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At age 22, crafty left-hander Jerry Nops was a budding star, a 20-game winner for the 1897 Temple Cup champion Baltimore Orioles. By age 26, his major league career was behind him, a sterling .637 winning percentage notwithstanding. Undone by alcohol abuse and behavioral issues, Nops – whom Cooperstown-bound manager Ned Hanlon once described as […]

Dusty Baker has spent a lifetime in baseball. After a productive career as an outfielder for four teams over a 19-year career, Baker joined the managerial ranks. As a major league manager over most of the period since 1993, he developed a reputation for helping teams win, although it took him until 2022 to capture […]

It is often said that no matter how many times a person may go to the ballpark, chances are good they might see something occur that they had not seen before. That experience is even more enhanced if the achievement or the play is of the record-setting variety. The 26,884 patrons who pushed through the […]

In four years of high school and two in college, Daryl Spencer won just one varsity sports letter. In his first season of Ban Johnson baseball, he hit about .260. Not a single major league scout even nodded toward him until well into his first season of professional baseball. Yet he was in a major-league […]

When Mel Harder guided 13 Indian arms through an astonishing 111-win season, there was no “How-To” book for pitching coaches. That’s because he was still writing it. During Harder’s two-decade stint as an active hurler, pitchers were often treated like zoo animals—objects of curiosity, the care and feeding of whom was left to whichever coach […]

Haywood Cooper Sullivan was many things during his life: passing record holder at Dothan High School (Alabama), college All-SEC quarterback and baseball standout (Florida), bonus baby, American League catcher, manager, general manager, and major-league ballclub owner, and to top it off, a self-made millionaire. Sullivan was born in Donalsonville, Georgia on December 15, 1930, and […]

When he was 36 years old Paul Krichell found himself at something of a crossroads in his baseball life. After many years playing professional baseball—including two nondescript seasons in the majors—Krichell had become a minor-league manager. Near the end of the 1918 season, however, Krichell resigned and quit Organized Baseball in the wake of a […]

Sam Mele managed the Minnesota Twins to the American League pennant in 1965, but just a year and a half later was fired by the team. Subsequently, his former team rallied to finish the 1967 season tied with the Tigers, just one game out of first place in the American League. The record books show […]

Born in New Albany, Indiana, on February 21, 1867, Jo Meekin was the son of James Meekin, a renowned riverboat pilot. At the time of his birth New Albany was the undisputed leader of the Falls Cities (cities that resided beside the Falls of the Ohio, the only major obstruction to river traffic between the […]

With a graceful and deceptive side-arm delivery, Tex Carleton was a tough, no-nonsense right-handed pitcher who enjoyed an eight-year major-league career between 1932 and 1940. Notching exactly 100 career victories, Carleton was a member of the St. Louis Cardinals’ Gas House Gang championship team in 1934, helped lead the Chicago Cubs to the World Series […]

Tony Freitas, left-handed pitcher with a deceptive delivery, appeared in 107 major-league games from 1932 through 1936 as both a starter and reliever for Connie Mack’s Philadelphia Athletics and for Charlie Dressen’s Cincinnati Reds. Freitas also had a historic minor-league career, appearing in 736 games from 1928 through 1953, mostly in the Pacific Coast League, […]

Phil Gagliano grew up in a baseball-oriented family. Though his grandparents on his father’s side of the family hailed from southern Italy (Sicily and Calabria), and on his mother’s side from the Tuscany region, the second-generation Americans took to baseball whole-heartedly. Phil’s father, Ralph, who was a director of purchasing at a wholesale food business […]

A promising young right-handed pitcher, Del Paddock once tossed two no-hitters in a minor-league season. But he was also a capable hitter, prompting managers to seek to convert him into a position player. Paddock reached the major leagues as an infielder, where he batted .287 in 47 games in 1912, and finished his career in […]

Ed Mickelson, like so many of the 19,000-plus former major-leaguers, had a very short major-league career consisting of three cups of joe with three different organizations. But Mickelson had a very successful and memorable 11-year career in professional baseball, and has had a long and fruitful life outside of the game. Edward Allen Mickelson was […]

When he debuted with the St. Louis Cardinals in 1914, pitcher Rees “Steamboat” Williams became the first of only 10 men born and raised in the state of Montana to play Major League Baseball.1 In 1916, Williams would lead the National League in games finished. When his playing days were done, Williams retired to the […]

A potential championship baseball team should possess both a strong cleanup hitter and catcher to provide stability for the long season. One player left his mark on the 1984 Detroit Tigers by demonstrating to the blue-collar Detroit faithful that he had the strength and versatility to put on the so-called tools of ignorance and swing […]

Sled Allen may have been born in Missouri, but he found both his home and his calling in the West Texas town of Lubbock. He fielded a baseball team there in the 1920s and won what was then the country’s most prestigious semipro tournament in 1925. He was a top wrestling promoter and later became […]

Among the baseball accomplishments in Tony Mullane’s career, two events in 1882 stand out in particular: becoming the first ambidextrous pitcher in major-league history on July 18, while with the Louisville Eclipse of the American Association, and tossing a no-hit game on September 11. Anthony John Mullane, also known by the nicknames the Count and […]

High and Inside The Newsletter of the BioProject Committee Society for American Baseball Research (SABR) December 2016 (Special Festivus Edition), Volume 1, Number 7 Past newsletters Editor: Stew Thornley From the Director From the Editor Guest Columnists: Norm King and Rory Costello Project Profile: Leslie Heaphy Project Poobahs   From the Director Would you like […]

Baseball’s distinctive aspects – the most scheduled games of all team sports, greatest amenability to playing two games in one day, and highest likelihood of suspended games getting completed at a later date – have produced more than a few chronological oddities. On May 30, 1922, Max Flack and Cliff Heathcote swapped teams between games […]

In other seasons, the Opening Day faceoff between the Triple-A Pawtucket Red Sox and Rochester Red Wings on April 10, 1981, might have been one of the most dramatic and memorable games of the year for fans of both teams. On an unseasonably gorgeous afternoon in western New York, Pawtucket jumped out to leads of […]

The American Association was already two weeks into its 1887 schedule when the St. Louis Browns and Cleveland Blues met at St. Louis’s Sportsman’s Park on April 30. (In the National League, by contrast, the 1887 season had not begun until April 28.) The two-time defending league champion Browns (6-3) – winners of the “World […]

Editor’s note: This article was originally published in the December 2021 issue of the SABR Black Sox Scandal Committee Newsletter. Peter J. Wilt, a lifelong White Sox fan and soccer executive, has solved a Black Sox mystery, discovering the unmarked grave of pitcher Lefty Williams at Melrose Abbey Memorial Park in Anaheim, California. The location […]