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Sad but no great surprise, any number of baseball careers have been short-circuited by hunting accidents. Unintentional firearm discharges, accidental shootings, falls from elevated hunting blinds, and other misadventures are risks inherent in shooting activities, and ballplayers, like other hunters, undertake them willingly, knowing full-well the effect an errant shotgun pellet or a tree tumble […]

In March of 1935 Mickey Rocco boarded a train in his hometown of St. Paul, Minnesota, headed for Hot Springs, Arkansas, to start his career in professional baseball. The St. Paul Saints of the American Association had offered him a tryout and the opportunity to make the team as a 19-year-old rookie.  Sixteen years later, […]

Elburt Fletcher was an 18-year-old minor leaguer when he shared a spring training dugout with Babe Ruth. “He still had that marvelous swing, and what a follow-through, just beautiful, like a great golfer. But he was forty years old. He couldn’t run, he could hardly bend down for a ball, and of course he couldn’t […]

Mike Briscese was a minor league umpire who had his chance in the major leagues in 1979, filling in as a replacement in the American League during a labor dispute involving the regular umpires. Briscese was born in Staten Island, New York, on August 19, 1915. His father was a barber, and he had two […]

Through one lens, John Upham’s baseball career was brief and injury-riddled. Through another, he was a super athlete who excelled in three sports in school and was a rare talent who could hit, run, field, and pitch at the major-league level. He came to the plate 13 times over 21 games and batted .308 for […]

Nate Colbert wasn’t supposed to play on August 1, 1972. The San Diego slugger had injured his knee in a collision at home plate the night before and was listed as doubtful against the Atlanta Braves. Looking forward to hitting in Atlanta Stadium, known as the Launching Pad, Colbert decided to tough out the pain. […]

In the early 21st century, Jerry DaVanon is probably best known as the father of eight-season big leaguer Jeff DaVanon, but he played as many years in the majors himself, starting in 1969. In contrast to his son, who played somewhat regularly for four years, Jerry appeared in just 262 games at the top level, […]

Grant Johnson, baseball historian Gary Ashwill argues, “was the best everyday player in Black baseball from 1895 to 1909.”1 After slugging his way to a legend with a hometown Findlay, Ohio, club in 1894, “Home Run” Johnson’s career mapped the finest Black teams of the era. He starred at shortstop for the Page Fence Giants, […]

Farmer Vaughn was “a strapping big fellow,”1 standing 6-foot-3 and in his prime weighing in at 180 pounds. Outspoken and fun-loving, he was also highly competitive and, at times, combative. He drew quite a few fines over the years for arguing with umpires both as a player and as a manager. While guiding his 1906 […]

Frank Robinson would not want to be remembered as a racial pioneer. He would prefer to be immortalized as a baseball player who conducted his craft to the best of his ability in the field and at the plate. Robinson knew from a young age that he would face his share of obstacles in life. […]

Dan Gooley was the head baseball coach at the University of Hartford for Jeff Bagwell’s sophomore and junior seasons. He coached at the U of H for five years. The well-seasoned coach had a long stint helming the Quinnipiac University nine, too. In Hartford, Gooley took the program to new heights and aided in Bagwell’s […]

If one had to summarize Bill Madlock’s career in song, the best two numbers to choose would be Noël Coward’s “Mad Dogs and Englishmen” and Duke Ellington’s “It Don’t Mean a Thing if You Ain’t Got That Swing.” The former because “Mad Dog” was his nickname, the latter because it took only one cut for […]

More than 9,000 men played in the major leagues before Chuck Lindstrom, but he was the first to achieve an incredibly rare distinction. In fact, 15 more years passed before another player matched him. He is also among the few twentieth-century major leaguers whose fathers were Hall of Fame players, and though none of these […]

The 1901 Cleveland Blues were mired in seventh place as July came to a close. Dissatisfied with their pitching staff, club management replaced the older arms – Bill Hart (35), Bill Hoffer (30), and Ed Scott (30) – with Harley McNeal (23), Jack Bracken (20), and Bill Cristall (25). McNeal debuted on August 5 with […]

“You know ‘W.W.J.D., what would Jesus do’? Here, it’s what would Scott do? He doesn’t argue with the umpires, he runs every single ball out, he makes great plays, he makes routine plays, he gets the runner in when he needs to get him in, he gets the runner over when he needs to get […]

Paul Carter was a late bloomer as a professional pitcher with a career ERA+ of 85, a statistic that appears to denote him as a below-average pitcher. Nevertheless, across the 54 games he pitched for teams of Negro major-league quality, he had a record of 22 wins and 15 losses that resulted in an impressive […]

The late-19th century hurler known as Roscoe Coughlin on the West Coast and Bill Coughlin most everywhere else possessed all the attributes seemingly required for success in the major leagues: good stuff, command of the strike zone, pitching intelligence, a durable arm, and temperate habits. And he was a consistent winner in the high minors, […]

Before Bo Jackson and Deion Sanders made “two-sport athletes” a vogue term in the 1980s and ’90s, there was Dick Groat. Groat lacked the power of Jackson or the speed of Sanders. But what he lacked in physical gifts he more than made up in guile and spirit. His collegiate career at Duke University earned […]

Long-limbed southpaw Graeme Lloyd became the first Australian to win a World Series ring. The 6’8”1 reliever joined the New York Yankees bullpen late in the 1996 season and remained with the club for the 1998 championship too. Through the 2011 season, this distinction remained unique among Aussies. Just one other of Lloyd’s countrymen, Grant […]

He was considered too small to play for a Division I college baseball program, yet John Valentin became one of the best-hitting middle infielders in the majors between 1992 and 1999, putting up impressive numbers for the Boston Red Sox. He won the Silver Slugger Award in 1995, hit for the cycle in 1996, and […]

Mike Flynn had an extremely brief major-league baseball career, appearing in just one game in 1891 with the Boston Reds in the final year of the major-league American Association. He then played portions of three minor-league seasons in the New England League before retiring as a ballplayer in 1895 to be involved in the bowling-alley […]

In the summer of 1922, a young Frank Reiber would make trips to Navin Field from his home in Detroit. At the ballpark he would go on the field and make himself useful to the Tigers by shagging fly balls and cleaning up. One day coach Dan Howley gave him a catcher’s mitt and asked […]

The baseball team known as the Braves makes its home in Atlanta, but traces its diamond ancestry back through Milwaukee and to Boston, where it began in 1871. In fact, the Atlanta Braves are the only baseball team that has played every season consecutively since 1871, outdating even the National League itself. While forgotten by […]