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Chet Emerson had made it to the big leagues. It was September 1911 and the Philadelphia Athletics had seen enough promise in the 21-year-old Dartmouth graduate to sign him to play for legendary Connie Mack and his first-place A’s. It’s safe to say that Emerson wasn’t particularly worried about where in the powerful Philadelphia lineup […]

Pitcher Wilfred “Kid” Carsey achieved an 81-59 record for the 1892-95 Philadelphia Phillies, working an average of 317 innings per season. He was the antithesis of big hard-throwing contemporaries Cy Young and Amos Rusie. The diminutive Carsey frustrated hitters by delivering deceptive slow curves. He was normally cool and collected, but at times he was […]

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 […]

Eight major-leaguers died while serving in World War I.1 The third of these casualties, Eddie Grant, had the longest playing career and is also well remembered because he received a plaque in center field at the Polo Grounds. The shortest career on this list belonged to Alexander Thomson Burr, a pitcher who played just one […]

Otey Clark pitched right in the middle of the ’40s in the heat of World War II. His major-league career may have lasted only one season but it was a productive season. His first win came against the Chicago White Sox when he pitched a complete game, giving up only two earned runs. For the […]

Ovid Nicholson’s chief baseball skills were bunting and speedy base running. In 1912, he stole 111 bases in 123 games, vaulting from Class-D ball to a six-game stint in the majors. A contributor to the SABR/Baseball-Reference Encyclopedia quite reasonably posed the question as to what else Nicholson could have done to win a job with […]

Bert Thiel pitched four games for the 1952 Boston Braves, the extent of his major-league career. He had a long minor-league pitching career with 145 wins. He pitched two seasons of winter ball with Caguas, in Puerto Rico; managed in the minors; and scouted. His baseball mentors were George Selkirk, his manager with the 1953-55 […]

From left, Sid Mercer of the New York Journal, Al Spink of The Sporting News, and G.W. Axelson of the Chicago Herald. (Photograph by Charles Martin Conlon of the Chicago Herald.)   The irony is clear to anyone who gives it even the slightest thought. At the time that baseball was entering the public consciousness […]

Jerry Moses aspired to become a major-league ballplayer, and declined football scholarships at Southeastern Conference (SEC) universities to pursue his dream. A 1970 American League All-Star, Jerry became the youngest Red Sox to hit a home run, at age 18 and 289 days, with a pinch-hit rocket off Jim “Mudcat” Grant on May 25, 1965. […]

After Fred Thomas of the Boston Red Sox left for the Navy in July of 1918, third base was a tough position for manager Ed Barrow to fill. Catcher Wally Schang played there on occasion, but the hot corner was mostly played by a succession of career minor leaguers. All had strengths and weaknesses as […]

Was it fate that placed infielder Mel Hoderlein with the 1948 Boston Red Sox rather than the Philadelphia Athletics? Writing in Sports Collectors Digest, Brent Kelley makes the point that Hoderlein probably would have had a much longer big-league career had he been signed to an Athletics contract (that team’s 1948 infield had an average […]

The March 20, 1941, edition of the Sporting News brandished this headline on page 5: “Loyal Watchers Daffy About Dodgers’ Flag Chances; Scribes Already Arguing About World Series Plans.” Brooklyn’s “Bums” had finished a distant second to Cincinnati in 1940, but the beat writers were predicting an all-New York World Series come October. The hubbub […]

In his second big-league season, young Pittsburgh Pirates infielder Jimmy Viox hit .317, good for third place in the 1913 National League batting race. In the eyes of many observers, including Sporting Life, Viox had supplanted Johnny Evers as the senior circuit’s top second baseman, and great things were expected of Viox in coming seasons. […]

From 1905 to 1921, Native American Lloyd Nephew was a first baseman and catcher on White minor-league, semipro, and industrial teams. He got his start in baseball in 1903 at the Carlisle Indian Industrial School, after Charles Bender and before Jim Thorpe played there. Nephew’s journey illustrates the rocky road of integration. A full-blooded Seneca, […]

Almost 40 years after he first played for the Boston Red Sox, Hal Janvrin was described by a veteran Boston Postsportswriter as “the greatest schoolboy athlete of all time.”1 As a student at Boston English High School, Janvrin had earned three letters in baseball, three letters in football, three letters in hockey, and three letters […]

A side-wheeling left-hander with a great pick-off move to first base that kept runners close, Jack Pfiester posted a lifetime 2.02 ERA over eight seasons, the third best of all-time for pitchers with at least 1,000 innings, but he is best remembered for his seven shutouts and 15-5 career record against the hated New York […]

Farmer Vaughn was “a strapping big fellow,”1 standing 6-foot-3 and in his prime weighing in at 180 pounds. Outspoken and fun-loving, he was also highly competitive and, at times, combative. He drew quite a few fines over the years for arguing with umpires both as a player and as a manager. While guiding his 1906 […]

Most baseball careers are filled with a number of ups and downs, but few players experienced the extreme highs and lows of nineteenth-century pitcher Dad Clarke. In a professional career spanning more than 20 years with at least 17 teams in more than a dozen leagues, he twice won 30 games in a season in […]

The Deadball Era’s Jack Taylor — not to be confused with “Brewery Jack” Taylor, who died in 1900 — was the greatest “iron man” pitcher of the 20th century, hurling 187 consecutive complete games from June 20, 1901, to August 9, 1906. Pitching mostly for losing teams, Taylor relied on pitch location and guile to […]

Until his fateful involvement in the plot to fix a World Series, Fred McMullin was known as the Chicago White Sox’ “lucky man.”1 His addition to the starting lineup coincided with late-season surges to win the American League pennant in 1917 and 1919. Today he is mostly thought of as the “forgotten man” – in […]

As the 1917 season reached its next-to-last day on October 3, the Boston Red Sox, winners of the American League pennant and World Series in the two previous seasons, were in second place, eight games behind the Chicago White Sox, who had dethroned the Red Sox and wrapped up the pennant a week earlier. The […]

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 […]

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, […]

In conjunction with SABR’s Eight Myths Out project, here are specific examples of factual errors or misinformation that appear in Eight Men Out, both the 1963 best-selling book written by Eliot Asinof and the 1988 film directed by John Sayles. Certain entries on this list may seem like pedantic nitpicking: surnames misspelled, Abe Attell’s boxing […]