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When John Joseph O’Brien took the field for the Brooklyn Bridegrooms on July 25, 1891, he was “unheralded and unknown,”1 described as “a little pale-faced chap who looked as meek as a country youth fresh from the mourners’ bench.”2 He hit the first pitch he saw for a line single to right, then added another […]

There have been countless cosmetic changes in how baseball has been played during the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, but the tools and rules of the game — and of the professional sport — have not been radically altered. A spectator from 1901 would recognize the game in 2021. The revolutionary advances occurred in the 19th […]

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 […]

In 1971 The Sporting News reported “Joe Moeller, the sometime starter, sometime relief pitcher of the [Los Angeles] Dodgers [was] a ‘situation’ pitcher.’ ‘The problem,’ Moeller [joked] ‘is that they haven’t found the right situation.’”1 Dubbed the hardest thrower in the Dodger stable of flamethrowers in 1962—a remarkable claim considering the presence of future Hall […]

On a chilly October night, Marquis Grissom gracefully glided to his right from his position in center field at Atlanta’s Fulton County Stadium and gloved the final out of the 1995 World Series. After three tries, the Atlanta Braves were the champions of professional baseball. The man who gloved that final out was the only […]

A fastball pitcher who spent his 15-year major-league career playing for five teams, Ed Whitson was an All-Star in 1980 and amassed a 126-123 career record in 2,240 innings pitched. The 6-foot-3 right-hander was a starter for the first half of the Pirates’ 1979 championship team, but he might best be remembered for his temper […]

Norm Cash would have loved it. The story drew upon metaphors including baseball, the Old West, and the camaraderie of friends. Its title, City Slickers, was evocative of the relationship between the burly cowboy and the legions of brewers, auto manufacturers, and teamsters who became his fans. The director, Billy Crystal, who also played the […]

Joe Cambria was one of the most prolific scouts in major-league history, signing hundreds of men to professional contracts as a scout for Clark Griffith and the Washington Senators. He also inked countless others as a promoter of semipro and Negro Leagues baseball in Baltimore and minor-league teams throughout the country. He was one of […]

After four seasons of double-digit victories as a starter for the Dodgers (1946-1949), left-handed pitcher Joe Hatten started only twenty-eight games over the next three seasons. He then departed the Major Leagues for a long career in the minors.  When Hatten was asked what single thrill he remembered from his days as a major leaguer, […]

In June 1959, International League secretary and longtime baseball historian Harry Simmons was ecstatic about the 24-year-old Montreal Royals right-hander making the jump from the Three-I League (Class-B) to Triple-A ball. “[Ed] Rakow could be the best pitcher to come along since Don Drysdale,” Simmons exclaimed. “He can throw hard and is … completely fearless […]

Taylor Phillips had an outstanding career in armed-services baseball, good seasons in the minor leagues, and a six-year major-league career highlighted by being part of the 1957 world champion Milwaukee Braves. William Taylor Phillips was born on June 18, 1933, in Atlanta, Georgia, to parents Amos and Jewell Phillips. He had a kidney disease as […]

Few 20th-century politicians had a more impressive résumé than Albert Chandler. During the course of his political career he served as Senator, Lieutenant Governor, and two terms as Governor of his home state of Kentucky. It can also be argued that few non-players had a greater impact on baseball. His support of Branch Rickey‘s signing […]

Versatility can be both a blessing and a curse. Larry Kimbrough came to the Negro Leagues with the reputation of being both a switch-hitter and a switch-pitcher. Early in his career he faced the Harrisburg (Pennsylvania) Stars in an exhibition game and held them to two hits until the fourth inning, when they exploded for […]

A live bat, good speed, and a solid work ethic should have afforded a substantial major-league career to the World War I-era outfielder who played under the name Jim Kelly. But Kelly was handicapped by a belated start in professional baseball and owed his relatively brief tenure as a big leaguer to forces far larger […]

It marked the pinnacle moment in Luke Sewell’s managerial career. According to author David Alan Heller in As Good as It Got: The 1944 St. Louis Browns, the club’s skipper intended to bench left fielder Chet Laabs during their last series of the 1944 season, only changing his mind at the last minute after watching […]

Following a promising rookie year in 1989, pitcher Kevin Ritz found his career on shaky ground after struggling with extreme control problems for the Detroit Tigers over his next couple of seasons. This was exacerbated by a serious elbow injury suffered at the end of his tenure in Detroit that sidelined him for a full […]

Sal Campisi grew up in the Bensonhurst area of Brooklyn, New York, loving his hometown Dodgers while hating the St. Louis Cardinals and dreading the sight of their star, Stan Musial, at the plate. Campisi recalled, “When I was only a few years old, my folks would take me to Ebbets Field for critical games […]

As the clean-up hitter on one of the strongest offensive teams of his day, Bobby Veach was one of the truly great RBI men of the late Deadball Era, easily leading the major leagues in runs driven in over the twelve years, 1913 to 1924, that he was a full time player. Veach drove in […]

On June 11, 1914, the Carbondale (Pennsylvania) Leader proudly informed readers that hometown minor leaguer Joe Kilhullen had been engaged by the National League’s Pittsburgh Pirates.1 Unhappily, by the time that the edition hit newsstands, the major league career of catcher Kilhullen was already over, confined to a two-inning stint the afternoon before. Undiscouraged by […]

Did outfielder Joe Riggert actually manage even before he began his 20 year career as a player? If nothing else, he seems to have managed in his first season. His career began started in 1909 with seven games for the Abilene Red Sox in the Central Kansas League; he hit .375 in the very small […]

A member of the Washington Nationals, a short-lived 1872 National Association club, Oscar Bielaski is generally recognized as the first major league ballplayer of Polish descent. Other aspects of his five-season professional career are less noteworthy. A low-average singles hitter and a poor defensive outfielder, Bielaski holds another, less enviable distinction – that of being […]

A slick fielder in the days before gloves, Ed Somerville was the top defensive second basemen in the inaugural season of the National League of 1876. A year later his death in Canada marked the first passing of a National League ballplayer. Edward G. Somerville was born in Philadelphia on March 1, 1853, as the […]

It was an unusual news story in a summer full of them. In the first week of July 1969, newspapers in Maine reported that Portland TV station WMTW, southern Maine’s home for Boston Red Sox telecasts, would also carry five New York Mets games “by special arrangement” that month.1 A station official said the Mets […]

The story of General Abner Doubleday inventing baseball as a young man in Cooperstown, New York, has long been recognized as apocryphal, a creation myth fashioned as proof that baseball is wholly American. Baseball historians agree that the sport was being played long before Doubleday purportedly came on the scene in 1839. Another Union general […]