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Jason Bay is a member of the Canadian Baseball Hall of Fame, having worn his country’s colors in both the Little League World Series and the World Baseball Classic. Along with Lou Piniella, he is one of only two players in major-league baseball history to have been traded three times before winning the Rookie of […]

During the Deadball Era, it wasn’t all that unusual for a local sandlot player to get a shot at playing in the major leagues with his hometown team. So it was with Bert Yeabsley, a two-sport standout on the fields of Philadelphia, who found himself on the 1919 Philadelphia Phillies Opening Day roster. His major […]

Even the most casual baseball fan is familiar with Eight Men Out, the book (and the movie) that tells the story of the eight members of the Chicago White Sox who were forever banished from organized baseball for fixing the 1919 World Series. Joe Gedeon was the “ninth man out.” The regular second baseman of […]

On August 6, 1912, Bill Hunter made his major-league debut as a ninth-inning pinch-hitter for the Cleveland Naps. Tasked with facing Boston’s Smoky Joe Wood, then in the midst of a celebrated (34-5/1.91 ERA/258 strikeouts) season, Hunter promptly struck out. Onlookers sympathized, with the Cleveland Leader observing, “There’s no disgrace in that. Better hitters than […]

Shortstop Humberto “Chico” Fernández played the game with flair. It was a flair that endeared him to fans and fellow players, but often saw him at odds with his many managers. He was a daring, some would say reckless, baserunner. Playing for the Detroit Tigers, he showed that special flair in the second game of […]

If you page through the annals of Black baseball, you will come across watershed moments – the “First Colored World Series,” Yankee Stadium’s first game between Black ball clubs, Satchel Paige’s first professional no-hitter – and you will find a single face peering across the ages. Historic moments seemed to cling to Clint “The Hawk” […]

It would not have been surprising if Armon Stovall had wished his only brush with fame had been as batboy for the champion 1934 Philadelphia Stars. Instead, 18 years later, he was the subject of a brief news item printed coast to coast over many months because his strong attraction to a certain model of […]

Selected in the third round of the June 1976 amateur draft, 18-year-old pitcher Rich Dubee, the 66th overall draft pick, looked forward to a successful career with the Kansas City Royals following his brilliant high-school career. However, after six years in the Royals’ minor-league system, Dubee washed out as a professional pitcher at the age […]

Any conversation about the greatest hitter in baseball history must include Rogers Hornsby in the opening gambit.1 His .358 lifetime batting average in 23 big-league seasons is second all-time to Ty Cobb’s .367 and well ahead of such all-time greats as Tris Speaker (.345), Ted Williams (.344), Babe Ruth (.342), Lou Gehrig (.340), and Stan […]

Chicago Cubs fans who are old enough will remember Walt Moryn as the blond, 6-foot-2, 205­-pound Minnesota native who roamed the Cubs outfield from 1956 to 1960. The burly, left-handed-hitting slugger, known affectionately as “Moose,” averaged 20 home runs a season for a team that never won as many games as it lost. For most […]

One might say that Jim Boyle went into the family business – recruited by no less than Hall-of-Fame manager John McGraw himself1 – but ultimately he chose his own path after being the first Boyle to attend college. Jim Boyle followed his uncles Jack Boyle and Eddie Boyle as a catcher into the major leagues. […]

A stocky 5’8″ right-hander who threw one of the wettest spitballs in baseball history, Harry Howell was the St. Louis Browns’ best pitcher during the Deadball Era, establishing a franchise record for career ERA (2.06) that has never been equaled. Howell learned his singular pitch from spitballing legend Jack Chesbro in 1903, and subsequently relied […]

Uninvited and unannounced, “Harold Emerich” traipsed into the 1920 Philadelphia Phillies training camp in Birmingham, Alabama, and made a credible showing before being shipped out to the minors. However, “Harold Emerich” was actually Michigan contract jumper Herrick “Spoke” Emery. Fast forward four years, and the speedy Emery actually donned a Philadelphia uniform in five July […]

There have been two Nick Cullops in major-league baseball; one a left-handed pitcher, the other primarily an outfielder. Despite a 13-year age difference, they faced each other in the American Association in 1926. Nick the outfielder had recently joined the St. Paul Saints from the New York Yankees. His first weekend series with the Saints […]

“The fans had departed, and the stands were dark.”1 This was the description of the end of the game on July 1, 1970, at Baltimore’s Memorial Stadium. The Baltimore Orioles, headed to their second of three straight American League pennants and a World Series title, had defeated the visiting Cleveland Indians, 3-0, as rising ace […]

It was a delightful morning on April 4, 1994, when the Colorado Rockies and defending National League champion Philadelphia Phillies began batting practice on Opening Day at Mile High Stadium in Denver. The temperature was near 70 degrees,1 but weather reports called for falling temperatures, with wind and snow developing before the end of the […]

In the midst of a mediocre 1914 campaign, the American League’s Detroit Tigers sought to bolster an “unreliable” pitching staff and build for the future.1 In August, the club summoned Ed McCreery, who had just turned in an all-star season on the mound for the Butte Miners of the Class-D Union Association. After nearly being […]

Johnny Markham must have looked long and hard at Ted “Double Duty” Radcliffe. He knew what the signal meant and it must have been somewhat of a relief, even though it would load the bases. After all, who would want to pitch to Josh Gibson at all, let alone with freezing hands in Game Three […]

Ninth-inning home runs by Pedro Alvarez and Starling Marte rallied the struggling Pittsburgh Pirates to a 6-5 win over the Toronto Blue Jays, overcoming a night of missed connections and providing the first ripple of Pittsburgh’s surge toward a repeat postseason appearance. Rising up from two dismal decades,1 the 2013 Pirates notched the franchise’s first […]

Arizona Diamondbacks left-hander Tyler Gilbert (0-1, 0.00 ERA1) was making his first major-league start. His family was among the 16,716 fans at Chase Field enjoying the comfortable 75-degree temperature with the roof closed.2 The 27-year-old California native had been drafted by the Philadelphia Phillies in 2015, then traded to the Los Angeles Dodgers, then selected […]

Entering the 1977 season, expectations were low for the Baltimore Orioles. After they won 88 games the season before and finished second behind the pennant-winning Yankees, many experts were picking the Orioles to finish in the lower half of the American League East. The lowered expectations were primarily due to major-league baseball’s first year of […]

In July 1952 Boston Red Sox rookie and Opening Day shortstop Jim Piersall was hospitalized with manic depression, more recently classified as bipolar disorder. Struggling to learn the nuances of switching positions from the outfield, coupled with the fear of failure, Piersall with his seeming playfulness on the field became progressively troublesome. He fought with […]

SABR Bibliography Committee Research Guide No. 7: Overview and Pre-1948 Subject Player Index of “Who’s Who in Baseball Editor’s note: This guide was first published by the SABR Bibliography Committee in 1987. To download the original in PDF form, click here. By Frank Phelps July 1987 Baseball Magazine published this collection of players’ career records […]