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“As a reliever, you’ve got to have amnesia. Not only with the bad days, but with the good days. You may get them out one, two, three today, but you’ve got to forget about it immediately, because that may not happen tomorrow.” — Roberto Hernandez, 20071 “(In the 1989 Instructional League), Roberto (Hernandez) and (pitching […]

The year 1962 saw National League baseball return to New York City with a new expansion team, the New York Mets. From its origin, the Mets were very fortunate in that it had a very enthusiastic fan base. While enthusiastic, these fans suffered significant frustration in 1962 as the Mets lost 120 games. Sharing that […]

Early in the 1979 season, Kiko Garcia became Baltimore’s primary shortstop. He supplanted eight-time Gold Glover Mark Belanger, whom manager Earl Weaver described as “the best friend the pitchers on this ball club have ever had.”1 Yet even at the best of times, Belanger was a light hitter, and he endured the worst struggle of […]

Winner of 158 major-league games, Willis Hudlin was a mainstay of the Cleveland Indians’ pitching staff in the 1920s and 1930s. His best pitches were his fastball and sinker. He was later a team owner, manager, coach and scout, in a professional baseball career that lasted nearly 50 years. George Willis Hudlin was born in […]

A glorious, romantic, and competitive era of Cuban amateur baseball was the early 1940s.1 During that time, there was a quartet of star pitchers: Conrado Marrero, Julio Moreno, Rogelio Martínez, and Sandalio Consuegra. All four entered the big leagues in 1950 with the Washington Senators. Consuegra – often known as Sandy in the U.S. – […]

Immersed in a pennant race that would go down to the wire, the first-place Los Angeles Dodgers took the field at Busch Stadium in St. Louis on September 28, 1966, in hopes of putting distance between themselves and their two closest competitors. The St. Louis Cardinals had no intention of making this endeavor any easier […]

Perhaps no other sport offers redemption to a player more often, or more quickly, than baseball. It can be a dangerous motivator for a young ballplayer. This is especially true for one who has been given his first opportunity to play every day. Or for a player who has been lauded for his skill on […]

Pitcher Joe Slusarski rolled with a lot of punches in his career. The college star won medals with Team USA in the late 1980s and made Baseball America’s Top 100 Prospects list in 1990. Two years later, arm problems rooted in a freak accident left “Slu” a journeyman. From 1993 through 1999, he spent roughly […]

Herb “Baldy” Souell, 5-feet-9 and 150 pounds, carved out an 11-year career as an undersized third baseman for the Kansas City Monarchs from 1940 to 1950. He threw right-handed but was a switch-hitter whose valuable bat kept him in the top third of the Monarchs’ lineup for most of his career. Once Souell’s time with […]

From the mid-1960s to 1980s, Vince Lloyd and Lou Boudreau brought Cubs games to life for legions of fans. Vince Lloyd Skaff was born June 1, 1917 in Beresford, South Dakota. His parents, Michael T. and Lula (Salem) Skaff, were Lebanese immigrants who owned a family bakery. He had three brothers (Francis, Alfred and John) […]

Tommie Agee was one of the key components to the 1969 Miracle Mets, solidifying the defense and serving as the club’s chief power source, albeit from the leadoff spot. His on-field heroics during the ’69 season—including socking the only home run to ever reach Shea Stadium’s upper deck—helped propel the Mets to their first postseason […]

Porter Riley Charleston was born in Mexia, Limestone County, Texas, on January 8, 1904. Charleston’s life story is filled with gaps. His parentage remains obscure; whether or not he played in one of the Negro/Colored Leagues in Texas is not known.1 When Charleston first traveled to Pennsylvania, where his Negro League career began with the […]

“If after five years in the Yankee chain, I still am not eligible for major league baseball, what’s the use of kidding myself?  If I can’t make the big leagues in this war situation, I should go into something that has a better future.”1  Those were the words of Joe Buzas when directed during the […]

Since major-league baseball began, no player has ever enjoyed a debut to match Ted Cox’s. In every one of his first six at-bats, he got a base hit. Other players have made a hit in their first time at bat. Some of the greatest hitters of all time took a long time to get established. […]

Lenny Levy’s career defies conventional logic. A washout in one year of minor-league D-level baseball (years later, Baseball Digest called him “hardly more than a semipro player”), he fashioned a professional career with the Pittsburgh Pirates that began in 1934 and ended in 1964 with only a break for World War II. He was a […]

Pitcher Chet Kehn (pronounced keen) appeared in just three games for the Brooklyn Dodgers in April and May 1942. He got no decisions and posted a 7.04 ERA. Yet he holds a distinctive position in baseball annals, being one of just 10 big leaguers to hit 1.000 in a career of more than one at-bat.1 […]

“Now Ol’ Rebel Oakes come up from the South With some tan on his face and a chew in his mouth; When asked if he thought he could build up a team That can drag down a pennant and fulfil a dream, Ol’ Oakes, he say: ‘Mebbe so!’”1 Ennis Telfair Oakes was born in the […]

“There is a new heroic figure in the Cardinals picture,” gushed St. Louis sportswriter J. Roy Stockton after Roy “Tarzan” Parmelee emerged victorious in an epic 17-inning pitchers’ duel with Carl Hubbell to defeat the New York Giants, 2-1.1 Parmelee, who finished with a six-hitter, “gave a masterful demonstration of his skill,” opined John Drebinger […]

The New York Mets came into existence in 1962 as the National League expanded for the first time.1 Casey Stengel’s ragtag “Can’t Anybody Here Play This Game” Mets stumbled to a 40-120 record in their first season, finishing dead last of the league’s 10 teams, 60 games out of first place.2 By 1966 the Mets […]

The Philadelphia Phillies were 4-9 when manager Nick Leyva was fired early in the 1991 season.1 They lost three of their first five games under new manager Jim Fregosi2 and were in fifth place in the National League East Division heading into the third game of a four-game series with the San Diego Padres on […]

Two days and 3,000 miles away from its improbable 11th-inning victory in Game Five of the American League Championship Series, the Boston Red Sox continued their march toward the AL pennant with another elimination-game victory. Back home in Fenway Park, the Red Sox batted around in the third inning, scoring five times off Angels starter […]

You’ve heard it before. A batter steps up to the plate in a pressure situation, humbly claims that his solitary goal is to get a bat on the ball, keep the inning alive, and hopefully give his team a chance to win. The prospect of something heroic is just gravy, perhaps even sheer luck. Just […]

In June 1999 the Houston Astros were starting a 10-game homestand against the San Diego Padres. This was the Padres’ first trip to the Astrodome since they had eliminated Houston from the playoffs the previous October. Houston’s record was 36-23 while San Diego stood at 24-36. After the teams split the first two games, 39,773 […]

Montreal mayor Jean Drepeau with (from left) John Bateman, Jim “Mudcat” Grant, and Maury Wills on Opening Day in New York, April 8, 1969 (COURTESY OF THE McCORD MUSEUM, MONTREAL)   It somehow seemed inevitable when it all came to an end in 2004. Fate didn’t really smile on the ’Spos (Les Expos de Montreal) […]