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“I never have fear of the ball.”1 It’s a sentiment that Luis Salazar has been known to iterate about his love of baseball and it’s also a good way to sum up his playing career. He was willing and had the skill to take the field as needed. In his 13 years as a major-league […]

Tall righty Nate Minchey pitched in parts of four major-league seasons (1993-1994, 1996-1997), though he never appeared in more than six games in a given year. He then built a successful career in Japanese baseball, earning 74 victories from 1998 to 2004. Following his playing days, he spent more than 15 years working as an […]

The title of a Shakespearean play, All’s Well That Ends Well, seems to fit the life of George Provens. In the midst of some tough years in his 20s fell a genuine bright spot, a brief stint with the Cleveland Buckeyes of the Negro American League in 1945. Though that achievement didn’t turn his life […]

“He is another Vance, another Dazzy, I’m telling you. Hasn’t the best disposition in the world. You know some of those Carolina fellows get funny ideas sometimes, but he certainly can buzz that ball over. Best young pitcher I’ve seen since Rube Marquard. Only he is faster than Rube was. Say, maybe he is another […]

“Just call me Hank,” said Henry “Prince” Oana. He didn’t really come from Hawaiian royalty, but there was still a certain mystique about this outfielder-turned-pitcher. In a time when mainstream baseball lacked diversity, Oana was something exotic. When this story was originally published in 2009, there weren’t many men alive who knew Hank Oana during […]

This outfielder was the first member of the Lumbee people of Robeson County, North Carolina, to play in the majors. Throughout his playing days, Gene Locklear’s skill as an artist also got attention. “They are both individual things, and you have to have talent. You can’t just have desire,” Locklear said in 2005.1 One of […]

As of 2013, there had been more than 18,000 members in the major league baseball fraternity. Many of those were outstanding overall athletes who excelled at more than one sport. Some, such as Jim Thorpe and Bo Jackson, attained a mythic status for their athleticism. Others performed in the national limelight such as Dave DeBusschere, […]

In a nine-year career spent with three teams, outfielder Tito Landrum never received more than 205 official at-bats in a season. Yet he earned two World Series rings and was a League Championship Series hero for both the 1983 Orioles and 1985 Cardinals. Terry Lee Landrum was born on October 25, 1954 in Joplin. Missouri. […]

World War II ended when the Axis powers surrendered to the Allied powers in 1945. Men and women of the U.S. Armed Forces returned to an America deeply affected by years of war, and they sought to resume a simple, more pedestrian way of life. They looked to an America which embraced enterprise and entertainment, […]

After a highly successful playing career as both a slick-fielding infielder and a slugger, Davey Johnson went on to an even more decorated career as a manager. His winning percentage of .562 is 10th all-time among managers with 1,000 victories, and is surpassed by only Earl Weaver among pilots who began their career after 1960. […]

Before Mike Lum came along in 1967, only three men born and raised in Hawaii had played in the majors, and none since 1945.1 Both before and after World War II, quite a few Hawaiian ballplayers had gone to Japan – but for mainland fans, Lum became a longstanding reminder of baseball in the Aloha […]

Robin Mark Ventura was one of the outstanding third basemen of the last decade of the 1900s. After a stellar college career, Ventura played integral parts in the success of the Chicago White Sox and New York Mets during his career. Ventura was born on July 14, 1967, in Santa Maria, California, to John and […]

The San Diego Padres celebrated their 50th season in Major League Baseball in 2019. (SAN DIEGO PADRES)   San Diego’s quest for major-league baseball began earnestly in the mid- to late 1950s, around the time California’s largest cities, Los Angeles and San Francisco, ascended to “the bigs.” Home of the Pacific Coast League Padres since […]

New York Giants manager John McGraw, left, and team owner Charles Stoneham in the early 1920s. (NATIONAL BASEBALL HALL OF FAME LIBRARY)   INTRODUCTION The New York-San Francisco Giants baseball club is among the most storied franchises in the annals of professional sport. To fans, mention of the club’s name promptly evokes images of Willie […]

John McGraw, the third baseman-manager of the Baltimore Orioles, led a team that included future Hall of Famers Wilbert Robinson, Roger Bresnahan, and Joe McGinnity as well as himself. Also a member of the team was Turkey Mike Donlin. Donlin got his nickname because of his strutting walk and red neck.1 Donlin had played for […]

After back-to-back World Series appearances in 2014 and 2015, including their first championship since 1985, the Kansas City Royals began the 2016 season with high hopes of a third straight trip to the World Series. With most of their roster returning, it was not an unreasonable expectation. The defending champions, however, got off to an […]

The Baltimore Orioles went from no hits to 26 hits in the span of four days. After being no-hit by Hisashi Iwakuma and the Seattle Mariners on Wednesday, August 12, 2015, the Orioles exploded for 26 hits and 18 runs on Sunday the 16th against the Oakland A’s. In their intervening games, the Orioles got […]

Entering the 2022 season, only one player had hit more than 14 triples in a season since 2012: Eddie Rosario. The left-handed-batting outfielder stroked 15 triples in 2015, leading all major leaguers. And he accomplished this feat as a rookie with the Minnesota Twins, playing in 122 games. In his next six seasons, though, Rosario […]

The 1963 Rule 5 draft gave major-league teams the opportunity to pluck unprotected, non-first-year minor leaguers from other organizations at a cost of $25,000 each. Among the baseball executives sweating bullets during those proceedings, held at San Diego’s Cortez Hotel, was Cleveland Indians general manager Gabe Paul, terrified at what he might lose.1 Paul’s protected […]

July 4, 1921, fell on a Monday, giving baseball teams a golden opportunity for not only a potentially lucrative Sunday doubleheader, but also another twin bill on the holiday. The Atlantic City Bacharach Giants took full advantage of the calendar, hosting two games on Sunday against archrival Hilldale of Philadelphia, and two more on July […]

When Pat Gosney shipped off for US Army duty in the summer of 1952, he left with a good story to tell his buddies: Just before entering military service, he’d pitched a three-hit shutout against a major-league team. The story came with a few caveats, which Gosney no doubt admitted by and by. The shutout […]

This article appears in SABR’s “20-Game Losers” (2017), edited by Bill Nowlin and Emmet R. Nowlin.   Chris Archer took the mound for the Tampa Bay Rays at Chicago’s U.S. Cellular Field on September 29, 2016, in a meaningless game between two teams slogging to the end of disappointing seasons. But a defeat would make […]

A small group of hearty Rogers Hornsby Chapter SABR members traveled to the northwestern lands of Cedar Park, Texas, to watch the San Francisco Giants get even with the Kansas City Royals in Game 4 of the 2014 World Series on Saturday, October 25, 2014. Fueled by delicious cheeseburger sliders, cookies and brownies by host […]