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On September 27, 1963, the Houston Colt .45’s (64-95) were entering the first game of a final three-game home series versus the New York Mets (50-109). They were also on a four-game winning streak and a sweep of the Mets would give them their longest winning streak of the season, surpassing a six-game stretch from […]

Let’s ponder these statistics for a moment: 187 pitches in a 10-inning complete game, 10 walks and 12 punchouts, one hit batter, at least 13 full counts, bases filled twice, 10 stranded runners, and three outfield flies. Together they produced Cincinnati Reds speedballer Jim Maloney’s no-hitter, arguably the most astounding in big-league history.1 “It was […]

Entering a summer when the boxing world famously crowned a new heavyweight champion,1 baseball’s powerhouse teams met on May 14, 1919, at Comiskey Park in Chicago for an early-season clash between the game’s two most recent champions. The Boston Red Sox, led by their young hitting and pitching star Babe Ruth, came to town with […]

Shoeless Joe Jackson had gotten off to a hot start in 1911. By the first week of May, the 23-year-old was batting .408, setting up a long-anticipated batting-title showdown with fellow Southerner Ty Cobb. Jackson’s major-league playing career had begun inauspiciously, but by May of 1911 he finally seemed ready to unleash his full capabilities. […]

The woman took her seat in the fourth row of the grandstand in the crowded ballpark. She had purchased her ticket at the last moment and she was unrecognized as she sat among the patrons in a crowded Milwaukee County Stadium.  Later on that evening, Mrs. Henry Aaron would cover her face with her hands […]

Bob Quinn owned the Boston Red Sox from 1923 into 1933. In 1936 he became president of the Boston Braves and renamed them the Bees, changing the name of the ballpark from Braves Field to National League Baseball Park. More imaginative locals called the place the Beehive. Some continued to call it Braves Field. African […]

When baseball’s stars convened in Pittsburgh for the 1994 All-Star Game, emerging pennant races and milestone quests shared headlines with labor-management discord. A strike shuttered the majors a month later, relegating the unfinished campaign to an ignominious place in the game’s history, but the National League’s 8-7 win over the American League in 10 innings […]

It was still early in the 1919 season, one in which the Chicago White Sox won the American League pennant. The Boston Red Sox – World Series champions from the year before – were headed for sixth place, percentage points behind the fifth-place St. Louis Browns, 20½ games back. Indeed, a “Sox” team had won […]

On the first Saturday of summer in 1986, Bo Jackson gave the NFL Tampa Bay Buccaneers a stiff-arm that would’ve made John Heisman proud. In a long-anticipated press conference held in Birmingham, Alabama, Jackson, the former Auburn University running back who six months earlier had won the trophy bearing Heisman’s name and iconic pose, rejected […]

After a fourth-place finish in the 2008 American League Rookie of the Year voting, Detroit Tigers starting pitcher Armando Galarraga suffered a sophomore slump in 2009 that saw his ERA balloon by nearly 2 points. And things were not looking any better heading into the 2010 campaign, after manager Jim Leyland sent the 28-year-old to […]

Almost midway through their season, the 2005 Chicago White Sox promoted “Turn Back the Clock Night” to honor the 1959 Go-Go White Sox. That team had won the American League pennant but had then lost the World Series to the Los Angeles Dodgers in six games. The Go-Go Sox roster had included six future Hall […]

Houston Astros third baseman Doug Rader had hit two home runs in 164 at-bats over his team’s first 44 games. One was a three-run bomb in a 5-2 victory over the Los Angeles Dodgers on April 13, while the other was a solo shot that aided a 4-0 win over the Cincinnati Reds on May […]

Baseball card #186 in the 1967 Topps set seems in retrospect like a victory of hope over reality. The card shows New York Mets teammates Ed Kranepool and Ron Swoboda, hitters known more for their power potential than their actual production, kneeling with bats in a spring-training setting above the headline “METS MAULERS.” First baseman […]

After wins in Games Six and Seven in Cincinnati by scores of 5-4 and 4-1, respectively, it was clear the Chicago White Sox were no longer playing to lose. Dickey Kerr wasn’t as brilliant in Game Six as he was in Game Three, but he went the distance in a 10-inning affair that saw the […]

Thanks to Dickey Kerr serving his teammates a dose of rejuvenating elixir in Game Three, the Chicago White Sox had regained their confidence and were ready to take Game Four of the 1919 World Series at Comiskey Park. “Reassured by yesterday’s shutout of the Reds, the White Sox today declared they were ready to back […]

Sports writer Phil Jackman once called Mike Epstein “Babe the Blue Ox with brains.”1 The name did not stick, but it was an apt description of the brawny man’s prodigious power and academic bent, traits that Epstein carried throughout a baseball career that featured nine seasons in the major leagues. Michael Peter Epstein was born […]

Laurence Albert Pape played his entire major-league career – three seasons – for the Boston Red Sox. He pitched in a total of 51 games in 1909, 1911, and 1912. Twenty-four of his appearances were as a starting pitcher. He appeared in 13 games with the champion Red Sox of 1912 and did not play […]

He pitched 18 seasons in the major leagues but for Grant Jackson, it all came down to one inning in the final game ever played in the 1970s. It was familiar territory for the left-hander. Eight years before, the Baltimore Orioles took a lead over the Pittsburgh Pirates in the 1971 World Series, which culminated with […]

During the 1920s and 1930s the New York Giants captured seven National League championships. While they had great outfielders like Mel Ott and Ross Youngs as well as solid pitching, most prominently Carl Hubbell, it was their infield that anchored the team in its success. George Kelly, Fred Lindstrom, and Bill Terry each had a […]

Although Ransom “Randy” Jackson later suggested with tongue somewhat in cheek that he went into professional baseball “for lack of anything better to do; I had to earn money somehow,”1 he in fact had options in 1947 when he caught the attention of the Chicago Cubs. Set to graduate from the University of Texas, he […]

As far as Roy Lee Jackson was concerned, the highlight of his time in baseball wasn’t the 28 wins or 34 saves he compiled over 10 years (1977-1986) in the majors. Neither was it his induction into the National College Baseball Hall of Fame. Instead, it was a conversation he had with a young autograph […]

They were ubiquitous. They were funny. And for a while during the late 1980s and early 1990s, the Nike commercials that showed Bo Jackson playing everything from baseball to cricket to hockey — wearing the uniform of the storied Montreal Canadiens no less — brought the phrase “Bo Knows” into popular culture. These commercials played […]

Tim Murchison was a 23-year old left-hander who went north in the spring of 1920 with the eventual World Champion Cleveland Indians. He had excelled at Guilford College and logged about 600 innings in the minors. The St. Louis Cardinals had given him a brief look in 1917. But he worked only five innings for […]

This article was originally published in the December 2024 edition of the SABR Black Sox Scandal Committee Newsletter.   Judge Hugo M. Friend presided over the Black Sox trial during the summer of 1921, less than a year after he was tabbed to fill a temporary vacancy on the Cook County circuit court bench. (Photo: […]