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Minnesota Twins first baseman Justin Morneau started the 2006 campaign – his second full season in the majors – with a .248 career batting average. After going 1-for-12 in the season-opening series in Toronto, Morneau decided to ditch his 35-inch, 33-ounce cudgel for one of teammate Joe Mauer’s 34-inch, 31-ounce bats.1 The decision paid immediate […]

The Washington Nationals had seen their season go south after a 50-31 start propelled them to first place in the NL East, where they remained as late as July 25. About to send John Halama, a reclamation project, to face 23-year-old Dontrelle Willis on a Wednesday night, the Nats were five games over .500 at […]

The Los Angeles Dodgers were having a weird week. Two nights earlier they had forfeited a game to the St. Louis Cardinals when their fans threw souvenir baseballs onto the field to protest the umpire’s strike calls.1 It had been 16 years since a major-league game had been forfeited (the infamous Disco Demolition Night game). […]

The New York Mets announced in advance that this would be a bullpen game. The scheduled pitcher, Jason Vargas, went on the DL with a calf injury two days earlier. Chris Flexen was called up from the minors, but he arrived from Las Vegas at 7 that morning after some travel snafus. The teams’ mutual […]

Detroit Tigers rookie Lou Whitaker could not have picked a better time to hit his first career home run. The 21-year-old second baseman came to the plate with two out in the bottom of the ninth, a runner on first base, and the Tigers trailing the Seattle Mariners by a run on July 28, 1978. […]

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 […]

Wally Backman was perhaps the first major-league manager fired before his team played a game. His fiery personality may have cost him another chance at managing in the majors. Three times he spent short stints in jail. He declared bankruptcy. From this sordid interval in life, he emerged to become a successful minor-league manager. Walter […]

He accomplished what no other pitcher had done — came straight off the prep diamonds and hurled a major-league shutout. Fresh out of Chester (Pennsylvania) High, 18-year-old Lew Krausse strode to the mound on June 16, 1961, before the largest single-game crowd of the season up to that point in Kansas City’s Municipal Stadium to […]

Although he displayed a strong batting eye and some extra-base power during his minor-league career, Bobby Brooks had a relatively brief major-league career over parts of four seasons. Nicknamed “The Little Hammer,” Brooks may have been hurt by his short stature (he stood 5-feet-8 and was listed at 165 pounds), which may have led some […]

The leadoff men of the 1960s were known mainly for slapping singles and stealing bases. Into this game stepped Don Buford, a versatile switch-hitter with speed and a little power, and also the ability to draw walks and get on base. He had some success for a few years with the White Sox, but it […]

Lou Brissie still has the wristwatch he was wearing when a 170mm German artillery shell exploded near him, breaking the watch and both his feet and also shattering Lou’s left tibia and shinbone in 30 places. Shrapnel also pierced his right shoulder, both hands, and both thighs. And, one might assume, crushed Corporal Brissie’s hopes […]

Mike Sharperson was a super-utility man, a valuable role-player who could play any infield position or come off the bench to pinch-hit. While supersubs rarely get the credit they deserve, his skills were such that he made the National League All-Star team. Sharperson spent parts of eight seasons in the major leagues, winning a World […]

The subject of this biography was a great female ballplayer. She did not play in the All-American League; in fact, she played softball rather than baseball. Nevertheless, she was one of the most significant figures in the ball playing scene of the 1940s and ’50s. The movie A League of Their Own popularized the All-American […]

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 […]

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 […]

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, […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]