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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 […]

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 […]

“The opening night against the Yankees was one of the most electrifying nights I’ve spent in baseball. The excitement was everywhere. It was incredible to see that place filled. It was hard not to look up and be just as awed as any fan.”1 That was Rusty Staub in 1985, 20 years after professional baseball’s […]

Game Two of the NLCS was another extra-inning nail-biter, with the Pirates again prevailing in extra innings by a narrow margin. Only for drama, this game outdid its predecessor on several counts. Clutch hitting, controversy, terrible baserunning, heroics: it had it all. Chuck Tanner selected Jim Bibby, a strapping, intimidating right-hander, as his starter. The […]

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. […]

September 26 should have been his 30th start. Instead, his coaches, teammates, and 26,9331 fans were mourning the untimely passing of José Fernández2 the previous day in a boating accident. Instead of the atmosphere of relaxed anticipation before a ballgame, the mood was somber inside and outside Marlins Park.3 As the Marlins left the dugout, […]

The Cleveland Indians boasted a big three who anchored their pitching staff in 1948. The triumvirate featured Bob Lemon (20-14, 2.82 ERA), Gene Bearden (20-7, 2.43), and Bob Feller (19-15, 3.56). They were followed by spot starters Sam Zoldak (9-3, 2.81) and Steve Gromek (9-6, 2.84). Since one of the big three had each pitched […]

It sounds like the kind of far-fetched scenario you might hear in a barroom bet: “True or false? Two baseball teams once played a game where the pitchers threw seven shutout innings, but the score was 21-17.” If anyone ever offers you that brainteaser, pick “true,” because it really happened to two teams in the […]

The 1950 season began with a dramatic rematch between two rivals that battled for the American League pennant until the final day the season before. In 1949, going into the final two games at Yankee Stadium, Boston needed to win only one to take the pennant. They lost both. With Boston and New York expected […]

He played first base, second base, third base, catcher, and the outfield in the major leagues, but 558 of his 568 games in the field were behind the plate. Red Kleinow hit for a .213 average, playing at a time that any contribution at all from a catcher was considered a bonus. He was born […]

Ox Eckhardt has the highest lifetime average in the minor leagues of batters with over 1,000 games played. Some sources even suggest that his career batting average was the best of all time.1 A left-handed hitter with an extremely open stance, he was “almost in motion toward first when he hit the ball. Result, a […]

From New England’s Blackstone Valley textile mills sprang Second World War pitcher Lou Lucier, a trim 5-foot-8 right-hander weighing 160 pounds with a brief major-league career for the Red Sox and Phillies in the years 1943-45. Lucier had four brothers and four sisters, born in Northbridge, Massachusetts, on March 23, 1918, to John B. Lucier, […]

Possibly the only “one-hit wonder” to belt a ground-rule double for his knock, one of the few to play only designated hitter, and one of the rare ones who (but only temporarily) had a second base hit, Vince Belnome is a unique twenty-first-century addition to the list of one-hit wonders. Vincent Michael Belnome was born […]

Across the decades, baseball players from the celebrated to the obscure have traded in their spikes for movie or TV scripts. Some — Chuck Connors, Bob Uecker, and Greg Goossen come to mind — enjoyed careers in the entertainment industry as, respectively, the star of TV’s The Rifleman, a sometime film and TV actor and […]

The Cleveland Indians’ return to prominence in the mid-1990s is well known. So is the plan that general manager John Hart used to orchestrate it. The plan focused on developing young players and signing them to long-term contracts before they became eligible for arbitration and free agency.  What perhaps is not so well known is […]

Stout left-hander Ed Zmich won only one big-league game, but for a few weeks in the summer of 1910, the Class-D hurler caught the attention of the baseball world, resulting in an unusually fierce bidding war. Edward Albert Zmich was born on October 1, 1884, in Cleveland. His father, Max, emigrated from Germany in 1873 […]

“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 […]

Described as “an idealist, a dreamer, and a lover of solitude and nature,” Harry Pulliam was an eccentric dresser (one reporter wrote that “all the colors of the rainbow were utilized by him in the color scheme of his fancy waistcoats”) and fabled storyteller who put all around him at ease, rising to high places […]

During the 1890s southpaw Bert Inks pitched for six different major league clubs – but posted a winning record for only one of them. More than a century later, that performance prompted a 19 th century baseball scholar to declare, “Bert Inks exemplified the lengths to which teams often go to give a left-handed pitcher […]

On December 12, 2018, at the Negro League Baseball Museum in Kansas City, Missouri, Museum President Bob Kendrick, with historian Jay Caldwell, announced the Negro League Centennial Team. The team was a key part of the Museum’s celebration in 2020 of the 100th anniversary of the founding of the Negro Leagues. The team of 30 […]

Red Sox right-hander Gordie Mueller was in the big leagues for a little more than three months in 1950. He worked a total of seven innings, over eight games, without a decision, facing 45 batters. He walked 13 of them and struck out only one. Eleven of the batters secured base hits off him, one […]

“I felt I’d be happier trying to make a living from baseball than any other business I know,” Judge Emil Fuchs said.1 “Happy” would not describe the Judge in the baseball business world: he lost nearly everything he had as owner of the Boston Braves, unsuccessfully striving to make them into a contender from 1923 […]

Outfielder Joe Kelley’s sensational play on the diamond earned him the well-deserved title “Kingpin of the Orioles.” He along with John McGraw, Willie Keeler, and Hughie Jennings made up the “Big Four” of the great Baltimore teams of the middle 1890s. Kelley was fleet of foot, sure-handed in the field, and blessed with a powerful […]

This article appears in SABR’s Baltimore Baseball (2021), edited by Bill Nowlin.   1. Flat Rock (a/k/a Druid Hill Park) 1858-1859 When Baltimore grocer, George F. Beam, formed the Excelsior Base Ball Club in the summer of 1858, the choice for a practice space was imperative since ball playing within city borders was often impractical, […]