Search Results

During a fifteen-year major-league career that spanned the Deadball and Lively Ball Eras, Jack Fournier was one of the premier power hitters in baseball. His batting accomplishments were impressive: While compiling a lifetime .313 batting average, he led the National League in home runs once; led the American League in slugging percentage once; hit three […]

Growing up in downstate Illinois, between Chicago and St. Louis, a midcentury youth was blessed by time and place. By radio, born in 1920, and television’s relatively new wonderwork, baseball could be followed through the art of play-by-play. If you grasped the pastime’s rhythm, the Voices often became as arresting as being at the park. […]

During the mid- to late 1880s, the St. Louis Browns dominated the major league American Association, capturing four consecutive pennants. Key to the club’s success was the standout pitching of Bob Caruthers and Dave Foutz, and thereafter, Silver King.1 Each of these right-handers was also a capable batsman who doubled as a Browns outfielder when […]

Dave Schmidt was a catcher with the Boston Red Sox in 1981. He played for them in 15 games at the start of the season and acquitted himself well. But the Sox had two other solid catchers — Rich Gedman and Gary Allenson, who filled most of the team’s needs for the next several years. […]

Among the newcomers on the Brooklyn Superbas roster for the 1903 season was right-handed pitcher Henry Schmidt. At almost 30, he was getting a rather late shot at a major-league career, but had earned a look as a 35-game winner in the California League the season before. Soon Schmidt discovered that getting out National League […]

Charles Richard “Charlie” Maxwell, the popular outfielder of the Tigers from 1955 to 1962, often called “Paw Paw” by fans, writers, and broadcasters, was one of Detroit’s best power hitters. A lefthanded batter who averaged .264 lifetime, Charlie hit 148 home runs and batted in 532 runs in a major league career lasting from 1950 […]

“There was no better teammate. … He’ll do anything to win.” – James “Cool Papa” Bell1   When legendary pitcher Satchel Paige became the first to be inducted in the National Baseball Hall of Fame in 1971 based on his Negro League accomplishments, he told Afro-American reporter Sam Lacy that he thought there were others […]

“Yes, I knew him. He had huge hands with crooked fingers. He was a catcher, you know.” “Hell Yes, Babe was here. When? I don’t know, maybe on Ben Egan day? No! I don’t recall ever seeing him. No! I don’t know of anyone who did.” “Yes, I knew Ben. A great guy, everyone liked him. He […]

The story of baseball in the nation’s capital is interlinked with the career of Arthur P. Gorman, a name unrecognizable to today’s fans. Long before Clark Griffith made his annual trips to the White House to present the Commander-in-Chief with his season’s pass, Gorman actually befriended and entertained the President of the United States and […]

The 21st-century epithet “ump show,” coined to describe umpires who make themselves the center of attention, could have been created 100 years earlier to describe Charles Van Sickle. Brawls, riots, ejections, and suspensions followed Van Sickle throughout his 20-year career, which included 67 games in the 1914 Federal League and stints in more than a […]

Chuck Connors was a career minor-league ballplayer who played portions of two seasons in the major leagues, with the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1949 and Chicago Cubs in 1951. Connors gained greater fame as one of the very few ballplayers who was a successful actor in his post-baseball career, best known for his role as Lucas […]

He was a handsome, stylish Italian-American from the streets of Brooklyn who strutted into prominence at the same moment John Travolta’s Tony Manero did the same on the silver screen. But there was more to Lee Mazzilli than a pair of tight-fitting pants. He was a graceful athlete with a good eye who could hit […]

As pitching coach for the White Sox in the 1950s and ’60s, Ray Berres was noted for two things: developing quality pitching staffs year after year, and not wanting to draw attention to himself. Quiet and unassuming, he once said, “I stayed away from writers. … I didn’t care for publicity.” But Ray Berres couldn’t […]

Wayne Bromley “Rasty” Wright spent his entire adult life pursuing his two passions, baseball and his alma mater, The Ohio State University. Wright was a star collegiate pitcher for the Buckeyes from 1915 through 1917. Going directly from college to the majors — a rarity throughout baseball history — he went on to pitch for […]

Baltimore native Tommy Thomas signed his first professional baseball contract while still in high school and later became a standout pitcher on one of the greatest minor league teams of all time. The talented tosser went on to flash occasional signs of brilliance during a 12-year stint in the majors. When his pitching career ended, […]

Maurice Joseph McDermott, Jr. was a hard-throwing southpaw teenage “can’t miss” prospect who devolved into a journeyman reliever. Slated as the next Lefty Grove, Mickey McDermott played 12 seasons in the big leagues with the Red Sox, Senators, Yankees, Athletics, Tigers, and Cardinals. He spent the first half of his MLB career in Boston where […]

Four men named Dave Roberts have played major league baseball. David Leonard Roberts, who appeared in 91 games in the 1960s for the Houston Colt .45s and Pittsburgh Pirates, is probably the least known, at least in the United States.1 But across the Pacific in Japan, that Dave Roberts is by far the best known […]

On the back of his 1955 Bowman baseball card, Mel Clark urges youngsters to have a glove, bat and ball at hand so they can be ready to play when the opportunity presents itself. When that opportunity arose for the war veteran from the sandlots of West Virginia, he seized it with a vengeance. Melvin […]

Beset by a chronic illness and often in pain, John T. Brush was not an obvious candidate for a leadership role in turn-of-the-century baseball. But Brush’s afflictions camouflaged a fiercely competitive spirit and a will of iron. For 25 years he was the most influential club owner in the National League, a champion of causes […]

“When Mr. Reardon speaks you are under the impression that he has just spit out a hand grenade.” — Harry A. Williams, Los Angeles Times1   Beans Reardon learned a lot about umpiring at the age of 16 when he worked as a riveter’s assistant. “Riveting was good education for umpiring,” he recalled. “If I […]

In a major-league playing career that lasted only seven seasons, Bill Lange made an indelible impression on those who saw him in action. A star outfielder on the also-ran Chicago Colts of the 1890s, Lange could do it all: run, throw, field, hit for average, and hit for power by the standards of his time. […]

Jersey City, squeezed between Newark Bay and the Hudson River, is a prime metropolis for a ballpark. For 50 years, it had one, an Art Deco edifice débuting in the Depression, thriving for the first half of its life, fading into deep neglect in the 1970s, and succumbing to eventual nullity in the 1980s. Within […]

“People don’t know how good the Pacific Coast League is,” a onetime miner named H.V. “Hardrock Bill” Lane said in 1935. “There’s Oakland, or San Francisco.”1 A year later he moved the then-Double-A Hollywood Stars to San Diego, renamed them Padres for a nearby mission, opened single-tier 9,100-seat Lane Field, and began to fill a […]

This article is part 1 of a planned multi-part series on the history of the Chicago Cubs franchise. This chapter covers the journey from the White Stockings to the Cubs from 1876 to 1919.   The 1885 National League champion Chicago White Stockings. 1-George Gore, 2-Silver Flint, 3-Cap Anson, 4-Sy Sutcliffe, 5-Mike Kelly, 6-Fred Pfeffer, […]