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James Joseph Cooney from Cranston, Rhode Island, played in three seasons for two teams in the National League. He was with the Chicago Colts during 1890, 1891, and the first part of 1892; he then joined the Washington Senators for the remainder of 1892. Cooney played shortstop in the majors but was originally a catcher […]

Bill Cooney was part of an extended family of professional ballplayers. He was related to Jimmy Cooney, who played major-league baseball in the 1890s and was the father of major leaguers Jimmy and Johnny Cooney as well as having two other sons who played minor-league baseball.1 William Ambrose (or as he was known at various […]

John Walter Cooney, the son as well as the brother of major-league baseball players, competed as a major-league pitcher, infielder, and outfielder for 20 seasons, primarily in the National League with the Boston Braves. Known as a fine defensive outfielder, he compiled a .286 career batting average, briefly managed the Braves, and even umpired a […]

“I’ve always been a Red Sox fan, ever since I was a little kid,” he told author Jack Lautier. “My family grew up in Cranston, and Fenway Park was less than an hour away by rail. I remember going to games to see Smoky Joe Wood pitch.”1 Jimmy Cooney came from a baseball family. He […]

Phil Cooney1 signed contracts with two major-league teams, neither of which was the team he played for in his one and only major-league game. Born Philip Cohen, he changed his name to Cooney to insulate himself from the anti-Semitic prejudices that prevailed throughout professional baseball. Still, during his entire career, he was given many affectionate […]

Bob Cooney pitched 110⅓ innings during a major-league career that included appearances in 28 games. He won one game. The game he won was scheduled to be played the day after he was given credit for the win. Robert Daniel Cooney was born in Glens Falls, New York, on July 12, 1907. He was the […]

Colorful Dick Cooley crossed paths in his lifetime with personalities as diverse as saloon-smasher Carrie Nation and Broadway star George M. Cohan. For 13 years in the big leagues (1893-1905), Cooley also held his own with the greatest baseball players of his day. In 1,317 games in the majors, he batted .294.  Duff Gordon Cooley […]

Over a three-year span, 1912 to 1914, Larry Cheney was one of the National League’s most durable and effective pitchers, racking up more than 300 innings each season and joining Joe McGinnity, Deacon Phillippe, Vean Gregg, and Wes Ferrell as the only hurlers ever to reach the 20-win mark in each of their first three […]

When Esty Chaney pitched for the Boston Red Sox, a good portion of the fans at Fenway Park may not have realized whom they were seeing. He stood only 5-feet-11 (listed with a playing weight of 170 pounds), but the next day’s Boston Globe wrote, “He is as big a man as [catcher] Forrest Cady, […]

From the 1960s until his death in 1991, Bert Convy was a household name with an authentic nice-guy persona. But before that, he was a minor-league baseball player. It was not well known to the millions of people who knew him as an entertainer—game show host, actor, and, briefly, member of a 1950s rock group […]

The once thick and perfectly groomed dark hair grew thin and gray over a professional career spanning a remarkable sixty-nine years. From 1920 to 1989, Johnny Neun served in the capacities of player, coach, manager, instructor and scout. Along the way, he earned a reputation as a great baseball mind, an excellent storyteller, and an […]

Editor’s note: This article, originally published in  “Baseball’s Business: The Winter Meetings, 1958-2016” (SABR, 2017), was honored as a 2018 McFarland-SABR Baseball Research Award winner.   Negro League baseball magnates meet at the Hotel Teresa on June 20, 1946, in New York City. The owners had all attended the Joe Louis boxing bout the night […]

Here is supporting evidence for the correction of errors in the official RBI record of Lou Gehrig.

Eight games into the 1904 season, the Philadelphia Phillies found themselves in the National League cellar, where they remained for the remainder of the season. Philadelphia had yet to capture the pennant in its 21-year franchise history in the NL, although the team had placed as high as second (most recently in 1901).1 The Boston […]

Shortstop Jimmy Cooney’s rare defensive play highlighted the Chicago Cubs’ come-from-behind 10-inning, 7-6 win over the Pittsburgh Pirates on May 30, 1927. The 32-year-old Cooney, known as Scoops for his outstanding fielding during a seven-season career with six major-league teams,1 turned an unassisted triple play in the fourth inning, denying the Pirates a chance to […]

As July 1927 came to a close, the Philadelphia Phillies and Pittsburgh Pirates were at opposite ends of the National League standings. Philadelphia had lost 35 of 56 games during June and July and was in seventh place, already 18 games back, but only one game above the last-place Boston Braves. Pittsburgh was atop the […]

“It was a dark and stormy” day. It was the kind of day that might have inspired Edward Bulwer-Lytton to open his 1830 novel, Paul Clifford, with the now cliché “It was a dark and stormy night.”1 It was the kind of day the fictional Snoopy, in myriad Peanuts cartoons, would start with those same […]

In 1923, the National League Braves and the American League Red Sox, besides sharing the city of Boston, had a couple of other notable things in common. One was that they both had truly awful seasons. With a record of 61-91, the Red Sox finished at the bottom of the junior circuit, 37 games behind […]

The year 1942 was a pivotal one in baseball. Concerns that the season might be canceled were put to rest when President Franklin D. Roosevelt sent the “Green Light” letter to baseball Commissioner Kenesaw Mountain Landis, ensuring that the season would be played. The US war effort was in full swing and many of the […]

The National League’s St. Louis Browns and Louisville Colonels faced each other on August 16, 1895, in what one newspaper described as “a somnolent game.”1 Even though the home team won and there were 13 total runs scored, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch told its readers that the two teams “put up a sleepy game,”2 while […]

The Boston Red Stockings squad was one of the original eight teams when the National League formed in 1876.1 In 1883 the team changed its nickname to the Beaneaters,2 and in 1907 changed it once more to the Doves. Up to this point, the NL team’s success was confined to the nineteenth century, with six […]

“‘Finis’ was written to the 1927 chapter of the New York-Pennsylvania league yesterday afternoon as the season gasped its swan tones and passed on into peaceful sublime.”1 The Shamokin (Pennsylvania) News-Dispatch rolled out its purplest prose on September 12, 1927, invoking “swan tones” and “peaceful sublime” to summarize the hometown Shamokin Indians baseball team’s final […]

California starter John Candeleria pitched seven strong innings and the Angels got seventh-inning home runs from Dick Schofield and Gary Pettis and beat the Boston Red Sox, 5-3. The victory — which gave the Angels a 2-1 lead in the ALCS, provided some comfort to Angels manager Gene Mauch, who was ejected in the fourth […]

If there was one man upon whom manager Frank Selee could depend, it was Bobby Lowe. Selee signed Lowe to a contract in 1889, and for the next 12 seasons, Lowe capably played second base and other positions for Selee’s Boston Beaneaters. When Selee became manager of the Chicago Colts in 1902, he brought Lowe […]