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Em Lindbeck’s big-league career spanned only two plate appearances. Although unsuccessful in the major leagues, he achieved success in nearly all other areas of his life. Lindbeck was a high school class president, a decorated multisport collegiate athlete, an all-star minor leaguer, an esteemed professional educator, and a public servant. A series of poor decisions […]

An adept base stealer known for taking unusually large leads from first base, Wid Conroy used his raw speed and acrobatic skills to earn a reputation as one of the most versatile defensive players of the Deadball Era. During his eleven-year major league career, Conroy played a significant number of games at third base, shortstop, […]

America loves an underdog. It favors stories of players who weren’t given a chance because they were too small or didn’t have a traditional background, but they pushed and persevered and in the end made the team. Wayne LaMaster’s baseball career isn’t widely remembered today, but it is the classic underdog story of a player […]

William “Gunner” McGunnigle had a flair for fashion on a baseball field that likely will never be matched. McGunnigle managed and coached the bases wearing black patent-leather shoes, a cutaway suit coat, lavender trousers, a silk tie and a derby hat. “It’s only a good looking man like yours truly who could wear patent leathers […]

Although his playing days were not without accomplishment, Brooklyn Dodgers outfielder Len Koenecke is remembered only for his bizarre and violent death late in the 1935 season. While aloft in midnight skies, he was beaten to death by the pilot of the six-passenger airplane that a berserk Koenecke had attempted to commandeer in mid-flight. The […]

By the time he was 21 years old, George Rettger had established himself as a skilled pitcher at the semipro level in his native Cleveland, Ohio. He yearned for a professional career and earned his first pro experience with Akron in the Ohio State League in 1889. The league was formed in August and featured […]

“I’m sure God never meant me to be a ball player,” Taft Wright said. “If he had, I wouldn’t be built so close to the ground and always worrying about my weight and being muscle bound.”1 Sportswriters called him “Fat Wright” and “Round Man.”2 Wright was a born designated hitter — born decades too soon. […]

After nine years in the major leagues, Tommy Dowd’s tenth and last season of big-league baseball was with the Boston Americans in the very first year of the new franchise, 1901. This was the team that became the Red Sox. Dowd was, in fact, the first player to ever play for the team, the leadoff […]

Standing just 5’5″ and a stocky 169 pounds, Topsy Hartsel used his small size to become the most effective leadoff batter of the Deadball Era. During his 10 seasons with the Athletics, Hartsel led the American League in walks five times, on base percentage twice, and runs scored once. His 121 free passes in 1905 […]

At the close of his maiden season in 1917, right-hander Oscar Horstmann loomed large in the plans of the St. Louis Cardinals. Effective as both a starter and reliever, the young hurler displayed an excellent fastball, an outstanding overhand curve, and exemplary work habits for the long-downtrodden Cards who were finally making some progress in […]

Editor’s note: This article was selected as a winner of the 2012 McFarland-SABR Baseball Research Award.   In the early 1880s prosperous tobacco merchant John B. Day re-established the national pastime in New York – operating teams in both major-league circuits with great success. In 1884 Day’s New York Metropolitans were American Association pennant winners […]

Once upon a time decades ago, girls played professional baseball. To quote from the opening paragraph of our book, The South Bend Blue Sox (McFarland, 2012), written by Robert M. Gorman and myself, “The unique circuit immortalized by the 1992 movie, A League of Their Own, resulted from talented women undertaking nontraditional roles and occupations […]

Paul Robert Burris was born on July 21, 1923, in the small town of Hickory, North Carolina, population at the time approximately 6,000. At the age of one, he moved with his family to Charlotte, 50 miles southeast of Hickory. He grew up in Charlotte, and graduated from high school in 1941, having attended both […]

The most coveted player in the September 1907 minor league player draft was 23-year-old Bill Lattimore. All 16 National and American League clubs placed the name of the Toledo Mud Hens lefthander on the player wish lists submitted to the National Commission. The winner of the Lattimore lottery was the AL Cleveland Naps, a stroke […]

“In the morning he won a bride . . . and then proceeded to win the ball game, with a couple of home runs, much to the delight of the bride who sat in the stands and cheered his efforts.”1 On the morning of June 19, 1914, Vella Chloa Glasman, an accomplished 22-year-old singer living […]

Gary Allenson is a baseball lifer. He began his baseball career as a Little Leaguer and spent his entire life involved in the game. He played baseball at every level and has managed or coached at every professional level. Allenson was an excellent player at Arizona State University and competed in two College World Series […]

Al Leiter spent 18 years in the majors and enjoyed pitching success in both leagues. During his career, he managed to earn two World Series rings and play on three different teams in the fall classic. Although Leiter never became one of the star pitchers of his day, he made important contributions to his teams’ […]

Willie Smith is best remembered for his game-winning pinch-homer on Opening Day for the 1969 Chicago Cubs, but he surely deserves to be recalled for a much more enduring achievement: He was the last major leaguer — and the only African-American player ever — to have pitched and played different positions in the field in […]

When Mike Sandlock signed his first professional baseball contract, in 1938, he could not have envisioned that he would become a major-league teammate of no fewer than six Hall of Famers – Warren Spahn, Paul Waner, Ernie Lombardi, Pee Wee Reese, Billy Herman, and Ralph Kiner. Nor could he have imagined that during his five […]

After a nine-year career in Japan, where he won an unprecedented seven consecutive batting titles, seven consecutive Gold Glove awards, and three consecutive MVP awards, Ichiro Suzuki became the first position player from Nippon Professional Baseball in the major leagues in 2001. Over the next 12 seasons with the Seattle Mariners, he amassed 2,533 hits, […]

For the first time in six World Series appearances, the Dodgers reached Game Six with a chance to capture their first title in franchise history. Coming off a dramatic 6-5 victory in 11 innings over the New York Yankees in the Bronx to take the Series lead, “Dem Bums” returned to Brooklyn and Ebbets Field, […]

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and a conclave of civil rights advocates arrived at Memphis Municipal Airport on the morning of April 3, 1968. Dr. King’s group made the trip to show solidarity with the city’s 1,300 striking Black sanitation workers.1 Later that day Dr. King gave his iconic “I’ve been to the Mountaintop” speech […]

If the 1975 Tacoma Twins had been as good at winning baseball games as manager Cal Ermer was at winning protests, they would have gone undefeated. The Twins’ June 8 loss to the Hawaii Islanders, their top rivals in the Triple-A Pacific Coast League’s Western Division, was temporarily put on hold after Ermer mounted a […]

Many minor leagues folded after Pearl Harbor. Most of the rest went under during or after the 1942 season. By 1943, the American Association, the Eastern, International and Pacific Coast leagues and the Southern Association were still operating, providing a reserve source of talent for the major leagues. Below those levels there was a problem. […]