Search Results

Jimmy Burke, a coach for the 1929 Cubs, was the quintessential baseball lifer. A marginal ballplayer at best, he somehow managed to hang around in the game for 38 years. His long career as player, manager, coach, and scout began in 1896 with the Peoria Distillers of the Western Association, where he felt privileged to […]

Tom Wright, a left-handed hitting outfielder who played major league baseball over nine seasons, still lived in 2007 in the town where he was born: Shelby, North Carolina. Wright was born on September 22, 1923, one of 10 children (five boys and five girls) raised on the family farm run by his father, J.B. Wright. […]

Josh Gibson has often been called “the black Babe Ruth” since he, like the Sultan of Swat, was his league’s most-feared home run hitter, but Wilmer Fields – Gibson’s teammate during four of his seasons with the Homestead Grays – had much more in common with the Babe than Gibson did. On the surface, this […]

Dave Robinson was the first player signed by the San Diego Padres in 1968. The National League expansion team’s press conference on July 31 featured Hall of Famer Duke Snider, a fellow Southern Californian who had inadvertently discovered Robinson at San Diego State College.1 “He told me he went out to see [outfielder] Jim Nettles […]

“Mystique” is a word often linked with Sandy Koufax. He was dubbed “The Left Arm of God” for his pitching feats – especially over the five years from 1962 to 1966. A long litany of statistics attests to his brilliance during this period, but perhaps the most salient points are these. Koufax became the first […]

Norm Cash would have loved it. The story drew upon metaphors including baseball, the Old West, and the camaraderie of friends. Its title, City Slickers, was evocative of the relationship between the burly cowboy and the legions of brewers, auto manufacturers, and teamsters who became his fans. The director, Billy Crystal, who also played the […]

“With a fine disregard of flying regulations here came this big flying machine roaring from behind the center field fence and only a few hundred feet in the air and there were a few panicky seconds. And then George Case [who was waiting to bat] removed his cap and began to wave it violently as […]

Adonis Terry debuted in the first major- league game played by the franchise that became the Dodgers and saw the start of his last game delayed by an electrical fire in a doomed grandstand. During the 13 years in between, the tall, mustachioed right-hander threw two no-hitters, earned two pennant-clinching victories, won three World Series […]

“Lou Brock is the symbol of great base stealing, but today I am the greatest of all time.”1 — Rickey Henderson, May 1, 1991   The above proclamation was part of a short speech made by Oakland’s Rickey Henderson just moments after he stole base number 939 in his career. The thievery of third base […]

In 1886, John “Jocko” Flynn was 22 years old and the toast of Chicago, a formidable starting pitcher on a pennant-winning team. In 1887 he was 23 years old and forgotten with a sore arm and a troubling taste for liquor. In 1907 Flynn was dead at 42. Who was this man? John A. Flynn […]

Miguel Tejada was the dream. A kid born into extreme poverty in the Dominican Republic – geographically close to the United States and the means to achieve an entirely new life – but, in reality, light-years away. Tejada beat long odds to be plucked from his small town and placed under the bright lights of […]

Floyd (“Jack”) Farmer, baseball and football star at Cumberland University (Lebanon, Tennessee), was the only player in the first 135 years of the major leagues to hail from that institution.1 Farmer enjoyed a solid debut as a second-half starter for the sixth-place 1916 Pittsburgh Pirates, and as an occasional double-play partner of 42-year-old Honus Wagner.2 […]

With the muscular physique of a football player, 6-foot-2, 215-pound rookie pitcher Earl Francis was called up in midseason 1960 by the Pittsburgh Pirates to strengthen their bullpen. The 24-year-old right-hander logged 18 innings in seven appearances and sported a nifty 2.00 earned-run average, but came down with shoulder problems and was sent back to […]

Homer Simpson may live forever in baseball history as the man who pinch hit for Darryl Strawberry—who had already hit nine home runs (four-base hits often dubbed “homers”)—in the 1992 City Championship game between Springfield and Shelbyville. It was Simpson who knocked in the winning run, being knocked out in the process, and gave victory […]

For a pitcher with 474? innings of major-league experience behind him to leave on the note he did – his disastrous one partial inning for the 1908 Red Sox – must have been personally aggravating. But even with that disappointing finale, Jake Thielman won 30 big-league games with an earned-run average of 3.16. Thielman spent […]

In 1922 the Class D Blue Ridge League consisted of teams from Hagerstown and Frederick, Maryland; Waynesboro, Hanover, and Chambersburg, Pennsylvania; and Martinsburg, WestVirginia. The loop had a $2,000 monthly salary cap for the 13-man roster, including the manager, who was normally an active player. The circuit operated under the Class Rule, which allowed clubs […]

The Sunday-afternoon game on July 14 was the final game of the unofficial first half the season. The homestanding A’s entered the game in second place with a 45-41 record, six games behind the AL West-leading California Angels. The visiting Milwaukee Brewers, losers of nine of their last 11, were 37-46 and trapped in sixth […]

A pair of rare events were accomplished by a pair of future Hall of Famers at the Hubert. H. Humphrey Metrodome on August 1, 1986. The Minnesota Twins were spending the weekend celebrating their 25th anniversary, beginning with this contest against the Oakland A’s. In a rout of the Athletics, the Twins’ Kirby Puckett and […]

The month of June 1931 came to a close with the Philadelphia Phillies and the Chicago Cubs battling each other at the Baker Bowl. Chicago (36-29-1) held third place in the National League standings, seven games ahead of sixth-place Philadelphia (29-36-1). The teams had split the first two games of a four-game series, and on […]

On an unseasonably chilly Tuesday night in early May, a small crowd gathered at Tiger Stadium to watch the Detroit Tigers take on the visiting Chicago White Sox. The 7,327 who braved the cold — there were chill warnings in effect for later that night — were in for a treat: arguably the greatest pitching […]

As much as the All-Star Game is a celebration of baseball’s history and a recognition of its current and future stars, it is also a celebration of place, and Oriole Park at Camden Yards played its role perfectly in 1993. The ballpark opened in 1992 as a reminder of classic ballparks of an earlier era, […]

Yogi Berra once said, “It’s déjà vu all over again.”1 For the second time in less than three weeks, Milwaukee’s Christian Yelich had a perfect day at the plate while hitting for the cycle. Further, this accomplishment was against the same team (the Cincinnati Reds) victimized by his first cycle, which took place on August […]

The Sunday game at Handlan’s Park1 on September 19, 1915, drew an estimated crowd of 13,000 to watch the second-place St. Louis Terriers square off against the last-place Baltimore Terrapins.2 The Terriers, who had a record of 17-10-2 since August 23, were locked in a hotly contested three-team battle for the Federal League pennant. They […]

The idea of a winter retreat appealed to many in the baseball business. The men the game attracted were by their nature sportsmen. Unless a man resided in a remote area during the winter, he gravitated towards his baseball companions, especially if he was a bachelor, to partake in any number of activities such as […]