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Stan Musial approaches home plate after hitting the game-winning home run in the 1955 Major League Baseball All-Star Game at County Stadium in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. (SABR-Rucker Archive)   From the day in 1953 when the National League’s Braves arrived in Milwaukee and took up residence in County Stadium, until the early 1960s, there was never […]

Surely, preparation would not be an issue for Pittsburgh’s 1891 National League campaign. The club spent two months training in the South, getting in shape for the new season. The new manager was also familiar to the squad. Still an active player, Ned Hanlon was in the nascent stages of a managerial career that would […]

Jean Faut was having another outstanding season for the South Bend Blue Sox. Not only was she the best pitcher in the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League (AAGPBL) in 1953, but her contributions as a two-way player were invaluable. When she wasn’t on the mound, Faut was South Bend’s regular third sacker, leading the team […]

He “pitches with such intensity that he ought to be declared a fire hazard,” gushed sportswriter Mark Littwin after Bruce Kison’s dominant five-hit complete-game victory, while California Angels teammate Reggie Jackson described him “as so mentally tough, he’s a ball of fire.”1 Kison touted his coolness under pressure as a product of his postseason “experience” […]

The Boston Red Sox had not won a World Series since 1918, almost 30 years. As all the teams reassembled their full rosters in the wake of World War II, the Red Sox found themselves with a superb team and jumped out to a very strong start. They were 21-3 by May 10. They clinched […]

Doubleheaders were common in 1941, but not like this day. For the second time in eight days, and the fourth time in the season, the Boston Braves and Philadelphia Phillies treated their fans to two games on one day. The teams previously squared off against each other for doubleheaders on May 30 in Philadelphia, July […]

It almost strains credulity, given the number of home runs hit over the years by the Boston Red Sox, but no Red Sox player hit a grand slam at Fenway Park until more than a dozen years and a month from its opening. The ballpark opened on April 20, 1912. Six days later, Hugh Bradley […]

Considering that the New York Giants were riding an eight-game winning streak and held a very comfortable lead in the National League pennant race, it was no surprise that fans swarmed the Polo Grounds by the thousands for a Labor Day doubleheader in 1904. Some 37,327 rooters eventually squeezed into the ballpark on September 5 […]

On July 18, 1923, the Philadelphia Phillies rallied in the bottom of the ninth inning to win a see-saw battle with the Chicago Cubs at the Baker Bowl. The win pulled the Phillies out of last place, but had little impact on the fortunes of either team that season. Philadelphia sank back into the National […]

It was a warm spring day in Pittsburgh as 2,861 fans filed into Forbes Field to watch two struggling teams, their hometown Pirates and the visiting Boston Braves. They were witness to the National League debut of an exceptional talent whose arrival was delayed by segregation: 37-year-old shortstop James “Buster” Clarkson of the Braves.1 Born […]

Pitcher Jim Wilson was a right-hander who played 16 years in professional baseball, including 257 games in major-league ball over the course of 12 seasons — despite being near death after having his skull fractured by a line drive off the bat of Hank Greenberg. He went on to become the first Executive Director of […]

When Boston Red Sox owner Tom Yawkey died in 1976, he left his entire baseball empire in the care of his wife Jean. At first it appeared that she had no interest in taking his place. However, circumstances arising from internal jockeying by others to take over the ballclub led to her emergence as one […]

Bob Scherbarth was a catcher for the Red Sox. He played in just one major-league game — and never did get the opportunity to bat. His “cup of coffee” came on April 23, 1950, in the first game of a doubleheader against the PhiladelpJoe McCarthyhia Athletics. “I went up there for a month,” he recounted […]

Jay Kirke was a formidable hitter of the 1910s and 1920s. According to sportswriter Norman E. Brown, Kirke hit the ball “as hard as anyone who ever swung a bat.”1 His line drives “burned with smoke.”2 Kirke “hits everything — bad balls, good balls, curves, fasts and slows,” said outfielder Sherry Magee.3 A left-handed slugger, […]

As organizer and nonplaying manager of the hapless 1890 Brooklyn Gladiators of the American Association, Jim Kennedy barely rates a footnote in the annals of major-league baseball. But during his turn-of-the-century heyday, Kennedy was a prominent actor in the sporting life of New York. As a young man he covered the National League New York […]

Fred Koster’s major-league career consisted of only 76 games for the 1931 Philadelphia Phillies as a back-up outfielder. But for years any conversation around the greatest athletes from Louisville, Kentucky, often started with his name. Decades after Koster graduated from the University of Louisville he was still heralded as the best all-around athlete to come […]

Louis Pelouze, a semipro baseball player in Detroit, had had only 20 games of professional experience in the summer of 1885 playing for the London (Ontario) club in the Canadian League, when on July 24, 1886, the St. Louis Maroons of the National League called on the 22-year-old to play center field against the Detroit […]

Win Noyes was one of several ballplayers for whom service in World War I interrupted a promising big-league career. His brief stint with the 1919 White Sox was merely a footnote in a long, if not especially distinguished, baseball career. Various baseball references say Winfield Charles Noyes was born on June 16, 1889, in Pleasanton, […]

To date, there has only been one woman who played baseball with a team of major leaguers in a big-league ballpark. Her name was Mary Elizabeth Murphy and on August 14, 1922, she played for a team of “all-stars” in an exhibition game against the Boston Red Sox at Fenway Park. Lizzie Murphy’s team beat […]

One of the main attractions of the Louisville Slugger Museum is its Signature Wall showing the names and signatures that have been branded on bats for hundreds of baseball players dating back to the beginning of the practice. Among the names of plaques featured from the 1920s is Baldonaro Acosto. The incorrectly spelled name on […]

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 […]

There was a possibility that first baseman Paul Campbell’s major-league career might last only one game and, at that, might have been without an at-bat. He was a pinch-runner for the Boston Red Sox in the first game of the 1941 season, on April 15. In the bottom of the seventh, the Red Sox were […]

“He was a missionary extraordinary for the game itself. … Wherever he went … Barrett talked and preached baseball.” i He was referred to as the King of Weeds, a play on words about scouts who “beat the bushes” for prospects. He signed the second most major-league players in baseball history, second only to his […]

A baseball lifer, Al Widmar spent almost six decades playing, managing, coaching, and developing players in the major and minor leagues. Widmar, who was the pitching coach for the 1964 Phillies, pitched for the Boston Red Sox, St. Louis Browns, and Chicago White Sox with a 13-30 career record and 5.21 ERA in parts of […]