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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. […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

Burt Hooton is one of a few quality pitchers who parlayed the use of a devastating signature pitch into a long and effective major league career. Hurlers who relied on a distinctive pitch include Christy Mathewson (“fadeaway”); Carl Hubbell (screwball); Roy Face (forkball); Mariano Rivera (cutter); and Hooton, who baffled big league hitters with a […]

“Arriving in Missouri at 29 with a lifetime’s worth of rough outings in Minnesota and Cincinnati already behind him, Lohse was both not good and pretty old in ballplayer years – more flotsam than reclamation project.”1 Then he met Dave Duncan, who told him what to throw, most notably a new two-seam fastball, and Yadier […]

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 […]

It is rare for a single moment to pivot a career. Dick Stockton is an exception, not rule. Before 1975, Stockton moved from Syracuse University via KDKA Pittsburgh’s revolutionary news to pro basketball’s Boston Celtics. After 1975 he aired a Klondike of more national sports, including the Red Sox, A’s, and network baseball postseason and […]

Until his fateful involvement in the plot to fix a World Series, Fred McMullin was known as the Chicago White Sox’ “lucky man.”1 His addition to the starting lineup coincided with late-season surges to win the American League pennant in 1917 and 1919. Today he is mostly thought of as the “forgotten man” – in […]

The thing that sticks in the minds of many baseball fans about Greg Harris is that he was ambidextrous. Indeed, he had a glove custom-made for him with an extra thumb, so he could use it either on his left hand or his right hand. Though he long wanted the opportunity, there was only one […]

Baseball fans everywhere can picture the scene. In 1945, the Cleveland Buckeyes stood in first place after the first half of the season with fans hoping that the momentum would continue in the second half. Then their leading hitter—Lloyd “Ducky” Davenport who was batting .264—left the team to play in Mexico. Just the fans’ rotten […]

A dapper Bob Brown surveys his domain from the wooden steps of Athletic Park. The 5′ 9″ Brown was a dandy of sorts, wearing vests until the 1950s, long after they had gone out of style. (David Eskenazi Collection)   Bob Brown figured more money was to be made in baseball as an owner than […]

Jim Busby was a speed merchant when teams were buying power. In the station-to-station baseball of the 1950s, sluggers drove Cadillacs and base stealers hitched rides. Busby never stole more than 26 bases, but he was in the American League’s top 5 in steals four times. He used his sprinter’s speed in center field, covering […]

Metropolis, Illinois, is the hometown of Superman, the comic-book character who leaps tall buildings in a single bound. Back in the day, Robert Dale “Hawk” Taylor was the genuine article when it came to baseball. Unlike mild-mannered Metropolis Daily Planet reporter Clark Kent, who left his office, entered a phone booth and came out as […]

During an eastern road trip in the middle of the 1912 season, Chicago White Sox owner Charles Comiskey made two moves to strengthen his thin pitching staff. One was the purchase of Eddie Cicotte from the Boston Red Sox. The other was the acquisition of a hard-throwing youngster from the Burlington, Iowa club of the […]

He owned and operated the Kansas City and Oakland Athletics for 20 years. Nearly everyone, including fellow owners, players, the fans of his teams, the media, and the baseball commissioner, disliked or even despised him. When his team lost, he blamed everyone but himself. When they won, he was apt to call the radio booth […]

A flaky southpaw from California with a deep repertoire of pitches, Frank Bertaina spent parts of seven major league seasons (1964-1970) with the Orioles, Senators and Cardinals. Primarily a starter, he was in Baltimore’s bullpen for the 1966 World Series but did not see action. Frank Louis Bertaina was born on April 14, 1944, in […]

“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 […]

It was almost as if sportswriters had a sense of relief following Bob Groom’s no-hitter against the Chicago White Sox in the Gateway City. Nothing “remotely resembled a hit,” declared beat writer W.J. O’Connor in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch;1 Groom’s gem was “free from stain or taint,” offered the Chicago Tribune’s I.E. Sanborn.2 A day […]

Battles on the field and in the standings between the Hawaii Islanders and Tacoma Twins carried over from 1975 and into the following season. Hawaii, a San Diego Padres affiliate, produced the best record in the Triple-A Pacific Coast League in 1975, finishing 14 games ahead of Tacoma in the West Division, and then beat […]

Clayton Kershaw pitched a magnificent game on April 13, 2022, but did he leave too soon? The Los Angeles Dodgers’ ace left-hander threw seven perfect innings against the Minnesota Twins on a cold afternoon at Target Field. Kershaw, making his debut in the Dodgers’ fifth game of the lockout-delayed season, threw 80 pitches and struck […]