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The Philadelphia Phillies and Atlanta Braves played Game Five of the 1993 National League Championship Series on October 11 in Atlanta after splitting the first four games. The favored Braves, who won 104 games during the regular season to secure their third consecutive NL West Division title, had outscored the Phillies 27-13 during those first […]

Starters for the next-to-last game of the 2004 season were Pedro Astacio for the Boston Red Sox and Sidney Ponson for the Baltimore Orioles. The outcome wasn’t going to affect either team’s place in the American League East standings. The Red Sox began the day 3½ games behind the first-place New York Yankees, with two […]

The first National League Division Series in major-league history got underway in Denver on October 3, 1995. Unlike the Conference Series and the World Series, the NLDS was a five-game series.1 The Rockies, in just their third year of existence, were hosting the Braves. Colorado had played hard to the end of the season, finishing […]

It is not always that a star player gets to “come back” to his original team, to finish his career and take his final at-bats to the admiration of his hometown fans. In 2018, after spending six years away from the Seattle Mariners, including the last three with the Florida Marlins, Ichiro Suzuki was unsigned […]

As September 1999 ended, Bobby Valentine’s New York Mets saw themselves looking up at a very high hill. Bobby Cox’s Atlanta Braves were too far ahead to catch in the National League Eastern Division, at eight games ahead of the second-place Mets with three games to play. But the wild card was still a possibility […]

Runs had historically been hard to come by in the Astrodome, but on May 11, 1999 — in the building’s last season — the Astros proved an exception to the rule, blasting the Pirates 19-8 in front of 18,450. The Dome had opened as the modernistic “eighth wonder of the world,”1 but its design made […]

“He’s one of the icons of the industry, no question.” – Dan Moushon, President of the Appalachian League (2020)1   In the early 1970s, Miles Wolff raised a concern about having a career befitting a graduate of Johns Hopkins University. That concern was unfounded. Over the course of half a century as a commissioner, executive, […]

Jason Jennings had what might be the greatest debut in baseball history. His first game at the major-league level was so impressive that no less an authority on greatness than the National Baseball Hall of Fame contacted the Colorado Rockies to inquire about displaying memorabilia from the game. The Rockies promoted pitcher Jennings from Triple-A […]

Harvard graduate Jeff Musselman pitched parts of five seasons (1986 to 1990) for the Toronto Blue Jays and New York Mets. Primarily a reliever, the lefty was back in the minors when he suffered a career-ending heart attack at age 29. Musselman then went to work for Scott Boras, one of baseball’s leading player agents, […]

“The bonus rule will ruin baseball if it isn’t curtailed,” proclaimed Branch Rickey, Pittsburgh Pirates general manager, in August 1952.”1 A revised rule was adopted by the major leagues that winter. Clubs were required to carry any player receiving a signing bonus of more than $4,000 on their major-league roster for a minimum of two […]

Mike Hart was so determined to play in the major leagues that he turned down two lucrative offers to play in Japan. A chance to play outfield for the Yankees was denied when the baseball commissioner nullified his trade to New York. Hart hit over .300 for five teams in Triple-A,1 yet his MLB career […]

Long before most teams had at least one reliever who could routinely hit 100 mph on the radar gun, the Cincinnati Reds had Rob Dibble. In his first four full seasons in the majors (1989–92), the 6-foot-4, 240-pound right-hander had a strikeout-to-walk ratio of nearly 4-to-1 while setting a record for the fewest innings (368) […]

“I wish I had my own baseball card,” Chris Singleton remembers Keith Foulke saying to him during a road trip in El Paso while they were playing together in the Giants’ minor-league system. “He wasn’t a guy who was highly touted, but I said, ‘You’re good, man. It’s just a matter of time.’ Now, here […]

Right-hander Claral Gillenwater spent most of the 1920s pitching in mid-level minor leagues without much sustained success. His brief major-league career was no different. Given a late-season tryout by the Chicago White Sox in 1923, Gillenwater lasted barely three weeks on the roster. But before he was released, Gillenwater managed a performance of true artistry: […]

For someone who always preferred the simple things in life, James Augustus Hunter was a complex man. To most of the world, he was Catfish, the big-game, big-money, right-handed ace who anchored an Oakland A’s pitching staff that won three straight World Series titles from 1972 to 1974. It was Catfish who in May 1968 […]

When asked to make a list of the best hitters of the late 1940s and early 1950s, few would mention left-handed slugger Ferris Fain, but perhaps they should. Fain broke in with the Philadelphia Athletics as a 26-year-old rookie in 1947 and established a reputation as a daring first baseman with a discerning eye at […]

Fred Osborne was a Canadian pitcher and outfielder who won three consecutive minor league batting titles, played for the worst Pittsburgh team in National League history, and had to be institutionalized in his early 40s. His death details were unconfirmed until 2019. Frederick W. Osborne was born in May 1865, in Alberta, Canada. His father […]

When even the most casual baseball fan envisions a first baseman, they conjure an image that looks a lot like Ryan Howard. In other words, a surprisingly athletic, imposing 6-foot-4, 250-pound frame that looks more natural at defensive tackle than on the baseball diamond. For a time, Howard’s production was the pinnacle of that prototypical […]

One teammate said Brad Radke was his hero. Another said Radke had more heart than anyone he ever played with. His pitching coach — after nearly three decades in professional baseball — said Radke was the man he respected most in the game. Stoic toughness. Steady reliability. Big-game guts. Brad Radke displayed it all during […]

Hal Keller was 12 years old in 1939 when his brother Charlie became a hitting sensation for the New York Yankees. “I was in sixth grade when he played in his first World Series,” Hal remembered 71 years later. “I was proud as a peacock. They were all day games, and the teacher brought a […]

Right-handed reliever Mike Timlin pitched in more than 1,000 major-league games and has four World Championship rings. His 1,058 games rank him eighth all-time among pitchers. He played postseason baseball with 11 teams during his 18 years in the major leagues.1 The World Series wins were with the Toronto Blue Jays in 1992 and 1993 and […]

This article was published in Dominionball: Baseball Above the 49th (2005), the SABR 35 convention journal.   There have now been approximately 200 major leaguers born in Canada. The necessity of using the word “approximately” would seem to imply a lack of research on the subject. In fact, it is precisely because there has been […]