Search Results

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 […]

For an obscure two-season pitcher, mid-1880s left-hander Cyclone Miller had a disproportionate effect on the major league record book. For example, without Miller and his contribution to the troubles of the 1884 Providence Grays, it is improbable that teammate Hoss Radbourn would have won 60 games that year, the all-time major league single-season record. Nor […]

(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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 — […]

Glenn Beckert had a good-but-not-great career for the good-but-not-great Chicago Cubs teams of the late 1960s and early 1970s. Those teams starred a quartet of baseball immortals in Ernie Banks, Ferguson Jenkins, Ron Santo, and Billy Williams. Steadily and sometimes spectacularly manning the keystone sack and batting second, Beckert made four All-Star teams, received MVP […]

Lou Finney was a tough man to strike out. A fast, feisty left-handed hitter with line-drive power, Finney made contact often enough and was versatile enough in the field to play an important role first for Connie Mack’s Depression-era Philadelphia Athletics and later for Joe Cronin’s World War II-era Boston Red Sox. A scrappy, curly-haired Alabaman […]

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 […]

In October 1876, outfielder-first baseman John Glenn was perched atop the baseball world, a lineup regular for the Chicago White Stockings, champions of the inaugural season of the National League. A dozen years later, he lay semi-conscious on his deathbed in upstate New York, the object of nationwide opprobrium. Universal disdain of Glenn was reflected […]

Described by Sporting Life as “an all-around athlete of more than ordinary ability”i at age 20, Buck Washer nonetheless had an inflated sense of his value as a prospective professional baseball player. At 5’10” and a stout 175 pounds, the right-handed hurler played only four games in the high minors in addition to his sip-of-coffee […]

After graduating from Duke University in 1974, John Poff made it to the majors for 31 games in 1979 and 1980. He hit .218 in 91 plate appearances. The first baseman-outfielder retired after the winter of 1981-82. “My career in baseball was frustrating,” he later said. “I wanted and felt I deserved a lot more […]

Entering the last day of the 1939 season New York Yankees’ righty Steve Sundra owned an unblemished 11-0 record, but a September 30 home run from Boston Red Sox rookie Ted Williams spoiled that. From 1900-60 Sundra’s .917 winning percentage ranked fifth among pitchers with 10 or more decisions in a single season. Combined with […]

It is a sports cliché that records are made to be broken. But in baseball, changing times and modern playing strategies seem to have put certain major-league bests permanently out of reach. The holders of unapproachable all-time records include immortals like Cy Young, Cal Ripken, Nolan Ryan, Zip Zabel, … Zip Zabel? Indeed, just as […]

On June 6, 1897, King Bailey of the Evansville Brewers and Pete Dowling faced each other in Central League action at Paducah, Kentucky. “The game was the finest ever witnessed. … Bailey was wholly invincible and was not once hit safe,” an Evansville paper reported. Dowling allowed only one hit in Evansville’s 1-0 win.1 Dowling […]

When you examine the life of Abner Doubleday you eventually have to come to the point expressed by classic detective Joe Friday: “Just the facts, ma’am, just the facts.” Okay, so here are two facts about General Abner Doubleday’s life. First, his military career was lengthy and he “was the highest ranking officer in the […]

Harold “Hal” Spindel won this glowing assessment in the 1930s: “Considered best young catcher in [Pacific] Coast League since Mickey Cochrane left Portland. Great arm.”1 In 1936, Spindel’s manager with the Seattle Indians, Walter “Dutch” Ruether, said simply that the young backstop “has everything.”2 Solidly built at 6 feet and 185 pounds, Spindel had played […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

On occasion, broadcasters have announced breaking news during live game telecasts. During Monday Night Football on December 8, 1980, ABC’s Howard Cosell announced an “unspeakable tragedy”: the shooting death of musician John Lennon. During the NBA Finals on June 17, 1994, NBC anchor Tom Brokaw showed viewers live footage of football legend O. J. Simpson […]

In front of a May 5, 1933, Ladies Day crowd of approximately 3,000 at the Baker Bowl, St. Louis Cardinals leadoff hitter Pepper Martin had a field day against the Philadelphia Phillies. In five at-bats, he contributed “Four Dashes of Pepper”1 – a home run, triple, double, and single – as he hit for the […]