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Larry Dale Ray was born at King’s Daughter’s Hospital in Madison, Indiana, on March 11, 1958. The youngest of nine children, he was raised with a farming family near Vevay, Indiana. Ray’s parents, William and Dorothy Ray, had a dairy farm and grew tobacco. Larry worked the family fields as well as those of other […]

Ese Hombre — That Man — was Willard Brown’s nickname in Puerto Rico. The outfielder was one of the most feared hitters in the Negro Leagues, but he was an absolute wrecking ball in the Puerto Rican Winter League. He won the Triple Crown twice there, in 1947-48 and 1949-50. Unfortunately, he played just 21 […]

Exactly 90 minutes after Chicago White Sox left-hander Dickey1 Kerr fired a strike past Cincinnati’s Morrie Rath to start Game Three of the 1919 World Series, he coaxed the dangerous Heinie Groh to tap an 0-1 pitch harmlessly to third base. Buck Weaver, the White Sox third baseman, fielded the ball effortlessly and threw over […]

Bradley David Ausmus enjoyed a prosperous career in baseball after he took a circuitous road to get to the major leagues. Although it took more than five years for him to reach the majors, his path to being a major-league manager was much shorter. Ausmus became manager of the Detroit Tigers after a brief managing […]

Everything about Jim Bibby was big. His frame: 6’5” and 235 pounds, with “legs like oak trees.”1 His hands: he could fit eight baseballs in his right hand — palm down — one more even than Sandy Koufax and Johnny Bench.2 His fastball: “vicious … serious heat … would scare the bejesus out of most […]

In January 1983, NBC television debuted a new action series titled The A-Team. The show followed the exploits of a fictional group of former U.S. Army members with such colorful names as Face, Hannibal, and the brawling, straight-talking, ludicrously bejeweled B.A. Baracus, the fictional embodiment of the character’s actor, Mr. T. Within months of the […]

The names of baseball’s most famous lineups are familiar: Murderers’ Row, the Big Red Machine, the Black Sox. The people who make up those lineups are familiar, too: Ruth, Rose, Shoeless Joe. However, even baseball’s most prominent teams include men more or less forgotten to history. Of the nine men in the starting lineup for […]

Bob Turley was a rich businessman who once won a Cy Young Award pitching for the Yankees. “Bullet Bob” was one of the hardest-throwing pitchers of the 1950s and one of the wildest of any generation. Turley’s business success far surpassed his baseball accomplishments. His top baseball salary was $35,000, but he earned millions in […]

When the Orioles nearly went from worst-to-first in their “Why Not?” 1989 season, Jeff Ballard epitomized their surprising success. Though he struck out fewer than three batters per nine innings, no major league lefty won more games than Ballard in 1989. By the time Baltimore did return to the post-season seven years later, however, Ballard […]

He was the first amateur player selected by his expansion franchise and became its first home-run champion, alas, when the parent team was in a different city. In his major-league debut, he dropped the first ball hit to him for an error and got his first hit, a triple, in his second at-bat. Nine days […]

A hard-throwing southpaw and two-time All-Star, Max Lanier won 45 games and posted an impressive 2.47 earned-run average from 1942 to 1944 for the St. Louis Cardinals, who captured three consecutive National League pennants and two World Series championships in those seasons. At the height of his career, in 1946, Lanier stunned baseball by breaking […]

Signed as a shortstop by the New York Giants in 1949, Foster Castleman appeared in 170 games with them in four seasons (1954-57). Finally in 1958 the Baltimore Orioles platooned the right-handed-hitting Castleman with switch-hitter Willy Miranda at shortstop. Castleman had begun his pro career as a heralded fielder, but three knee surgeries had taken […]

Although his tenure in Baltimore was limited to two good seasons and a comeback year, both of the nicknames for which Don Stanhouse became famous were earned while wearing an Orioles uniform. Manager Earl Weaver, overly apprehensive every time Stanhouse was retrieved from the bullpen, called him “Full Pack” after the number of cigarettes he […]

“Pete Hill was the first great outfielder in black baseball history,” suggests baseball historian Lawrence Hogan.1 The left-handed Hill was a five-tool star with several famed independent African-American teams: the Philadelphia Giants (1904 to 1907), Leland Giants (1908 to 1910), and Chicago American Giants (1911 to 1918). He then slugged his way to Ruthian heights […]

On a chilly October night, Marquis Grissom gracefully glided to his right from his position in center field at Atlanta’s Fulton County Stadium and gloved the final out of the 1995 World Series. After three tries, the Atlanta Braves were the champions of professional baseball. The man who gloved that final out was the only […]

A tall right-handed twirler from a wealthy family who for financial reasons did not need to play baseball, Roy Witherup won only three games in three partial seasons in the majors but had a surprising impact on the pulsating 1908 American League pennant race. Illness and injury ended his promising career early. Foster Leroy Witherup […]

One of the early relief specialists in the majors, George “Sarge” Connally started just 67 times in 304 games across a 12-year big-league career (1921; 1923-29; 1933-34). Connally never shied away from hard work. In 1933, at the age of 34, he exemplified his other nickname—“Rubber Arm”—by making eight relief appearances for Cleveland from June […]

What does Phil Garner have in common with Sir Edmund Hillary and Neil Armstrong? The answer is that all three performed feats never before achieved by humankind. Sir Edmund was the first person to reach the summit of Mount Everest. Neil Armstrong was the first person to set foot on the moon. And Phil Garner […]

For every 30-home-run hitter and 20-game winner, there is often a role player who, though contributing less, is embraced by the fans and given nearly unconditional support in return for those elusive attributes scrappiness and hustle. For the pennant-winning White Sox of 1959, that player was Sammy Esposito. Despite spending the majority of his career […]

At first blush, it might appear that a kid growing up in the western Massachusetts area known as the Pioneer Valley wouldn’t be playing baseball in a hotbed of the national pastime. But for those who excel at an early age and persist, there are rewards to be reaped, and this was exactly the case […]

In an episode of Cheers, former Red Sox relief pitcher Sam Malone, played by actor Ted Danson, appears in a beer commercial to save Luis Tiant after the hurler with a corkscrew windup flubs his lines. Tiant’s subpar performance is part of the script. Malone exclaims, “Another save!”1 Although Malone is a fictional character, the […]

Kansas City’s new Royals Stadium provided a fresh, attractive setting for the 1973 All-Star Game. But the results on the field were numbingly familiar as the National League cruised to a 7-1 victory over the American League, the NL’s 15th win in the last 20 All-Star Games.1 To add injury to insult, AL starter Catfish […]

Before the State College (Pennsylvania) Spikes’ game of July 22, 2018, relief pitcher Cory Malcom made the pitch of his life. On the field, he asked his girlfriend, Kayla Turner, to marry him. She said yes. Once the game began, Malcom found the visiting Auburn (New York) Doubledays to be a tougher audience. In an […]

The Toronto Blue Jays were struggling as they took the field in the third game of a four-game series at Tiger Stadium. They’d lost seven of their last nine games, including the first two games against the Tigers. Detroit seemed like a good team to get their bats going against, since the Tigers pitching staff […]