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Thesaurus.com has dozens of synonyms for the term “clubhouse lawyer” ranging from advisor to kibitzer to buttinski. Joe Garagiola was more precise in his depiction. “A clubhouse lawyer is a .210 hitter who isn’t playing. He gripes about everything … and he’s a perpetual second-guesser.”1 But what happens when a player is actually a law-school […]

During the 1890s southpaw Bert Inks pitched for six different major league clubs – but posted a winning record for only one of them. More than a century later, that performance prompted a 19 th century baseball scholar to declare, “Bert Inks exemplified the lengths to which teams often go to give a left-handed pitcher […]

Sometimes the best deals are those that aren’t made. In the spring of 1908, Boston was so impressed by a pitcher they faced in an exhibition game at Toledo they offered the Mud Hens $5,000 for him. Toledo Manager Bill Armour asked a reported $7,000 for the contract of Jack Bushelman – so he remained […]

George Scott’s professional baseball career spanned 41 years beginning in Class-D ball at Olean of the New York-Penn League in 1962. His travels were highlighted by his 14 seasons in the majors, starting with the Boston Red Sox in 1966. Scott also played for Milwaukee 1972-1976, Boston 1977-1978, and split his final year between Boston, […]

When asked in 2015 about his earliest baseball memory, Tomás Pérez replied, “Caimaneras,” referring to Venezuela’s “improvised baseball game, without referees, in which players are chosen spontaneously, which usually takes place in the streets, in the schoolyards or in some field…”1 He recalled that his parents were angry that baseball, a game, interfered with his […]

When and where someone happened upon a young infielder named Jim West is imprecise. It may very well have been in 1929, when he played for the Birmingham Negro Industrial League.1 Although lacking details of West’s early life and baseball career, his fine play at first base – perhaps noted by Bill Gatewood – prompted […]

Bud Black spent 15 years as a major-league pitcher and followed that up with a long career as a manager. In 2018 he was in his 11th year as a big-league skipper. Harry “Bud” Ralston Black was born on June 30, 1957, in San Mateo, California. He graduated from Mark Morris High School in Longview, […]

Detroit native Paul Andre Assenmacher (born December 10, 1960) epitomized the somewhat obscure baseball term LOOGY (Lefty One-Out Guy) by making a “long and profitable career out of coming into a game, pitching to one or two left-handed batters, then leaving.”1  Assenmacher, who pitched for the Aquinas College Saints (Grand Rapids) from 1981 to 1983, […]

The first European-trained major leaguer was Wilhelmus Abraham Remmerswaal, known simply as “Win.” The pitcher from the Netherlands made his nickname come true three times in 22 appearances for the Boston Red Sox in 1979-80. He played just one more season in Triple-A after that, then spent five years pitching in Italy. Red Sox fans […]

“Baseball’s clichés remain largely unchanged through the years,” observed the writer Mordecai Richler in a 1986 essay for GQ.1 His first examples were the types of gripes from marginal pitchers and backup fielders: “If only they give me a chance to start, I know I can help this team,” and “I know I’m a .300 […]

“What I was meant to do was impact people’s lives.” — Ed Hearn (2015) “You never know what you are truly capable of until situations or circumstances force you to strive beyond what you ever thought possible. When we come face to face with our own mortality, often we begin to see life in a […]

Gary Allenson is a baseball lifer. He began his baseball career as a Little Leaguer and spent his entire life involved in the game. He played baseball at every level and has managed or coached at every professional level. Allenson was an excellent player at Arizona State University and competed in two College World Series […]

Disco music peaked in the United States with the top six songs on the Billboard Hot 100 chart during the week ending July 21, 1979. At the time, “Disco Dan” Ford was starring for the California Angels club that was headed for that franchise’s first postseason appearance.1 Although the musical genre quickly fell out of […]

Perhaps the most emphatic action ever taken by the Commissioner of Baseball occurred on August 3, 1921. On that day, Kenesaw Mountain Landis banished eight Chicago White Sox players from Organized Baseball for life for throwing the 1919 World Series, despite their acquittal in a court trial. The expulsion edict quickly became a baseball landmark, […]

The teams that met at Chicago’s Comiskey Park on August 21, 1921, seemed to be heading in opposite directions. The Washington Senators were on the rise, enjoying a winning season and responding well to a new ownership group headed by majority owners Clark Griffith and William Richardson and a new manager, George McBride. The Chicago […]

The Detroit Tigers were one win from their first World Series appearance in over 20 years. After 12 straight losing seasons from 1994 through 2005, the Tigers carried a commanding three-games-to-none lead over the Oakland Athletics in the 2006 American League Championship Series into a cool Saturday evening in the Motor City. They appeared unstoppable, […]

“He’s been hotter than the weather, and in the Midwest, that’s torrid.” Les Biederman of the Pittsburgh Press, discussing Ernie Banks who during the final four games of a five-game series between the Cubs and Pirates went 11-for-19 with five home runs and 13 RBIs.1 Ernie Banks, in his second full season with the Chicago […]

As the second month of the 1920 season opened, the New York Yankees routed the Boston Red Sox at the Polo Grounds, 6-0, behind Babe Ruth’s first home run1 as a New Yorker. The first-place Red Sox, coming into this contest with a record of 10-2-1, had beaten the Yankees (4-7) in their four previous […]

The champagne was on ice while 15,443 waited to erupt after their Minnesota Twins defeated a Seattle Pilots team they had already beaten 11 times in 14 games, including eight of eight at Metropolitan Stadium. At 91-60 with an 11-game lead over the second-place Oakland A’s, the Twins saw that the clinching of the first-ever […]

Any time a baseball team ends a game with more errors than hits, chances are that it had a tough day at the office. That sums up the Kansas City Royals’ performance against the Oakland Athletics on the night of May 13, 1974. The six-hit complete-game pitching of Oakland’s Vida Blue would have been tough […]

He was a two-time All-Star, won 209 games, and tossed 43 shutouts in his 17-year career but is best remembered for a walk. Milt Pappas “came so dramatically close to perfection,” opined sportswriter George Langford of the Chicago Tribune, that “even the rare distinction of what he did achieve — pitching a no-hit game — […]