Mike Kelly, 6-Fred Pfeffer, […]