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Typically, baseball ground rules require the public-address system of a ballpark to be silenced during a game. But when the leader of the free world is resigning from office, exceptions can apparently be made. The Syracuse (New York) Post-Standard reported that a portion of President Richard Nixon’s resignation speech on the night of August 8, […]

Opened to baseball on April 19, 1984, Pfitzner Stadium is plopped in the heart of the McCourt Government Center in Woodbridge, Virginia, seating 6,000.1 The “Pfitz” has been the home of several incarnations of a Class-A franchise, the Potomac Nationals, under the ownership of Art Silber. The field has never drained well. On the evening […]

Like most forces of nature, Paul Lo Duca’s twin eruptions in June 2007 were remarkable for both their spontaneity and the havoc they left behind. Frustrated with his team’s recent struggles and what he considered undue expectations from the press, on June 23 the New York Mets catcher littered the diamond with his equipment after […]

An early advocate for player’s rights, baseball commissioner Kenesaw Mountain Landis was a staunch supporter of minor league baseball. However, he never believed in the farm team concept. He felt the major-league magnates took advantage of the system by owning multiple ballclubs. Landis would have preferred that every minor-league franchise remain autonomous, telling the United […]

“Steps back up onto the mound, tucks the ball in his right hand. Now into the glove. Holds it in front of the letters. Nods yes. The wind; the one-two pitch. Swing, and a groundball to the left side. Castro’s got it. Spins, throws. He got him! A perfect game for Roy Halladay! 27 up […]

Wait ’til Next Year! The phrase became a euphemism for a baseball season gone awry and nowhere did it receive greater play than in the 1940s and 1950s with the Brooklyn Dodgers and their long-suffering fans.1 The Dodgers had never won a World Series and in those two decades leading to the 1955 season, they […]

The Cleveland Naps met the Boston Red Sox at Fenway Park on July 11, 1914. The pitching matchup was intriguing: The Naps started Willie Mitchell, a 24-year-old left-hander with a biting curveball, and the Red Sox sent a 19-year-old lefty, Babe Ruth, to the mound for his major league debut. The Naps were anxious to […]

Mike Paul, a veteran of a half-century in professional baseball, was born on April 18, 1945, in Detroit. Michael George Paul was the oldest of seven children born to George and Theresa Paul. George Paul was a police officer in Detroit, but thought it was becoming too dangerous there and moved the family to Compton, […]

With high-school graduation behind them, it was time for the Cates twins to decide upon a career course. Neither wanted the stable but strenuous future of life on the Cates family farm. For Levi, a painter’s job at the local cement factory beckoned. This is the bio of Eli, the brother who chose to pursue […]

A steady, left-handed pitcher can always find employment in baseball. Bob McClure was armed with a tremendous competitive spirit and a deceptive curveball. He turned his talent into 19 major-league seasons. “Bob Uecker told me that if I were right-handed I would have been digging ditches 10 years ago,” McClure said.1 After his playing days, […]

Although he became a star for the most famous team in baseball, for whom he helped win three pennants and a World Series, Jim Bouton’s most lasting contribution to the sport would come a few years later, after he lost his fastball and returned to the major leagues as a struggling knuckleballer for an expansion […]

There are hundreds of major-league players who fall into the nebulous category of having had a “cup of coffee” in the big leagues; a baseball idiom for a short time a minor-league player spends playing in the major leagues. It could be for a single game, or a few short weeks. The time period is […]

Although there are better known examples, Lyman Lamb typified a certain type of 1920s ballplayer: the batsman who piled up gaudy stats in the high minors but whose major-league career was brief and undistinguished. In one torrid three-year span playing for the Tulsa Oilers of the Class A Western League, he averaged .358, with an […]

In 1957 the Milwaukee Braves seized that city’s sole major-league baseball title, beating the New York Yankees in a memorable seven-game fall classic. It capped an odyssey begun when the National League franchise moved from Boston shortly before the 1953 season — the first big-league club to change sites since 1903.1 The Braves’ stunning success […]

Winner of 188 major-league games despite years of arm problems, John Lackey became only the second rookie to start and win a World Series-clinching game in 2002 with the Anaheim Angels. He won World Series rings with three different teams, the Angels, Boston Red Sox, and Chicago Cubs, over his 15-year career. John Derran Lackey […]

Starting 217 games as a Browns pitcher and relieving in 49 more, Barney Pelty was, along with shortstop Bobby Wallace, the common thread on a team that flirted with destiny and fell into oblivion. Armed with an excellent curveball that kept opposing hitters off-balance, the 5’9″, 175-lb right-hander recorded 22 career shutouts, but also was […]

Marvin Eugene Rackley was born on July 25, 1921, in Seneca, South Carolina, a mill town just up the road from Clemson University in the northwestern corner of the state. (Like many professional players of his time, Rackley would later take a “baseball age,” claiming to have been born in 1922). Marv’s parents were Thomas […]

Susan Fornoff’s childhood influenced her career choice; the location left an imprint on a particular part of that career. Fornoff was born February 4, 1958 and grew up in Baltimore, the oldest of four children (the others were boys) to Bill Fornoff, a factory foreman at Domino Sugar, and Romaine Fornoff, a homemaker and teacher’s […]

Catcher Rick Cerone had an 18-year career in the major leagues (1975-92), but he used his athletic talent and fame well beyond the baseball field. An excellent multiple-sport athlete in his youth, his real love was baseball. Prior to his major-league career, he was a college baseball star, and after his time in the majors, […]

Craig Minetto was born in Stockton, in California’s Central Valley, on April 25, 1954, to Armando and Lorene Azzaro Minetto. He had an older sister, Chris. Minetto spent much of his childhood at two businesses founded by his grandfather and operated by Craig’s mother, Lorene, the Alpine Nursery and the San Francisco Floral Company.1 Lorene […]

The World War I-era right-hander who played under the name Jim Bluejacket possessed key perquisites for pitching success: intimidating size, good stuff, and the ability to change speeds effectively. But he also had to contend with a ruinous shortcoming: the weakness for alcohol that pervaded his career. In the end, intemperance won out, precipitating Bluejacket’s […]

It had been over 28 years – from May 1983 to until September 2011 – since a man from the Bahamas had played in the major leagues. When the Atlanta Braves called up Antoan Richardson, it brought another Bahamian outfielder back into the news. Wil Culmer’s name remains prominent at home, but in the United […]

Cap Anson, baseball’s first superstar, was the dominant on-field figure of nineteenth-century baseball. He was a small-town boy from Iowa who earned his fame as the playing manager of the fabled Chicago White Stockings, the National League team now known as the Cubs. A larger-than-life figure of great talents and great faults, Anson managed the […]

Eight words: “They may not have some of the necessities.” Those words made Dodgers general manager Al Campanis a pariah. He tried to explain that he had not said what he meant or meant what he said, but his reputation was wrecked. His self-destruction focused a spotlight on Major League Baseball’s shameful record in hiring […]