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Between the minor and major leagues, there are thousands of baseball players trying to make a name for themselves. Some can hit home runs; others are great at striking out batters. One, Doug Mirabelli, was able to stand out and become a two-time World Series champion because he could do what most catchers can’t always […]

As Bob Lemon watched Willie Mays make his historic catch in Game One of the 1954 World Series against the Cleveland Indians, he may have recalled another spectacular catch by a young center fielder 8½ years earlier. That was the day, April 16, 1946, when rookie outfielder Bob Lemon saved Bob Feller’s Opening Day victory […]

Eddie Plank fidgeted. On every pitch, Plank went through a seemingly endless ritual: Get the sign from his catcher, fix his cap just so, readjust his shirt and sleeve, hitch up his pants, ask for a new ball, rub it up, stare at a base runner if there was one, look back at his catcher, […]

Imposing, confident, complex, charismatic, and controversial, Dave Winfield ranks as the greatest multisport athlete to emerge from the state of Minnesota. Drafted by five teams in five leagues in three major sports, Winfield chose baseball and compiled a first-ballot Hall of Fame career. At 6-feet-6 and 220 pounds, the powerfully-built right-hander wielded a menacing black […]

Every career has its defining moments. Not all of those moments are big or headline-grabbing. “It’s the little, small moments,” said Greg Olson, “that just as easily define where your career goes.” For Olson, who endured eight-and-a-half seasons in the minors before becoming an All-Star as a major-league rookie, several small moments defined his baseball […]

Rich “Goose” Gossage was “the type of relief pitcher that has become extinct,” as Murray Chass of the New York Times once put it.1 Today’s closer typically has the mission of pitching one inning. In 1978, when the fearsome, hard-throwing righty was the mainstay of the bullpen for the World Series champion New York Yankees, […]

An auto accident curtailed this pitcher’s modest major-league career with the Pittsburgh Pirates in the 1960s. But when he moved on to Duke University, Butters became a smashing success. He served as baseball coach from 1968-70 and then found his true métier — The Sporting News labeled him the world champion of fundraisers. Noted sports […]

Life isn’t always a fastball down the middle. Sometimes it is unpredictable, with all the ups and downs and erratic sharp curves of a Wiffle Ball thrown into a still breeze. An original Seattle Mariner, Danny Meyer experienced the full gamut of life’s changes both on and off the field. Through it all, Meyer adjusted, […]

Nobody wrote a song about Vince DiMaggio. It was his lot in life to be outshone by his kid brothers. He’s the DiMaggio who set the single-season record for strikeouts by a batter. Vince and strikeouts go together like Joe and Marilyn. He led the National League six times. He didn’t deliver the home runs […]

A teammate of Allie Reynolds in their college days, James G. “Jimmy” Cleghorn was a full-blood Indian pitcher. He was born on December 18, 1916, on the Otoe/Missouria tribal reservation at Red Rock, Oklahoma. Cleghorn was three-quarters Otoe and one-quarter Sac & Fox, descending from his full-blood Otoe father, Grant Cleghorn, and his Otoe/Sac & […]

Bruce Bochy’s baseball career is filled with notable achievements. From being the first European-born manager to reach the World Series when he was with the San Diego Padres to becoming the first manager to call on his son to pitch in a game when he was with the San Francisco Giants, Bochy’s long career has […]

“I don’t think there’s any play in baseball that excites more than someone really making a long home run. It’s one of the two best feelings a man can have.” – Sam Horn1   The beauty of his lefty swing had scouts swooning, epitomizing lethal power. At 6-feet-5, 215 pounds2, he seemed to tower over […]

Southpaw Paul Minner overcame serious injuries to his wrist and neck to transform himself from a hard thrower to a soft-tossing junkballer relying on location and control, and fashion a 10-year career in the big leagues (1946, 1948-1956). Traded by the Brooklyn Dodgers to the Chicago Cubs before the 1950 season, Minner averaged 10 wins […]

In a city fueled by flash, Wes Parker was anything but. A child of southern California privilege, Parker grew up in Brentwood with a private school education, material needs met, and natural athletic ability in several sports besides baseball. Money, though it bestowed abundant opportunity, did not generate airs, snobbery, or a feeling of entitlement […]

Over the course of a professional baseball career more than four decades long, Kenny Williams has done pretty much everything a person can do. After having navigated the grind of over a decade as a player, he made a smooth transition into the front office, where he came to be recognized as an astute baseball […]

Over the course of a 14-year major-league baseball career that ran from 1981 through 1994, Tom Brunansky played in exactly 1,800 big-league games. Most of them he played in right field, but he played all three outfield positions, some at first base, and some as a designated hitter. He was a member of the World […]

A speedy line-drive-lashing lefty with a strong arm, veteran Wally Moses joined the Red Sox midway through the 1946 season, shored up right field during Boston’s run to the American League pennant, and batted .417 in four World Series games. A well-liked and respected Georgian who spent 41 seasons in the majors, 17 as a […]

Editor’s note: An excerpt of John Jakicic’s poem, “My Bums Holding My Dream,” was published in Volume 2 of Turnstyle: The SABR Journal of Baseball Arts (2020). The entire poem, truly epic in length, is here for all Baseball and the Arts Committee members to enjoy.   All my dreams as a kid are long […]

Here is a list of all known players to have hit four or more home runs in a single professional game, first published by SABR founding member Bob McConnell in The Minor League Research Journal, Volume 2 (1997), updated in Going for the Fences: The Minor League Home Run Record Book (2009), and now maintained […]

The longest homerless stretch of Joe Mauer’s Hall of Fame career began in August 2014 and carried into 2015, spanning 324 plate appearances and lasting until Mauer’s Minnesota Twins visited the Pittsburgh Pirates on May 20. With the score tied in the top of the 13th inning, Mauer hit Antonio Bastardo’s pitch over PNC Park’s […]

In May 2006 the New York Yankees lost two of three games at Yankee Stadium in their first series of the season against the archrival Boston Red Sox. Two weeks later, the teams split the first two games of their three-game rematch at Fenway Park. Entering the finale on May 24, the Red Sox were […]

Going in, the game had the makings of one of the all-time-great pitching duels in big-league history, pitting two fireballing Texans against each other. One was a veteran seeking his 300th career win to further burnish his Hall of Fame credentials; the other, an upstart off to the kind of career launch that might have […]

Clint Hurdle was the longest-tenured manager in Colorado Rockies history as the team entered the 2009 season. In 2007 he’d led the franchise, which debuted with major-league baseball’s 1993 expansion, to its greatest success — two series sweeps in the National League playoffs and a World Series matchup in which a not-to-be-denied Boston Red Sox […]

On September 13, 1995, in front of 8,818 fans, the Ottawa Lynx, the Triple-A farm team of the Montreal Expos, hosted the Norfolk Tides, the New York Mets’ affiliate, in Game Four of the Governors’ Cup Finals. Ottawa had reached the finals by defeating the Rochester Red Wings three games to two in the East […]