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Washington’s Nationals opened their 1875 National Association season at their DC grounds. Defeated 8-2 by the defending three-time champ Boston Red Stockings, the teams then moved 90 miles to Richmond, Virginia, for the next two games, those being the first Association games ever played in “The South.” Danbury, Connecticut, manufacturer/promoter Alfred P. Sturges had contracted […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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, […]

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. […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

In the summer of 1955, Robert Leroy Powell became the first player from Flint, Michigan, to make the major leagues. Bob signed a $36,000 bonus contract with the Chicago White Sox following the spring quarter at Michigan State University, where he starred as a hard-hitting outfielder for the Spartans’ baseball nine. As it happened, Powell […]

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 […]

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 […]

(Copyright Mike Shuba)   George Shuba’s story is in many ways that of an average ballplayer. In seven years in the major leagues, his career batting average was .259, and he played in a total of just 355 games, never more than 94 in a season. Nearly a third of his at-bats were as a […]

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 […]

On March 1, 2012, a businessman named Andrew W. Schmidt III died in Baltimore, Maryland, the city of his birth. He was 80 years old. For 38 years, until the company closed in 1991, Schmidt had operated A.W. Schmidt and Son, a wholesale meatpacking house on Harford Road in Baltimore. The company had been in […]

Tall left-hander Frank Scanlan was a top-flight prospect who reached the 1909 Philadelphia Phillies while still a teenager. Prior to that, he had been an underage pitching standout at the University of Notre Dame. In addition to a talented arm, the Phillies phenom also had impressive ballplayer bloodlines, having three brothers in the professional ranks. […]

After spring training tryouts with the Philadelphia Athletics and Phillies and seven years in the minors, Ed Cole caught on with the St. Louis Browns in 1938. Pitching primarily in relief, Cole won his only big-league game that season in a grueling start against the Boston Red Sox at Fenway Park. The rubber-armed pitcher, however, […]

Kevin Collins was a hard-nosed infielder who stood up for his teammates and whose teammates stood up for him. He rose through the ranks with the Miracle Mets of 1969 only to be traded for the final piece of that championship puzzle. “When people say I wasn’t an important part of the 1969 Mets, I […]

Vaughan Pallmore “Bing” Devine, a soft-spoken, modest man, spent more than a quarter-century as a baseball executive and played a major role in building four National League champions and three World Series winners. Devine left his biggest mark as the general manager of the St. Louis Cardinals, whose owner fired him in 1964 just as […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 – […]