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In 1971 The Sporting News contributor Wayne Minshew submitted a report on the Atlanta Braves’ “bona-fide future ace . . . the pitcher visiting scouts like most when they visit Atlanta Stadium.”1 Minshew was not referring to Phil Niekro, who at the time was just one-third of the way along his path to Hall of […]

Dave “Beauty” Bancroft was Honus Wagner‘s successor as the National League’s premier shortstop. A brainy on-field leader with tremendous defensive range, Bancroft was especially adept at scooping up bad-hop grounders and cutting off outfield throws to hang up runners between bases. He believed that “the business of batting and fielding is a contention between minds,” […]

Bob Gilks devoted more than 40 years to professional baseball, as a player, manager, and scout. As a player, his greatest strengths were his versatility and fielding ability. As a minor-league manager, he schooled youngsters in the right way to play the game. And as a scout, he recognized the potential of future stars like […]

Bill McGilvray’s major-league career lasted two months and 11 days, but for seven years he was at the top of his game in the minors (1906-12) spanning Denver to Birmingham. He crossed paths with some of the game’s greats – finishing second to Shoeless Joe Jackson in batting in 1910, but leading the league in […]

If Pants Rowland had gotten his way, big-league baseball would have reached California more than a decade before the Dodgers and Giants crossed the continent. As president of the Pacific Coast League, Rowland campaigned for recognition as a third major league as early as 1945. Personable and unfailingly optimistic, Rowland punched almost every ticket in […]

Jimmy Stanley was your classic “good field, no hit” infielder who enjoyed a year in the Federal League, spot starting and backing up at second, short, third, and even the outfield. Born Stanislaus (Stanley) Francis Ciolek, December 1, 1887, in Plymouth, Pennsylvania, he was the son of Wojciech (Albert) and Mary (Walega) Ciolek.1 The father, […]

One of the most influential figures in the history of the sport, Charles Comiskey had a 55-year odyssey through professional baseball that ran the gamut: captain of one of the greatest teams of the nineteenth century; league-jumper during the 1890 players’ rebellion; one of the chief architects of the American League’s emergence in 1901 as […]

As of 2022, it’s been nearly 60 years since a 17-year-old took part in a major-league game.1 That was lefty pitcher Jay Dahl, on September 27, 1963, as the Houston Colt .45s fielded a starting lineup consisting entirely of rookies. Less than two years after his cup of coffee, Dahl died in a car crash, […]

Bob Tufts was one of six big-leaguers known to have converted to Judaism during their careers.1 When it came time for Tufts to select his Hebrew name, something meaningful to him, he chose Sandy Koufax. His rabbi laughed but wasn’t impressed. He shook his head and asked Tufts to pick another name. Bob selected Reuven, […]

Chester “Red” Torkelson, a chipper sorrel-topped spitballer, lived out all his boyhood daydreams in the American League shortly before reporting to the army during World War I. Never recalled to the big tent, he remade his career in several minor leagues as a player, manager, and popular baseball clown. Chet was the eldest of Knute […]

It doesn’t take long to make a lasting impression that sticks with someone throughout his professional baseball career. Some of the things Derek Bell said over the course of his career surprised many and outraged others. This did not seem to faze Bell in the slightest. “What can I say?” Bell would ask. “I just […]

In 1976, Mark Fidrych made his major league debut at the age of 21 and took the city of Detroit by storm in a spectacular rookie season. He started the All-Star Game for the American League, won the Rookie of the Year Award, and finished second for the Cy Young Award. Of course, Mark Fidrych’s […]

As a pitcher, Lary Sorensen handled plenty of challenges over the course of his successful 11-year major-league career with seven teams. But not even the best-hitting opposing lineup—like the one he faced in the 1978 All-Star Game—compared to the opponent he battled after his playing days: alcoholism. His story resembles an amusement park ride, with […]

The champagne was ready in the Astrodome. With a two-games-to-one lead in the best-of-five National League Championship Series, the Astros were one win away from their first trip to the World Series. Considering the obstacles that both they and their opponents, the Phillies, had overcome, no one was apt to be counting on an easy […]

The 1918 season did not start well for either the Philadelphia Athletics or the Detroit Tigers. After a month the two teams found themselves at the bottom of the American League standings. On May 20 they met for the first time to play a four-game series.1 For the A’s, the games provided an opportunity to […]

The Chicago Cubs opened 1982 with rookie Ryne Sandberg at third base, months after acquiring him in an offseason trade with the Philadelphia Phillies. Held to one hit in his first 32 at-bats, the 22-year-old Sandberg entered the Cubs’ April 23 game with the Pittsburgh Pirates batting just .140. On a windy day at Wrigley […]

“They’ve called Ty Cobb the Georgia Peach for the last 15 years,” wrote Dean Snyder, nationally syndicated columnist and sporting editor of the Newspaper Enterprise Association, “but at this point in the drama enters Peachy George. It now remains for the world to start calling the Brown star the Great George Sisler.”1 With Cobb temporarily […]

  After losing a tight 2-1 decision in Game One of the 1973 World Series, the New York Mets hoped to salvage a split of the first two games against the Athletics in front of 49,151 spectators on a Sunday afternoon in Oakland. The starters for Game Two, the Mets’ Jerry Koosman and the Athletics’ […]

It was the final All-Star Game of the twentieth century. On a mid-July night at Fenway Park, the greatest living players in baseball history were in the ballpark for the game between the best of the National League and the best of the American League. And, appropriately, two Red Sox legends stole the show. The […]

“Major leaguers were our gods. We weren’t worshipful. We knew they were merely men like our brothers and fathers. Yet with a difference. When a father or brother died, he left no record of himself for remembrance. But a major leaguer, even though up for only a season and most of that spent on the […]

Not yet known as “King Carl” or “Meal Ticket,” the New York Giants’ Carl Hubbell tossed the first and only no-hitter in his 16-year big-league career in just his 18th start, defeating the Pittsburgh Pirates, 11-0, on May 8, 1929. Hubbell joined “that lofty gallery in baseball’s hall of fame,” gushed sportswriter William E. Brandt […]

Willie Stargell’s path to the top of the Pittsburgh Pirates’ home-run charts began from the bench in 1963, his first full major-league season. Filling in for first baseman Donn Clendenon, Stargell hit his first big-league homer, a three-run shot off Chicago Cubs fireman Lindy McDaniel, in a five-run, game-tying eighth-inning rally on May 8 at […]

The September 24, 1920, edition of the Akron Beacon Journal blared the following headline across its sports section: “Ban Johnson Called to Stand Today; Tell Plot Against Chicago.” Johnson, the American League president, was testifying before a Cook County (Chicago) grand jury about a plot to blackmail Chicago White Sox players. Johnson predicted that the […]

Here are the full SABR Defensive Index™ rankings, through games of August 3, 2014. The SABR Defensive Index draws on and aggregates two types of existing defensive metrics: those derived from batted ball location-based data and those collected from play-by-play accounts. The three metrics representing batted ball data include Defensive Runs Saved from Baseball Info […]