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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 […]

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 […]

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, […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

In 1947 Clint Hartung, the Hondo Hurricane, was going to be the biggest thing to hit New York baseball since Babe Ruth. Like the Babe, the 6-foot-4, 215-pound giant could pitch and hit home runs out of sight. The Giants signed Hartung in 1941. He had led his high-school team in Hondo, Texas, to the […]

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 […]

Best known as the principal owner of the New England Patriots football team from 1960 to 1988, Billy Sullivan began his career in professional sports in baseball when Boston was a two-team city. As publicity director for the Boston Braves from 1946 to 1952, Sullivan crafted numerous ideas to encourage baseball fans to patronize the […]

Roy White was a quiet, graceful leader on the New York Yankees during a transitional period in the club’s history. His strength of character and remarkable versatility enabled him to survive, and even excel, in the shark tank that is so often New York Yankee baseball. At a time when the great careers of Mickey […]

The astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson estimates that the slowest pitch that could reach home plate on the fly would travel around 30 miles per hour.1 Stu Miller didn’t defy the laws of physics, but he challenged the equation that says Velocity = Success. “He’s got three speeds of pitches – slow, slower and reverse,” the sportswriter […]

Frank E. Bradley, a fireballing right-handed pitcher who played in six seasons for the Kansas City Monarchs before suffering a career-ending wound in World War II, was born on February 3, 1918, in Benton, Bossier Parish, Louisiana. He was the son of June and Adline (Gates) Bradley. If Frank had any siblings, no mention of […]

Chuck Dobson might be best remembered as one of the first white players to room with an African-American on road trips, and as the first active player to admit using “greenies” (amphetamines) while playing. But that would be a disservice to the hard-throwing right-hander who seemed destined for a long career in the big leagues […]

Infielder Mickey McGuire appeared in a total of 16 games for the Baltimore Orioles in 1962 and 1967. Originally a shortstop, he played nearly an equal number of games at that position, second base and third base in his 15-year professional career. A right-handed contact hitter, he spent his final two seasons in Japan. M.C. […]

John Wright was the “owner of a blazing fast ball and a sharp-breaking curve and plenty of control”1 and his sinker brought “despair (to) opposing batsmen.”2 To many who saw him, “He dominated batters.”3 Wright will forever be linked in history with Jackie Robinson as the first two players to break the color line in […]

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 […]

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 […]

For Baltimore, 1993 was a shining era in baseball. The Orioles hosted the All-Star Game at its crown jewel, Oriole Park at Camden Yards. On August 7, Baltimore (60-49) trailed Toronto by three games in the AL East. Starting pitcher Fernando Valenzuela garnered American League Pitcher of the Month honors for July (3-0, ERA 1.56 […]

Introduction On Saturday, March 25, 1905, a small yet curious article appeared in the Salt Lake Telegram that announced a baseball game to be played the following day between the Salt Lake Browns and the Ogden Chocolates at Walker’s Field in Salt Lake City.1 This would be the first formally organized game of baseball between […]