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Henry Aaron reached the 100-RBI milestone in 11 seasons and retired with the all-time mark of 2,297. (SABR-Rucker Archive)   For much of his early career, due in part to his natural shyness and not playing in a media center like New York, Henry Aaron seemed to fly under the radar. One of his greatest […]

They didn’t know it at the time, but the Indianapolis Indians began the 1954 season with the right ingredients. The American Association club was affiliated with the major-league Cleveland Indians. What was the recipe for success? Start with a smart manager, Kerby Farrell, promoted to Indianapolis after leading the 1953 Reading (Pennsylvania) Indians to 101 […]

Most Phillies fans have Father’s Day 1964 etched in their hearts and minds. In the first game of a doubleheader against the New York Mets in Shea Stadium, Jim Bunning pitched the seventh perfect game in major-league history and the first in the National League since 1880. Acquired from the Detroit Tigers in the offseason, […]

The Boston Red Sox were nearing the end of a homestand in which they won 10 of 13 games, including three extra-inning games and three games in which Ted Williams hit game-winning home runs.1 Williams’s third-inning homer was the game-winner against the Chicago White Sox in the second game of the homestand on May 18. […]

Though the crowd for the joyous May 7, 1918, Braves Field record 16-0 blowout was rather sparse in comparison, just two days earlier the Wigwam was filled to capacity for what in previous years would have been an illegal Sunday ballgame. Connie Mack‘s former star shortstop Jack Barry and his Charlestown Navy Yard All Stars […]

Scipio Spinks and Gary Nolan never faced off as starting pitchers in the major leagues during the five seasons, 1969 through 1973, when their careers overlapped in the National League. That’s a shame, because when the pitchers started against each other in the short-season Class A Northern League one night in August 1966, they combined […]

With Pennsylvania law still barring Sunday baseball,1 the Pittsburgh Pirates scheduled two games against the Washington Senators2 for Saturday, May 30, 1896, at Exposition Park.3 It was the first doubleheader of the season for both clubs, and a huge crowd was expected. The sixth-place Pirates (17-13) were looking to climb in the standings at the […]

Of the Cincinnati Reds’ 18 extra-inning games in 1969, none was more dramatic than the extraordinary comeback win they accomplished on July 19. The Houston Astros appeared to have the game in hand with a 9-0 lead after their at-bat in the top of the sixth inning. But the Reds bounced back and tied the […]

As players warmed up for a National League game between the visiting Louisville Colonels and the first-place Baltimore Orioles at Union Park on September 8, 1897, a reporter from the Baltimore Sun approached Louisville player-manager Fred Clarke because he was unfamiliar with the Colonels’ battery. When pressed for details, Clarke seemed almost as confused as […]

Red Shannon is one of the 53 players who played for both the Boston Braves and the Boston Red Sox. His career embraced five consecutive years in the American League, bookended by two disconnected years in the National, first for the Braves and later with the Cubs. Shannon’s debut was with the Braves, in the […]

Right-hander Elmer Singleton pitched professionally for 23 seasons — more than half of them in the Pacific Coast League, where he won 146 games and once carried a no-hitter into the 13th inning. Over parts of eight major league campaigns with the Boston Braves (1945-1946), Pittsburgh Pirates (1947-1948), Washington Senators (1950), and Chicago Cubs (1957-1959), […]

Stan Benjamin used to say, “If they let you steal first base, I would have batted a thousand.”1 He was easygoing with a great sense of humor, often self-deprecating. His personality must have been forged early in life because a cartoon of the top regional high-school football players in 1932 labeled him “happy-go-lucky” and showed […]

Simon Rosenthal was one of only 16 Red Sox players who was actually born in the city of Boston and — joining Jack Slattery — one of only two to both live and die in Boston. He garnered more at-bats for the Red Sox than any other Boston native, 357 of them during the years […]

When you only pitch a few innings in the big leagues, in a meaningless game on the last day of the season, you don’t necessarily expect to get a lot of respect. So perhaps right-hander Jim Hisner wasn’t surprised to find that the Associated Press accounts of his one start called him Harvey Hisner. His […]

Metropolis, Illinois, is the hometown of Superman, the comic-book character who leaps tall buildings in a single bound. Back in the day, Robert Dale “Hawk” Taylor was the genuine article when it came to baseball. Unlike mild-mannered Metropolis Daily Planet reporter Clark Kent, who left his office, entered a phone booth and came out as […]

“This game is tough to play,” said 11-year major-league infielder Doug Flynn in an interview with the author.1 Progressing through the Cincinnati Reds’ system in the early 1970s, Flynn was a utilityman on the Reds championship teams in 1975 and 1976 before being traded to the New York Mets in 1977. A Gold Glove winner […]

Massachusetts-based contractors Lou Perini, Joseph Maney, and Guido Rugo became majority owners of the Boston Braves baseball club in 1944. In 1947, through a working relationship with Perini, Massachusetts native Joseph Cairnes shifted his career path from construction engineer, in the private and public sectors, to major league baseball administrator with the Braves. Perini, familiar […]

From the trade of Max “Camera Eye” Bishop before the 1934 season to the arrival of Benny McCoy in 1940, second base was in a state of flux for the Philadelphia Athletics. An infielder from Wisconsin, Stan Sperry, was once said to be a possible answer to manager Connie Mack’s “prayer for a second baseman.” […]

In November 1970 Boston Red Sox slugger Carl Yastrzemski was in Florida working with the organization’s young hitters when a hard-throwing right-handed hurler commanded his attention. “[Lynn McGlothen] is going to be a winning pitcher in the major leagues,” predicted the future Hall of Fame outfielder. “I don’t just mean a pitcher. I mean a […]

For the first half of the 1970 season, Cincinnati rookie pitcher Wayne Simpson had the National League by the tail. He won 13 of his first 14 decisions in the majors, making the All-Star team. “He was tough,” remembered Al Oliver, then an opponent with the Pittsburgh Pirates. “Outstanding. I’d have to rate him right […]

Fate: “The supposed force, principle, or power that predetermines events.”[1] Some people believe in it, some do not, though no one can be certain of its existence. But Fred Clarke was a believer in fate. In an interview with a reporter from the New York Herald in 1911, Clarke admitted, “I attribute my success to […]

“I’ve done football for fun,” Lindsey Nelson once said. “I did baseball for a living.”1 He made an extravagant living as one of network television’s premier college and pro football broadcasters while following the New York Mets from worst to first and back for the first 17 years of their history. During three decades he […]

Twenty-year-old Newton Halliday’s only major-league game came on August 19, 1916. He replaced injured star Honus Wagner and struck out in his only career at-bat for the Pittsburgh Pirates. Halliday, however, is better known for, less than two years later, being the first and youngest big-league baseball player to die while enlisted in military service […]

He was a bundle of contradictions, this imperfect man who pitched a perfect game. Don Larsen disdained training rules and had a mediocre major-league career; yet he pitched the greatest game in World Series history. He married out of a sense of duty; yet he refused to support his wife and baby daughter. He kept […]