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Early in his career Lou Bierbauer’s surname appeared in box scores in abbreviated form as “Bauer,” as did that of his younger brother Charlie, a marginal minor league infielder in the early 1890s. In 1883 Lou began serving as the principal catcher for the top semipro team in Erie, Pennsylvania, where he was born on […]

Bill Richardson grew up in an Indiana farming community where his father was a laborer. He married a woman from the western Indiana coal country and settled in her hometown. When his baseball career ended he worked in the mines. He was blue-collar and kept a low profile. That attitude carried into his baseball career. […]

One of the more obscure players in Red Sox history, Eusebio Gonzalez was the first foreign-born Latino to play for the Bosox. Eusebio Miguel Gonzalez Lopez was born in Havana, Cuba on July 13, 1892. Batting right and throwing right, he was an infielder listed as 5’10” with a playing weight of 165 pounds. Gonzalez […]

“I realized that this was a short-lived career, and I did something to prepare myself for what was to come later. I never spent a winter without doing something constructive.  I never played winter ball. I went to school or I took courses in advertising, radio and TV production.  I even took books on the […]

History has not been kind to Don McMahon. Now largely forgotten, McMahon had a very long –often excellent – career, pitched in the postseason four times, helped win two world championships, and was clearly one of baseball’s best relief pitchers in a number of seasons. Playing in the days before the closer became such a […]

 “Riggs Stephenson is a brilliant hitter, steady fielder, and a southern gentleman,” wrote Chicago Cubs beat reporter Edward Burns in 1929, as the rugged Alabaman was en route to a .362 batting average and 110 runs batted in for the pennant-winning Cubs.1 Blessed with eagle eyes, but cursed with a poor throwing arm, the career […]

The adage “You can’t win for losing” fits the 1962 New York Mets. That team lost 120 games, the most in one season in major league history — many close and winnable. Yet the performance of one pitcher on that team, Ken MacKenzie, deserves recognition. The Canadian-born, Yale-educated, control-oriented, bespectacled lefty reliever emerged as the […]

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 […]

Everyone agreed on one thing about Russ Wrightstone, who played major-league baseball from 1920 to 1928, mostly with the Philadelphia Phillies: He could hit. Former teammate and future Hall of Fame manager Casey Stengel once told a national television audience that Wrightstone was “the best left-handed line drive hitter” he ever saw.1 Hall of Fame […]

There was never an Alex Grammas question on Family Feud. However, if Richard Dawson, the late and long-time host of the popular game show, were to have asked a hundred of his contemporaries how they remembered Grammas, the survey would invariably point to three answers: flawless fielding, excellence as a third-base coach, and his Hellenic […]

George Crowe was Indiana’s first Mr. Basketball and became a “Big Daddy” to early black players in major league baseball. “Crowe was the most articulate and far-sighted Negro then in the majors,” Jackie Robinson wrote. “Young Negroes turned to him for advice.”1 Yet this splendid athlete and respected leader chose to spend one-third of his […]

As the first president of the Boston Baseball Association in 1871, Ivers Adams was the father of professional baseball in Boston. The Association’s baseball team was a charter member of the National Association during its inaugural season in 1871, played five seasons in that league, and then became the Braves franchise in the National League. […]

Though Mose YellowHorse toed the rubber for two underachieving Pittsburgh Pirates teams in 1921 and 1922, he left an indelible mark on the club and its fanbase. Because of his off-the-field antics and on-the-field accomplishments, YellowHorse was a longtime fan favorite. Those in executive and administrative positions with the Pirates were not so quick to […]

Curt Flood, Gene Conley, and Danny Ainge had nothing on Baltimore native Peck Lerian, who challenged the reserve clause and earned fame on both the basketball court and the baseball diamond. Showing great promise as the leading member of the Philadelphia Phillies’ young receiving corps at the close of the 1920s, he also stood out […]

Joe Girardi had the big hit in the deciding game of the 1996 World Series, caught a perfect game, won a Manager of the Year Award with one team, and skippered another to a World Series win. An above-average major leaguer for 15 seasons, Girardi will be remembered most for his time helming the post-Joe […]

John Kieran stands among the legends of baseball writing with his J.G. Taylor Spink Award and place of honor in the Scribes and Mikemen exhibit at the Baseball Hall of Fame.1 But baseball and even the broader realm of writing sports per se occupied only a part of Kieran’s career as a newspaperman, and he […]

Newspapers across the nation carried a story in 1908 about a young lady who proclaimed to the handsome, square-jawed, southpaw pitcher of the Dayton Vets, “If you strike him out, I’ll marry you.” The pitcher was Earl Yingling, in his second year of professional ball, the young lady was Georgeana Florine Sausser from Lebanon, Ohio. […]

With a flattened nose and the grim jaw of a heavyweight boxer, Steve O’Neill looked like someone born to be a catcher, and for much of his 17-year major-league career he was arguably the best all-around backstop in the game. An extremely smart man, O’Neill did all the things a good catcher is supposed to […]

Francis Bernard Cox spent many years playing for town and company teams in New England during the 1870s and 1880s. In 1884 he reached the zenith of his baseball career when he played for two professional clubs, including, for a brief stint, the Detroit Wolverines of the National League. Frank Cox was born on August […]

A classical pianist who played at Carnegie Hall by 16, a World Series champion baseball player with one of the major league’s glamour franchises by 23, and an actor sharing screen time with Tallulah Bankhead and Zsa Zsa Gabor on a top-rated television series before he turned 30, Al “The Bull” Ferrara has had enough […]

Native Philadelphian Monte Cross played short for the Phillies and Athletics during a particularly successful era in his city’s baseball history. After several earlier major-league stops, he manned the position for the slugging, first-division Phillies from 1898 to 1901. Then, jumping to the American League in 1902, Cross helped the Athletics to two pennants over […]

This article is the third and last in a series about the most famous sign in any baseball stadium and the man behind it. From 1931 until 1957, the Dodgers’ last season in Brooklyn, clothier Abe Stark’s sign, which offered a free suit to a batter who hit in on a fly, adorned the right […]

Phil Rizzuto had the nickname “Scooter” because of how he got from place to place. He’d earned the moniker as a 5-foot-6 minor leaguer, with short and quick shuffles to any ball or base that needed him.1 He embodied it with the New York Yankees for 13 seasons, turning more double plays than all but […]

Maple Leaf Stadium, circa 1929. (City of Toronto Archives)   Toronto is a world-class city with a proud baseball history, but its ballparks have not always met a high standard. Exhibition Stadium, the American League Blue Jays’ home from 1977 to 1989, was a converted football stadium whose seating arrangements were not entirely suited to […]