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Except for two games in the 1890 Players League, Fred Doe devoted his entire baseball career to the minor leagues in New England. On the diamond, Doe quickly progressed from player to manager during the period 1885 to 1888. In the 1890s, Doe became a non-playing manager and in the early 1900s he moved up […]

Gerald (Red) Fahr had an average major league fastball and curveball. At 6’5” and only 185 pounds he gave the “impression that he was composed only of arms and legs.”1 His gangly appearance made him appear out of control, but he had an uncanny ability to put the ball exactly where he wanted it. Howard […]

Kid Madden’s career was meteoric … and tragically short. Born in Portland, Maine, on October 22, 1866, the Kid took an early liking to pitching. Though frail and almost childlike in appearance – he weighed but 124 pounds spread thinly over a 5-foot-7 frame during his peak pitching years – Madden developed an assortment of […]

In late July 1958 newspapers nationwide published a brief Associated Press dispatch announcing the death of Deadball Era pitcher Jack Rowan.1 Follow-up articles supplied poignant detail. The elderly gent, believed to be about 85 and without family, had spent his final years living alone in a small Detroit hotel room, surviving on a small monthly […]

While a catcher for the Seton Hall University Pirates in 1987, Craig Biggio and two teammates – future MLB slugger Mo Vaughn and 1987 NCAA batting leader Marteese Robinson – were dubbed “The Hit Men.” After a brief time in the minor leagues through the first half of 1988, Biggio spent the next 20 years […]

Right-handed pitcher Roy Wilkinson reached the pinnacle of his modest baseball career in only his second major-league game. A capable seven-year minor-league veteran, Wilkinson had been acquired by the Chicago White Sox late in the 1919 pennant chase to provide some respite for a strained pitching corps. Given a September start against the Philadelphia A’s, […]

Whenever the subject of best baseball names comes up, Scipio Spinks is sure to be on the short list. A classic wild flamethrower, Spinks was breaking through to success in 1972. If he hadn’t torn up his knee in a collision with Johnny Bench, he would have more to show than a career record of […]

Horace Wilds is pictured in the middle row, second from right, in a photo of the 1887-88 Oakland Tribunes baseball team published in the Oakland Tribune newspaper on September 6, 1908. (Courtesy of Stephen V. Rice)   Horace Wilds, an African American catcher, excelled on white semipro teams in Oakland and San Francisco from 1886 […]

Immortalized by two dramatic World Series home runs, one in 1984 for the Detroit Tigers and another in 1988 for the Los Angeles Dodgers, Kirk Gibson was noted for his competitiveness and clutch hitting. Plagued by injuries, he never lived up to the hype created by his manager, Sparky Anderson, when he referred to Gibson […]

When Rod Dedeaux hit an RBI single in his first major-league start for the Brooklyn Dodgers in September 1935, it seemed a good omen for the beginning of a successful major-league career. Having graduated from the University of Southern California a few months earlier, he had been tapped by a struggling Dodgers organization as a […]

From 1901 to 1904 Bill Bradley was arguably the best young player in the American League. Wielding a heavy bat he nicknamed Big Bennie, the 6-foot, 185-pound right-hander was one of the junior circuit’s most feared hitters, becoming the first player to homer in four straight games in 1902, and batting .300 or better three […]

The Boston Red Sox lost to the Cleveland Indians on August 9, 1953, but for Red Sox fans there was something to savor – after being away for more than 15 months, Ted Williams was back in a Red Sox uniform and he’d hit his first home run. It was home run number 325 of […]

The courses of the Philadelphia Phillies and Boston Beaneaters had diverged by the time Boston arrived in Philadelphia for a three-game series on Monday, August 26, 1889. A week before, Boston had stretched its lead in the National League pennant chase with three victories over the second-place New York Giants, while the Phillies continued to […]

Bob Quinn owned the Boston Red Sox from 1923 into 1933. In 1936 he became president of the Boston Braves and renamed them the Bees, changing the name of the ballpark from Braves Field to National League Baseball Park. More imaginative locals called the place the Beehive. Some continued to call it Braves Field. African […]

The under-achieving Rockford Peaches were for all intents and purposes playing out the string on the 1947 season. Heading into their August 18 doubleheader against the Racine Belles, they were 13½ games out of the final playoff spot with two weeks remaining on the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League (AAGPBL) schedule.1 The Peaches were left […]

On July 26, 1921, when the Robins began their second long Western trip of the season, Brooklyn had a .500 record and was barely in the first division, just two games ahead of fifth-place St. Louis. According to the Standard Union (Brooklyn), the 15 straight road games would determine “whether or not [the Robins] are […]

Some Boston Red Sox fans were allowing themselves to harbor hope. The team had been down three games to one to the Cleveland Indians in the 2007 American League Championship Series, but they won Game Five to bring the series back to Boston. The 86-year-old “curse” had been snapped in 2004; the Red Sox won […]

Jackie Robinson and the Brooklyn Dodgers came to Chicago’s Wrigley Field in mid-May of 1947 amid a grand experiment that changed professional sports, opening the gates to a stream of talented Black athletes and advancing the cause of racial justice. The experiment proved an emotional stress test for Robinson, the Dodgers team, and the National […]

Each baseball season’s early summer games take on a mystical quality in cities that endure longer, darker winters. Near June solstice, night patiently awaits dusk’s extended loitering, humidity is tolerable, and the schedule is still young enough to keep fans of even the most dismal teams buoyant for revelation. Such was the setting on a […]

Momentum seemed to be on the side of the Red Sox. They had been down three games to none in the 2004 ALCS, but were coming off two extra-inning wins. Both were hard-fought, close games, but Boston won them both and was flush with exhilaration. The two teams traveled from Boston back to New York […]

It takes a great deal of effort to secure 25 hits in a baseball game and manage to lose it. In the case of the Pittsburgh Pirates in their game in Brooklyn on the damp afternoon of June 21, 1922, it was a poor defensive effort that contributed to their demise at the hands of […]

When Sal Maglie reached the major leagues on August 9, 1945, he was a 28-year-old rookie dismissed as “a nobody, another dreary journeyman pitcher coughed up by the minors in the final days of wartime baseball.”1 Manager Mel Ott used him for a mere two-thirds of the fourth inning that day and 4⅓ innings in […]

A combination of fine weather, a state holiday,1 the largest recorded crowd at the South End Grounds to date, and serious Boston batting made the Beaneaters’ 1896 home opener an event to be remembered for some time, although not for the quality of the baseball. In 1896 the South End Grounds in its third iteration […]