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On Sunday evening, April 4, the Boston Red Sox and Baltimore Orioles opened their 2004 seasons at Baltimore’s Oriole Park at Camden Yards. The game-time temperature was 43 degrees.1 The two teams had had very different seasons in 2003. The Orioles had finished in fourth place in the American League East, 30 games behind the […]

The Boston Red Sox certainly had momentum on their side as they headed into the 2004 World Series. They also had an unfortunate history of failing to close the deal when it came to winning world championships; it had been 86 years since the team had last won it all and they had lost in […]

The record for consecutive games won by a pitcher in a single season has stood for more than a century. It is 19 games, first set by New York Giants ace Tim Keefe between June 23 and August 10, 1888. The streak ended on August 14 at the Polo Grounds in New York when the […]

The major-league record for hits in a season has a long, and interesting, history. The first player to exceed 200 hits was Canadian Tip O’Neill in 1887. O’Neill’s record of 225 hits with the St. Louis Browns stood for seven years before Hugh Duffy put up 237 hits for the Boston Beaneaters in 1894. Just […]

The 1902 Pittsburgh Pirates were one of the greatest teams in baseball history; during the season’s last weekend, they were on the verge of completing the season with an exclamation point. In the midst of a three-year reign atop the National League, the Pirates handily won the 1901 NL pennant with a 90-49 record, the […]

On April 30, 1887, their Opening Day and National League debut game, the Pittsburgh Alleghenys hosted and defeated the defending league champion Chicago White Sox, 6-2. Pittsburgh’s offense was led by Alex McKinnon’s four hits (two singles, a double, and a triple) and two runs scored. Teammate Fred Carroll, whose defensive versatility enabled him to […]

St. Louis Cardinals great Bob Gibson hurled a high fastball from the Busch Stadium mound at 8 P.M. on July 17, 1974. César Geronimo, the Cincinnati Reds’ lithe centerfielder, swung and missed, making him the 3,000th strikeout victim in Gibson’s Hall of Fame career. Only the Washington Senators’ Walter Johnson had ever fanned that many […]

Proximate geographies, shared histories, and personal relations drive great sporting rivalries. The race for the 1916 National League crown had all three of these essential elements. The neighboring boroughs of Brooklyn and Manhattan make up part of New York City. Wilbert Robinson and John McGraw spent years together on the Baltimore Orioles and New York […]

In the early twenty-first century, a significant portion of the action within professional baseball games consolidated around three basic results for any plate appearance: walks, strikeouts, and home runs. Baseball fans and analysts following this development labeled it the “Three True Outcomes” (TTO). “True” because walks, strikeouts and homers – in contrast to, say, around-the-horn […]

Korean pitcher Dae-Sung Koo spent just 140 days in the majors, all with the New York Mets in 2005; this was his finest. The 35-year-old lefty struck out all three batters he faced that afternoon. What made the game memorable, though, was the batting and baserunning of “Mr. Koo” (as he was fondly known in […]

A standing-room crowd of 48,013 showed up at Camden Yards for Baltimore’s final home game of the 1998 season. When the gates opened, the scoreboard showed a lineup that was familiar to them. It included Cal Ripken, batting sixth and playing third base, the position he had occupied for the past three years. But unbeknownst […]

It was a brilliant day for a ballgame. The skies were clear and azure blue, the temperature in the low 80s. Wednesday, June 30, 1909, was the culmination of a glorious week of parties and galas in Pittsburgh celebrating the opening of owner Barney Dreyfuss’s million-dollar brainchild, Forbes Field, the new home of the Pittsburgh […]

In 1951 The Sporting News encapsulated the career of Frank Hiller stating, “This is the human story of the man who stands outside looking in … with desperation, pathos, perseverance as its theme … [Once] one of the ‘anointed,’ a hand-picked [New York] Yankee prospect from the start … And then, as the Fates snipped […]

Pinky Pittenger was a backup infielder who played for three major-league clubs during the decade of the 1920s. He picked up the name Pinky from a comic-strip character of the day. It was perhaps better than Clarke Alonzo Pittenger. That’s the name he was born with, son to William J. and Anna (Gray) Pittenger, born […]

On October 4, 1955, outfielder Edmundo Amorós helped “Next Year” arrive at last for the Brooklyn Dodgers. His racing catch off Yogi Berra near the left-field line at Yankee Stadium saved the Bums’ 2-0 lead in Game Seven of the World Series. Johnny Podres held on for the remaining three innings to bring Brooklyn its […]

Bill Monbouquette grew up just a few miles from Fenway Park and was signed by his hometown Boston Red Sox, but his first day with the team, the cops threw both him and his father into a holding cell at the ballpark. “I remember sitting out in the right-field stands at Fenway watching a game […]

A hard-throwing right-hander, Fred Beebe began and ended his major-league career in fine style. As a rookie in 1906, he posted 15 wins and led the National League in strikeouts. Ten years later, he provided excellent spot starter-relief work as a midseason Cleveland Indians call-up. In between, Beebe suffered from bouts of wildness, arm problems, […]

When Lou Boudreau became manager of the Boston Red Sox in 1952, he fostered a “youth movement.” The Red Sox had recently signed several young players who came to the majors with little or no experience, and it was Boudreau’s responsibility to get these players into the lineup. Accordingly, in the season opener he started […]

(Copyright Mike Shuba)   George Shuba’s story is in many ways that of an average ballplayer. In seven years in the major leagues, his career batting average was .259, and he played in a total of just 355 games, never more than 94 in a season. Nearly a third of his at-bats were as a […]

There have been many famous husband-wife teams who shared a career, each partner making contributions to their success. George Burns and Gracie Allen. Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt. Johnny Cash and June Carter. Ferdinand and Isabella of Spain. Isis and Osiris and the six wives of King Henry VIII to name a few. In a male-dominated […]

At approximately 3:15 P.M. on Monday, October 8, 1956, Babe Pinelli’s right arm shot upward, ending Game Five of the World Series. Pinelli did more than punch out Brooklyn Dodgers pinch-hitter Dale Mitchell to conclude a 2-0 New York Yankees victory; his called third strike completed Don Larsen‘s perfect game, the only one in World […]

If, like beauty, the assessment of baseball talent lies in the eye of the beholder, the wide divergence of opinion on the abilities of Deadball Era outfielder Bert Daniels can be rationalized. Opinions, naturally, may differ. With our subject, whether it was his batting, defense, or base running, Daniels was both praised and derided — […]

A run-scoring-machine leadoff hitter with great speed (408 career steals) and good power (235 homers), Johnny Damon had “good range defensively but … one of the worst outfield arms in the big leagues.” 1 Offensively, Damon had his best years with Kansas City in 2000 and Boston in 2004, and won World Series titles with […]

Editor’s note: This article was presented at the SABR Black Sox Scandal Centennial Symposium on September 28, 2019, in Chicago. It also appears in the SABR Business of Baseball Committee Newsletter, “Outside the Lines,” in Fall 2019. The story of the infamous Chicago Black Sox is well known, but less well understood. Groundbreaking research over […]