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Losses in May and June count as much as those in September; just ask any second-place team. Ivers Whitney Adams’s assembled dream team of Boston Red Stockings was designed to have an exciting and superior baseball season in 1871. But after winning their very first two games on the road, their initial home appearance at […]

bottle bat 1. A baseball bat with an especially thick barrel, an abrupt taper, and very thin handle, which gives it a milk bottle-like appearance. — The Dickson Baseball Dictionary, Third Edition.1   When the diminutive Heinie Groh, all 5-feet-8 and 158 pounds, came to the plate, he brought a bat of unusual proportions and […]

The drought at Dodger Stadium was serious. Heading into the 2004 season, a venue once flush with playoff and World Series games now came up dry year after year in October. The home team hadn’t made the playoffs since 1996; Los Angeles, in fact, hadn‘t recorded a postseason win at Dodger Stadium since Orel Hershiser […]

Not even the oppressive St. Louis heat could break Bob Sykes on the Fourth of July in 1980. With the Busch Stadium on-field temperature a reported 140 degrees,1 the Cardinals left-handed pitcher spun a 10-inning shutout against the Philadelphia Phillies. Center fielder George Hendrick hit a walk-off home run with one out in the bottom […]

“I’ll never pitch a no-hitter,” Paul Splittorff told reporters matter-of-factly in August 1975, and he was right.1 The bespectacled, high-kicking left-hander won 166 games and set enduring Kansas City Royals franchise records2 in his 15-season major-league career.3 But he never achieved a pitcher’s ultimate feat of skill and luck. Three complete-game one-hitters were as close […]

Winners of four straight National League pennants, the New York Giants began 1925 with their hottest season-opening pace yet. Another victory seemed imminent on May 22, when they erased an early five-run deficit at the Polo Grounds and pushed the Pittsburgh Pirates to extra innings behind Wayland Dean’s marathon relief effort. But Vic Aldridge stymied […]

In 1990 an old-school scout, Dick Wilson, stated that it was hard to explain that intangible something that told him a player had what it took to be a major-league player, but he “knew it when he saw it.” About Dave Rader, Wilson relayed, “I saw him at South Bakersfield High School, and I knew […]

Another couple of miles west and New Hampshire could have claimed Harry Lord as a New Hampshire native. Porter, Maine – where our guardian of the hot corner was born on March 8, 1882 – is that close to the state line. But Mainers take pride in the Porter lad, for Harry Lord was a […]

In 1986, Craig Shipley became the first player trained in Australia to reach the big leagues. In the ensuing decades, more than 20 other Aussies have made it to the top level – many encouraged by Shipley’s example. After four fractional seasons in the majors, the infielder established himself as a useful reserve over seven […]

Andy Reese was a versatile utility player for John McGraw’s New York Giants from 1927 to 1930, and he was a star of the Memphis Chickasaws of the Southern Association from 1931 to 1939. He is the “hit king” of the Southern Association: His 1,642 hits were more than any other player achieved in the […]

For nearly a quarter century, Gussie Busch simultaneously led a nationwide brewing company and the St. Louis Cardinal franchise. Nicknamed “The Big Eagle”, Gussie lived life to its fullest. His enemies called him profane, tyrannical, hot-tempered, a philanderer, and a huckster. His friends saw him as soft-hearted, congenial, open, personable, philanthropic, and loyal. In 1953, […]

Bobby Roth, sometimes called Braggo, was an often insufferable self-promoter who bounced around among six American League teams in the years surrounding World War I, and was on the wrong side of two of the most lopsided trades of the Deadball Era. A player with diverse skills, Roth won a home run title and also […]

“At 22 Cedeño is as good or better than Willie was at the same age. I don’t know whether he can keep this up for 20 years, and I’m not saying he will be better than Mays. No way anybody can be better than Mays. But I will say this kid has a chance to […]

At one time there was probably no figure more popular in the American League than the outspoken but amicable George Stovall, a gifted first baseman and team leader who would later go on to a stormy managerial career culminating in a prominent role in the establishment of the upstart Federal League. F.C. Lane of Baseball […]

Garry Hancock was a strong-armed, good-hitting outfielder who did not earn a regular place in the star-studded Red Sox outfield of Jim Rice, Fred Lynn, and Dwight Evans. Instead, Hancock filled in for the outfield trio during the heartbreaking roller coaster ride that was Boston’s 1978 campaign. Ronald Garry Hancock was born on January 23, […]

It’s a common tale. A major-league prospect falters after being celebrated as a highly significant addition to the team. So goes the story of Albert LaVerne “Bunny” Fabrique, who played in 27 games for the Brooklyn Robins in 1916-1917 and enjoyed a reported, though improbable, familial lineage to King Louis XVI.1 In 1917 spring training […]

Baseball and football are very different games. In a way, both of them are easy. Football is easy if you’re crazy as hell. Baseball is easy if you’ve got patience. They’d both be easier for me if I were a little more crazy – and a little more patient. – Bo Jackson1   No record […]

It was a dream come true for 23-year-old Stan Jefferson when he led off against San Diego lefty Dave LaPoint in the first game of a doubleheader at Shea Stadium on Sunday, September 7, 1986. He grew up in the Bronx, had been the Mets’ first-round choice in the 1983 amateur draft, and had just […]

Two words: Señor Smoke. Hernandez/Lopez. Things Change. Take your pick of the trio of descriptions that defined Aurelio Lopez’s baseball career. Things change. That’s a truism that, in its pithy wisdom, fails to reveal that perceptions of the past — even the recent past — can vary so widely from those of contemporary observers. Ask […]

Few Americans had ever seen anything like it — a black man and a white man cheek to cheek. The image greeted readers of many sports pages across the country on the morning after Game Four of the 1948 World Series: the winning pitcher, Steve Gromek, hugging Larry Doby, whose home run was the victory […]

With a lineup featuring Nap Lajoie and Shoeless Joe Jackson, the Cleveland Naps were expected to contend for the 1912 American League pennant. The club, however, proved a disappointment. By early September, a 54-71-2 (.432) record placed the Naps closer to the AL bottom than the top, and cost first-year manager Harry Davis his job. […]

Like other clubs in the established major leagues, the 1914 Cincinnati Reds suffered from player defections to the renegade Federal League. The task of signing suitable but low-cost replacements fell to incoming Reds player-manager Buck Herzog, acquired during the offseason via a trade with the New York Giants. That winter, the locales scouted for new […]

He was, by wide acclaim, one of the finest second basemen to play in the segregated era, as well as before the formal creation of a Negro League. Elwood “Bingo” DeMoss played alongside not only John Henry “Pop” Lloyd, but on various teams whose rosters included a figurative “Who’s-Who” of Black baseball in the first […]

Ron Leflore’s life story including his journey to the major leagues is truly One in a Million1. Defying apparently insurmountable odds — including never having played organized baseball — LeFlore rose above a disadvantaged childhood, the rough streets of the east side of Detroit, and a more than three-year stint in the State Prison of […]