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He played 850 miles from the nearest big league park in a part of New Mexico best known for alien spacecraft. On the road he drove the team bus. And at home he got up early to work in one of two Texaco service stations he owned. That was 1954, the year Roger Bannister became […]

Until the Negro Leagues were officially recognized as major leagues in December 2020, Dan Bankhead was on record as the first African American to pitch in the majors. He remains best known for that fact, as well as another: he and four brothers all played in the Negro Leagues. However, Bankhead’s big-league career was brief […]

Al Gardella usually wore uniform number 29, but 32 could have been more appropriate.  That was the total of his 16 major-league games with the 1945 Giants and his 16 years in the minors.  A 5-foot-10, 160-pound left-handed batter and thrower, he was 2-for-26 (.077) during his 51 days with New York, and he posted […]

When walking through the exhibits at the National Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, New York, it is difficult not to absorb slices of the game’s history and lore, and to learn about the role the sport has played in both American and world history. It also quickly becomes clear that the stories of the […]

William Henry Zuber had a notable major league career for two reasons. First, he was born and raised in a German-speaking religious sect that banned sports and other entertainment. Second, the loss of talented players to service in World War II created the opportunity for him to play a prominent role in several pennant races. […]

“Steady as a clock,”1 Abner Dalrymple was a fixture in left field for the 1880s Chicago White Stockings, a powerhouse that won five National League pennants over seven years. Together with Mike “King” Kelly and George Gore, he formed what manager Adrian “Cap” Anson called “the greatest trio of outfielders ever gotten together in one […]

“Rarely has there been a baseball player as good as George Grantham whom it was so difficult to settle in one regular position.” — James J. Long, Pittsburgh Sun-Telegraph 1   George Grantham, 5-foot-10 and 170 pounds in his prime, was tough and durable. A perennial .300 hitter despite frequent nagging injuries, he had unexpected […]

A familiar baseball stereotype of the mid-twentieth century was the “good field, no hit” Latino shortstop.1 The prototype was captured by Willy Miranda – who many contend was the slickest Cuban glove man ever born but who ended his near-decade-long sojourn in the majors with a mere 70 extra base hits and a lightweight .221 […]

Allan Lewis was baseball’s first “designated runner.” Owner Charles O. Finley, on one of his many whims, put “The Panamanian Express” on his Kansas City and Oakland rosters for parts of six seasons from 1967 to 1973. “Mr. Finley’s called me up every time,” said Lewis in 1973. “No reports, no scouts, no managers —just […]

A vital part of the Boston Red Sox teams of the 1950s and early 1960s, Ivan Martin “Ike” Delock, a gritty right-handed pitcher, was born, in Highland Park, Michigan. A Marine Corps veteran, he compiled an 84-75 record in a career which, with the exception of a one-month stint with the Baltimore Orioles in 1963, […]

When he was 36 years old Paul Krichell found himself at something of a crossroads in his baseball life. After many years playing professional baseball—including two nondescript seasons in the majors—Krichell had become a minor-league manager. Near the end of the 1918 season, however, Krichell resigned and quit Organized Baseball in the wake of a […]

Four cutouts of larger-than-life baseballs adorned the royal blue outfield wall at Cleveland Stadium. Each baseball sported a player’s name and the corresponding jersey number that had been retired by the Indians. Even the most casual of Cleveland fans would be familiar with Bob Feller’s number 19 and Lou Boudreau’s number 5. They may have […]

Vivian Sheriffs Anderson played third base for her hometown Milwaukee Chicks in 1944, the city’s only year in the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League (AAGPBL). The spirited infielder suffered a season-ending injury in June of that remarkable season and missed out on the Chicks’ championship. Even though Anderson’s time in the AAGPBL was brief, the league provided […]

A baseball journeyman, Reno Bertoia nevertheless held a number of distinctions. He was one of baseball’s original bonus babies. Of the seven major leaguers born in Italy, he had the longest career, ten seasons. (One of the seven, Alex Liddi, was still active in 2012.) In Bertoia’s big-league debut, with his hometown Detroit Tigers, the […]

According to conventional wisdom, a left-hander should not play second base, shortstop, or third base, because throwing to first base is awkward. This view was expressed as far back as 1867, when Henry Chadwick wrote, “A left hand player is the man for a first baseman; on any other base such a player is out […]

As Bob Lemon watched Willie Mays make his historic catch in Game One of the 1954 World Series against the Cleveland Indians, he may have recalled another spectacular catch by a young center fielder 8½ years earlier. That was the day, April 16, 1946, when rookie outfielder Bob Lemon saved Bob Feller’s Opening Day victory […]

Shortly after his birth, Fred Lee Valentine’s aunt dubbed him “Squeaky” for the noises he made as a toddler. Since he was too young to argue with her about the name, it stuck and remained with him through high school and college and even into his pro career. It bespeaks the constancy of the man, […]

If Babe Ruth owns the number 60 and Barry Bonds has a lock on 73, the number 254 just as surely belongs to Bob Crues. Unfortunately, not many know it. In 1948, Crues went on a rampage through the dusty and windswept ballparks of the Southwest, driving in 254 runs in just 140 games, dwarfing […]

Midway through the 2001 major-league baseball season, the Pittsburgh Pirates traded right-hander Jason Schmidt to the San Francisco Giants. Schmidt, who compiled a 49-53 record throughout the first six years of his career, would blossom into one of the elite pitchers in the National League during the mid-2000s. Jason David Schmidt was born on January […]

In January 1956, a few months after Ellis Kinder had been sold by the Boston Red Sox to the St. Louis Cardinals after eight years in the Hub, his friends threw him an Appreciation Night at Boston’s Sheraton Plaza Hotel. In attendance were the governor, the mayor, several former teammates, and 600 assorted guests. Birdie […]

The tale is familiar to followers of baseball legend: Young boy growing up in rough-and-tumble circumstances, running roughshod over parents and teachers, unrepentantly scoffing at law and decency, finally ends up in front of the local magistrate who has him declared incorrigible and packed off to the nearest reformatory. There, the lad discovers an outlet […]

Los Angeles’s Wrigley Field in was built and opened in 1925 as the finest minor-league park in the country. Some called it the best park in the country — majors or minors. From its earliest years Wrigley Field was home to multiple baseball teams, many other sports and community events. The history of Wrigley Field […]

On April 12, 1955, the former Philadelphia Athletics, having moved that winter to Kansas City, opened their first season at Municipal Stadium: A’s 6, Tigers 2, before a standing-room crowd of 32,147. Flanked by franchise progenitor Connie Mack, former President Harry Truman tossed the team’s first ball in Missouri’s first American League (AL) opener since […]