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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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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, […]

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 […]

Eugene Victor Hermanski was born in Pittsfield, Massachusetts on May 11, 1920, to Stephen and Pauline (née Oboyski) Hermanski (the family name was also spelled Horomanski and Horomenski). Stephen, seeking new opportunities, moved his family to Newark, New Jersey in 1924 shortly after second son Roman was born.1 Baseball became an important part of Gene’s […]

“There are those who can, and there are those who will,” an old saying goes. James Paul David “Jim” Bunning was clearly one of the latter. He willed himself to become a great pitcher and then a successful politician through hard work and determination. Though he struggled for almost six seasons in the minor leagues, […]

During his 18-year professional baseball playing career, Darnell Coles spent complete, consecutive seasons in the same uniform only once. Originally drafted as a shortstop by the Seattle Mariners with the sixth overall pick in June 1980, he played parts of 14 major league seasons (1983-1997) with eight different teams, primarily as a third baseman and […]

Author’s note: Many a night, when I should’ve been doing my homework, I spent valuable time “studying” the encyclopedia of baseball. I especially became fascinated with obscure players having brief careers. I didn’t get far into the alphabet before coming across Buzz Arlett; how could someone with seemingly good numbers play only one season in […]

Gene Kelly heard of Joe McCarthy’s death during a 1957 Phillies game at Connie Mack Stadium. On the air, he praised the man who never played in the big leagues, but played them like a cello. Some called McCarthy a pushbutton skipper, Kelly said over flagship WIP Radio. Others hailed perhaps the best manager of […]

To his contemporaries, he was a hard-nosed player, a throwback to earlier days, when players like Ty Cobb played the game as if their lives depended on it. Opponents labeled him “hard-headed” and “red-nosed.” Latinos had their own title for him: El Divino Loco or the Divine Madman. But it was Pittsburgh Pirates broadcaster Bob […]

Kevin Hickey had one of the most unlikely careers in the history of baseball. Then he had another one. In the span of a few years, he transformed himself from 16-inch softball ringer into a big-league reliever deployed against some of the best left-handed hitters of his era. When he found himself at rock bottom, […]

In September 2002, 22-year-old right-hander Steve Bechler debuted for the Baltimore Orioles and pitched in three games. In spring training the following February. he collapsed during a running exercise and died shortly thereafter. Weight-loss supplements containing ephedrine alkaloids were blamed for his sudden death. Their subsequent ban by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration became […]

“Joey is extremely smart. He’s great with figures and crossword puzzles. He could spell backwards when he was five. Did you know my Joey was an Eagle Scout? He took French in high school, finished sixth in his class of 266. I brought him up to excel in everything. He wants to be perfect.” — […]

“It exceeded all proportion, It could not be contained, It bloomed round like a dark sunrise, It glistened in the rain. The little boys with crew cuts Or blond locks oh so fair Would look and cheer with wonder At Oscar Gamble’s hair.” —Roy Peter Clark1   Oscar Gamble made his big-league debut in 1969 […]

Big Bill James’s involvement, if any, in the 1919 Black Sox Scandal remains curiously unexplored by most baseball historians. Yet the tall right-handed pitcher from Michigan pops up in three different game-fixing incidents during the Deadball Era. As a member of the Chicago White Sox for just two months in 1919, James saw little action […]

In his memoir, former Pittsburgh Pirates pitcher Steve Blass extolled the virtues of the non-verbal communication between a catcher and pitcher. “The reality of a pitcher’s relationship with his catcher is that if he is on a roll, he is almost his own decision maker…But Manny knew me just as much psychologically as the nuts […]

When the Chicago White Sox acquired him before the 1937 season, Thornton Lee was a hard-throwing but wild 30-year-old southpaw with just 12 victories in three-plus seasons for Cleveland. But under the aegis of manager Jimmy Dykes and coach Muddy Ruel, Lee developed into one of the best left-handers in the big leagues and the […]

Dick Williams’s intense competitiveness and versatility earned him 13 years as a major league utility player. He parlayed those strengths into one of baseball’s most successful managerial careers, though not one of the winningest, and the record suggests that he was probably one of the two finest managerial turnaround artists1 between Joe McCarthy and Lou […]

Ask casual baseball fans which Tigers player drove in the run that clinched the 1984 World Series, and you can’t blame them if they answer Kirk Gibson. After all, Gibson’s blast off Goose Gossage gets replayed time and again and is perhaps the most memorable hit in Tigers history. But the game-winning RBI, an official […]

Sandy Koufax was on the fringes of the Los Angeles Dodgers’ pitching staff early in the 1960 season, his sixth in the majors. Shaky control and hard luck left him with a 0-4 record and a 5.16 earned-run average entering his May 23 start against the Pittsburgh Pirates. Facing the hot-hitting, rally-prone, championship-bound Pirates, however, […]

A crowd heads toward Braves Field. The ticket and administration building (shown at left) still stands and today serves as the headquarters for the Boston University police. Note the trolley tracks in the foreground, indicating the path of transit vehicles exiting from within the ballpark itself. (NATIONAL BASEBALL HALL OF FAME LIBRARY)   Introduction Braves […]

This article was published in the SABR Baseball Research Journal, Vol. 21 (1992).   As your father shaved each morning with a Gillette safety razor and you watched the World Series in black & white on NBC-TV back in the 1950s, you probably never thought you were making it all possible for your fa­vorite player […]