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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 […]

James Henry “Jimmy” Bannon was born on May 5, 1871, in Amesbury, Massachusetts. He grew up in Saugus, Massachusetts, where he played ball with his brothers Tom, George, and William. Tom Bannon also became a professional ballplayer and played two seasons with the New York Giants (1895, 1896). George and William never made it out […]

Half of the most famous version of the “Pretzel Battery,” catcher Heinie Peitz was a noted “coacher”—more of a bench jockey in modern parlance—whose mouth gained him nearly as much attention as his play. For nine years of his 16-season (1892–1906, 1913) career, he was a Cincinnati Reds mainstay. When he retired, Peitz ranked 12th […]

“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 […]

“Ted Williams had his greatest day against the Yankees.”1 So wrote Harold Kaese of the Boston Globe. For most Boston Red Sox fans, any win against the New York Yankees has always seemed like a good day. To win a game in a walkoff is always a thrill. That the game ran 15 innings made […]

“For weeks on end, the once fell bludgeonings of Johnny Mize were but a ghastly whisper,” opined the St. Louis Post Dispatch about the slugger’s prolonged slump in 1938.1 After bursting on the scene as a rookie in 1936, batting .329 and knocking in 93 runs, the stout 6-foot-2 Georgian laid a legitimate claim as […]

“Naturally we’re going to miss him,” said Philadelphia Phillies manager Eddie Sawyer about left-hander Curt Simmons. “No team can lose a pitcher of Curt’s caliber without feeling it.”1 In his breakout campaign, the 21-year-old southpaw made his last start on September 9 of the Phillies’ most exciting season in history since their last pennant, in […]

When one thinks of home-run hitters and the Milwaukee Braves, Hank Aaron and Eddie Mathews immediately come to mind. However, Joe Adcock, the hulking 6-foot-4-inch former basketball player at Louisiana State University, had the reputation of smashing some of the longest home runs ever witnessed. Although measuring the distance home runs travel has historically been […]

 Joe Oeschger, the ace of the Boston Braves pitching staff, cruised through the first eight innings of the opening game of a Thursday afternoon doubleheader at Braves Field. He gave up just three hits to the last-place Philadelphia Phillies, as he propelled the fourth-place Braves to a comfortable 6-0 lead going into the top of […]

The New York Giants were once again in their familiar position of first place in the National League. John McGraw’s bunch were a dynasty in the early 1920s, winning back-to-back World Series titles against their crosstown rival New York Yankees in 1921 and 1922. In 1923 they saw the Yankees finally have the upper hand […]

When Cardinals right-hander and future Hall of Famer Jesse Haines retired in 1937 after 18 seasons with the club, he held the franchise record for wins (210), innings pitched (3,203⅔), starts (387), and complete games (209), and had helped guide the Redbirds to five NL pennants and three titles. Haines’s pitching records have all since […]

America’s Memorial Day festivities in 1948 included parades honoring fallen veterans and doubleheaders graced by the heroics of World War II comrades-in-arms. At Shibe Park in Philadelphia, former Navy and Marine Corps pilot Ted Williams drove in three runs in a win over the hometown A’s. Cincinnati Reds portsider Ken Raffensberger, inducted into the Navy […]

This article was published in the June 2015 issue of the SABR Black Sox Scandal Research Committee newsletter.   On September 28, 1920, Cook County Assistant State’s Attorney Hartley Replogle announced, “We are going after the gamblers now. There will be indictments in a few days against men in Philadelphia, Indianapolis, Pittsburgh, Cincinnati, and other […]