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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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

The numbers for Nippy Jones in the 1957 World Series don’t look like much: three games, three plate appearances, two at-bats, no runs, no hits, one hit-by-pitch. But the “shoe-polish incident” in the tenth inning of Game Four, when Jones was able to confirm that a pitch from Tommy Byrne had struck his foot by […]

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 […]

Lenny DiNardo’s baseball career has been diverse, highlighted by a World Series ring, two no-hitters, setting collegiate strikeout records, and playing in the World Baseball Classic twice. DiNardo’s time playing baseball spanned five years in the major leagues and 11 years including college, the minor leagues, the Dominican Republic Winter League, and in the Chinese […]

“He has nothing but a little curve and confidence,” Giants manager John McGraw said of his rookie pitcher Al Demaree in 1913.1 Yet after a late arrival to the majors, the right-hander contributed to four pennant-winning staffs over an eight-year career. Demaree also chronicled baseball, with humor and insight, as a cartoonist for several decades. […]

Sportswriter/historian George V. Tuohey hastily put together his famous A History of the Boston Base Ball Club – 1871 to 1897 in mid-1897. It was published to help celebrate Boston’s National League Beaneaters capture of the 1897 pennant after three unsuccessful seasons. Though weighted toward teams and players from the 1890s, the book does have […]

In 1937 rookie outfielder Gibby Brack captured the imagination of the baseball world with a 12-game hitting streak in the first two weeks of his major-league career, topping the National League in hitting. “There is power in his swing and speed in his legs,” exclaimed The Sporting News. “[H]e started out to make good for […]

His potential was glimpsed when future Hall of Famer Nolan Ryan, months removed from his Rookie League debut in 1965, was said to have the ability to “throw as hard as Dick Selma.”1 That fall, Eddie Stanky, who managed Selma in the Florida Instructional League, claimed the right-handed hurler could become “the best relief pitcher […]

In 1894 a sportswriter at the Brooklyn Daily Eagle, most likely Abe Yager, coined the nickname “Deacon” for pitcher Dan Daub. Daub conducted himself in a calm and educated manner, possessed good judgment and did not flinch in tough times. In the writer’s mind, he was the quintessential churchman. On July 1, 1894, the Brooklyn […]

Among the smiling faces seated in the front row in the 1970 Naugatuck High School baseball team photo is that of senior tri-captain John Caneira. There was good reason for Caneira and his teammates to be happily posing for the camera despite losing a marathon struggle in the previous year’s Connecticut Class A final, for the […]

As a teenager in the late 1930s, Ed Sanicki and his brother Emil would travel by train from New Jersey to Ebbets Field in Brooklyn. At the ticket office they would buy bleacher seat tickets, which was all they could afford. Occasionally Dodgers players would walk past the ticket office, and sometimes sign autographs. Babe […]

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 […]

“We won the game, and we went back to the hotel. I woke up at 4 o’clock the next morning, sat up in bed and screamed as loud as I could. I knew I would never have a chance to do that [pitch a perfect game] again.” – Brian Holman1   In May 1989 the […]

The Minnesota Twins’ home opener on Tuesday night, July 28, 2020, was like many others in the major leagues. The delay in starting the 2020 season because of Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID), meant an empty ballpark since no fans were allowed. Face masks were prevalent; procedures for distancing from one another were in place. The […]