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Asked if he thought New York Mets rookie southpaw Jerry Koosman was as good as his record (2-0, with two shutouts) suggested, San Francisco Giants manager Herman Franks replied no. “Nobody’s that good!”1 Franks’ response was understandable; the second of Koosman’s two gems to start the 1968 season had come at his team’s expense. That […]

Earmarked for greatness during his rapid rise through the Pirates’ farm system, Aramis Ramirez mixed promise with struggle for three seasons after reaching the major leagues as a teenager in 1998. On the first Sunday of the 2001 season, Ramirez’s career countdown hit liftoff with a three-home-run barrage at Houston’s Enron Field, igniting his breakthrough […]

“The game between the Red Stockings and Haymakers this afternoon, on the Boston Grounds,” wrote the Boston Advertiser, “will be perfectly interesting from the fact that it is the first game between professional nines in this city.”1 Those few sentences, buried in a column of “local matters about town,” are a far cry from what […]

The All-American Girls Professional Baseball League (AAGPBL) had a grueling schedule.1 In its inaugural campaign, in 1943, teams shoehorned 108 regular-season games into a three-month period by playing seven days a week, with a Sunday doubleheader thrown in for good measure.2 Since each team carried only four or five hurlers on its 16-woman roster,3 top […]

Phillies pitcher Robin Roberts took the mound of Connie Mack Stadium on August 1, 1958, with 199 career victories under his belt. The weather that night was hot, as were the team and its star hurler. The Phillies had just swept the Cardinals in three straight as they began the series against the Chicago Cubs. […]

The Pittsburgh Pirates were still enjoying the aura of their shocking 1960 World Series victory over the vaunted New York Yankees as they played their 33rd game of the 1961 season. They were in Chicago, en route from Milwaukee to St. Louis, for a two-game series with the Cubs opening on Wednesday afternoon, May 24.1 […]

Tippy Martinez hadn’t pitched in 13 days as the Orioles headed into the second game of a two-game series with Oakland. Before the game the lefty reliever went up to Memorial Stadium’s legendary public-address announcer Rex Barney and told him, “Next time I come in to pitch, you’d better explain to the fans who I […]

Enthusiasm reigned among Washington’s baseball fans after the Senators beat the New York Americans to kick off the 1903 season at American League Park in the nation’s capital. It diminished with the second game, played a day later, which New York won 7-2 for the first victory in franchise history. Three of the visiting squad’s […]

Voted by the Pittsburgh fans as the greatest right-handed pitcher in Pirates history, Deacon Phillippe may have been the greatest control pitcher ever — his 1.25 walks per nine innings is the lower ratio of anyone who hurled after the modern pitching distance was established in 1893. Longtime teammate Honus Wagner recalled that Phillippe “wanted […]

Midway through the 2001 major-league baseball season, the Pittsburgh Pirates traded right-hander Jason Schmidt to the San Francisco Giants. Schmidt, who compiled a 49-53 record throughout the first six years of his career, would blossom into one of the elite pitchers in the National League during the mid-2000s. Jason David Schmidt was born on January […]

Roland Gladu was a major sports figure in Quebec for decades. His career as a professional baseball player lasted over 20 years, mainly in the outfield and at first and third base. He played as a pro in five different countries – Canada, the United States, Mexico, Cuba, and even Great Britain – and hit […]

Two relief appearances for the 1950 Brooklyn Dodgers were the extent of left-handed pitcher Mal Mallette’s major-league career. An Air Force captain during World War II before entering professional baseball, he became an esteemed journalist after leaving the game. Malcolm Francis “Mal” Mallette was born on January 30, 1922, in Syracuse, New York, and grew […]

On a crisp mid-October day in 1984, Alan Trammell played a key role in putting the Detroit Tigers on the verge of the World Series championship their fans and city had been waiting for since the “Sock It to ’Em Tigers” team of 1968 upended the St. Louis Cardinals. The Tigers led their National League […]

Normally when a pitcher sustains a serious arm injury, it might have a career-ending ramification. But adversity did not seem to bother Ted Abernathy. Instead, he made a habit of treating setbacks like challenges. He adapted by becoming a sidearmer and then a submariner. He appeared in 681 big-league games, saving 148 of them, from […]

To Washington Nationals fans, he was “Pony” for his youth and diminutive size. In his post-major-league playing days, he was “Kid.” To some in Washington’s first and second Irish-American community, he was “Tice,” from the Old English for “kid goat.” Everywhere else he was simply William J. Madigan. There’s no evidence that anyone ever called […]

“Dad always told me: ‘When you put on a uniform, you hustle.’” So said Del Unser in 2011, looking back at his career and the lessons he learned from his father.1 Al Unser served the game for more than 40 years as a professional player (including four in the majors during World War II), manager, […]

Matt Murray spent seven seasons working his way up through the minor leagues, finally making it to the majors in 1995 — when he pitched briefly for two first-place teams, the Atlanta Braves and the Boston Red Sox. The Red Sox were swept in the Division Series by the Cleveland Indians, who went on to […]

The young prospect was having a hard time adjusting to the backstop position in the major leagues. Offensively, he was a threat from the beginning of his career.   He was a classic bad-ball hitter who could get wood on the ball no matter where the pitch was: high, low, outside.   He hit them […]

Juan Violat was one of the first Cubans to play in US professional leagues. In 1904 he debuted with Jacksonville, Florida, in the Class C South Atlantic League (the “Sally” League). Over eight seasons in that circuit, he batted .256—a solid average for the Deadball Era—and in 1910 he peaked at .305 and won the […]

“Pete Kilduff, by dipping dust whenever Burleigh Grimes was to pitch a spitter in the 1920 Brooklyn-Cleveland (World Series), tipped off the Indians when a spitter was coming, and they let it pass and clouted his fast one, winning the series by beating the Brooklyn spitball ace, simply because they got onto a spitball sign.” […]

For generations, many American fathers have raised their sons with dreams of emulating their baseball hero, Mickey Mantle. Chipper Jones’s father was no different. From an early age, his son reminded him of The Mick: a small-town country boy with charming good looks, a Southern drawl, and a preternatural ability to hit a baseball from […]

The most dramatic event of Ollie Welf’s baseball career came as an amateur. He had his Kirk Gibson moment more than eight decades before that celebrated blast off Dennis Eckersley. Cleveland amateur championships drew crowds the size of World Series games in the early 1900s. That was certainly true on September 12, 1915, when the […]

“I’ve always been a Red Sox fan, ever since I was a little kid,” he told author Jack Lautier. “My family grew up in Cranston, and Fenway Park was less than an hour away by rail. I remember going to games to see Smoky Joe Wood pitch.”1 Jimmy Cooney came from a baseball family. He […]

Harvey Shank was a tall right-handed pitcher who appeared in a single game with the California Angels in May 1970, throwing three scoreless innings against a talented Oakland A’s lineup. After one more pro season, he walked away from baseball at age 25 to join the front office of the NBA’s Phoenix Suns and never […]