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On June 22, 1990, the Cincinnati Reds hosted the Los Angeles Dodgers at Riverfront Stadium. In the bottom of the ninth inning, the Reds’ Eric Davis was rounding third base after a base hit to right field—the would-be winning run. Dodgers catcher Mike Scioscia stood at home plate as if he was not expecting a […]

Leon “Boogie Wolf” Childress is one of many obscure “ghost players” of the Negro Leagues, a player skilled enough to make it onto the rosters and even into group photographs of some very good teams, but never earning regular playing time or appearing in any statistical record. Leon was born on June 23, 1910, in […]

“Beware of robbing a wretch or attacking a cripple. Do not laugh at a blind man, nor tease a dwarf, nor cause hardship for the lame. Don’t tease a man who is in the hand of the god (i.e. ill or insane)…” [Instruction of Amenemope, Ancient Egypt]1 Frank James Burke was born on March 19, […]

After World War II, Frank Jobe followed the proverbial American dream: college, medical school, marriage, and a family. Even though he said he never planned it that way, he pursued a career that helped make the world a better place — particularly the world of baseball, as the developer of the procedure known as Tommy […]

Wilbur Wehde was born on November 23, 1906, in the hamlet of Holstein, Iowa. The town, roughly 45 miles east of Sioux City, was at the time home to fewer than 1,000 residents, mostly first- or second-generation German immigrants. Wehde’s father, Gustave, managed a creamery and brokered other farmers’ produce, while his mother, Frieda, managed […]

Before Ed Bolden began his career in baseball, he was a domestic servant and a clerk in the Philadelphia post office. He stood a scant 5 feet 7 and weighed less than 150 pounds, but his diminutive stature belied his forceful presence. By the time he retired in 1946, he was an accomplished baseball executive […]

On the way to a last-place finish, the 1914 Cincinnati Reds regularly auditioned marginal pitching prospects. Among these hopefuls was Pat Griffin, an inexperienced 21-year-old righthander plucked from a Northeast Ohio semipro team. Assigned ninth-inning relief duty in a lost-cause game against the defending NL champion New York Giants, recruit Griffin turned in a nightmarish […]

For much of his post-baseball life, Max Flack’s 12-year major-league career was remembered for one thing: his playing for two major-league teams in the same day. In 2011, 35 years after his death, his major-league career faced a renewed interest in his performance in the 1918 World Series. Flack was born Conrad John Flach on […]

How did a ballplayer from Indiana whose entire major-league career saw him pitch for the Boston Americans come to be known as Tex? His given name was Charles Leroy Pruiett. It wasn’t his lanky stature; he was 5-feet-8 with a listed playing weight of 176 pounds. The answer is probably a simple one: It likely […]

Full-blooded Mohawk Louis Bruce was one of the earlier Native Americans to reach the majors. He got into 30 games with the Philadelphia Athletics in 1904, during a pro career that ran from 1900 to 1907. He was small (5’5” and 145 pounds) but hit for good averages in the minors while playing numerous positions. […]

At the peak of a professional baseball career that spanned 11 major-league seasons, Greg Dobbs was recognized as one of the game’s best pinch-hitters.1 Consequently, it is appropriate that Dobbs’ membership in the first-at-bat home run club was earned as a pinch-hitter. That home run marked the achievement of his dream to play pro ball, […]

Louis Pelouze, a semipro baseball player in Detroit, had had only 20 games of professional experience in the summer of 1885 playing for the London (Ontario) club in the Canadian League, when on July 24, 1886, the St. Louis Maroons of the National League called on the 22-year-old to play center field against the Detroit […]

Ever since the award was established in 1955, there have been two types of World Series MVPs. On the one hand, there are the guys you’d expect to win the trophy: baseball superstars and future Hall of Famers like Sandy Koufax, Roberto Clemente, Mike Schmidt, and Johnny Bench, who simply do in the Series what […]

He was the first amateur player selected by his expansion franchise and became its first home-run champion, alas, when the parent team was in a different city. In his major-league debut, he dropped the first ball hit to him for an error and got his first hit, a triple, in his second at-bat. Nine days […]

Jesse Houston had a very impressive debut season in 1937 with the Cincinnati Tigers of the Negro American League (NAL). It was also the debut season for the Cincinnati franchise in the NAL, and Houston helped it secure the second-best record by contributing at least nine wins, including a no-hitter that wasn’t widely reported and […]

Betsy Jochum was one of the sixty original players, as well as one of the best, in the early years of the All-American Girls Professional Base Ball League, a professional women’s circuit born during World War II and made famous in the 1992 movie A League of Their Own. Sixty years later, she had the […]

Curry Foley, one of 32 Irish-born major leaguers in the 19th century, pitched and played in the field for Boston and Buffalo of the National League from 1879 through 1883, when he was forced to retire because of rheumatism. His first two seasons on the mound were his best; in his last three, he seldom […]

Picking sixth overall in the June 2012 amateur draft, the Chicago Cubs passed over left-handed pitcher Max Fried in favor of outfielder Albert Almora. With the next pick, the San Diego Padres selected Fried out of Harvard-Westlake High School in Los Angeles. As a rookie in 2016, Almora made his mark in Cubs’ lore by […]

The explosive Tigers-Yankees matchup that took place at Tiger Stadium on June 17, 1961, was one of the high points of a season that served as a pivotal one for the Tigers in a number of ways. The team surprised baseball by improving from a 71-83 mark the year before, to battling the iconic yet […]

In September 1883 a key late-season series in Boston pitted perennial powerhouse Chicago against a fine nine from Beantown. The Windy City team blew into the Hub holding first place, riding an 11-game win streak and appearing destined for a fourth consecutive National League title. Boston, however, was knocking on the door, a game and […]

The Chicago Cubs opened 1982 with rookie Ryne Sandberg at third base, months after acquiring him in an offseason trade with the Philadelphia Phillies. Held to one hit in his first 32 at-bats, the 22-year-old Sandberg entered the Cubs’ April 23 game with the Pittsburgh Pirates batting just .140. On a windy day at Wrigley […]

Before a nearly sold-out Anaheim Stadium crowd of 41,805, and with a national television audience tuned in, Nolan Ryan took the mound for the California Angels with four no-hitters under his belt. He shared the record with Sandy Koufax. Might the Ryan Express break the record against the visiting Yankees, the defending world champions? The […]

Early in his career, John Francis Smith was a pitcher of great promise. As a 20-year-old in 1885, the southpaw struck out 147 batters in 11 games for the Newark team of the Eastern League, and he became known as Phenomenal Smith.1 A clever hurler who mastered a variety of deceptive curveballs,2 he pitched for […]

Roses have thorns. Gardens have snakes. And ballparks have foul balls. Foul balls aren’t always the downside of the sport. When they land in a fan’s outstretched hands, or roll into a child’s grasp, everyone shares the vicarious pleasure of the souvenir. But there’s no denying that every foul ball is also a missile – […]