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The Los Angeles Dodgers had a pair of antique dueling pistols in the late ’70s. Yet despite their age, Vic Davalillo and Manny Mota were in great condition – and the fire of these small arms was often deadly. Davalillo’s big-league career had seemingly ended in 1974, but after more than three years in the […]

Lookin Up It lasted so long it went so fast it seems like yesterday it seems like never — “A Career,” from Days Like This, by Dan Quisenberry1   Sigh. There never was, and maybe there never will be, a major-league pitcher quite like Dan Quisenberry. He literally and figuratively came out of nowhere. Because […]

Venezuelan infielder Dámaso Blanco was 30 years old and in his 12th pro season when his dream finally came true with the San Francisco Giants. He told me the story in 2010. “The most important moment in my baseball career as an active player came on May 26, 1972. That day I played in my […]

Pete Vuckovich was a menacing figure. He was big: 6-feet-4 and 220 pounds (or more). He glowered over a Fu Manchu mustache and often had a few days’ growth elsewhere to go with his long, unkempt hair. While pitching, he had “a streak of calculated weirdness.”1 Rasputin comparisons arose, and he encouraged them, applauding the […]

Joe Wood’s reign as one of the most dominating pitchers in baseball history lasted a brief two seasons, but it left an indelible impression on those who witnessed his greatness first-hand. “Without a doubt,” Ty Cobb later recalled, “Joe Wood was one of the best pitchers I ever faced throughout my entire career.” In 1911 […]

Hub Pruett was an unassuming lefty with a screwball so good that Babe Ruth once told him, “If all pitchers were like you, no one would have heard of me.”1 But Pruett’s peak was brief. It served merely as the prologue to a lengthy and remarkable career outside the game. Hubert Shelby Pruett was born […]

In 2003 the Boston Red Sox were in the postseason for the first time since 1999. Back then, the New York Yankees had eliminated them in the American League Championship Series, but Red Sox fans were hoping that this time would be different. The ’03 Red Sox, who finished six games behind the Yankees with […]

The last home game of the 1952 season at Braves Field was played before 8,882 fans and nearly 32,000 empty seats on a Sunday afternoon in late September. Under the circumstances, this wasn’t much of a surprise. There are plenty of numbers one can use to describe the ’52 Braves, most of them bad. Boston’s […]

Members of the Kenosha Comets of the All-American Girls Base Ball League pose for a photo on July 1, 1943, at Wrigley Field in Chicago. (Chicago Sun / GenealogyBank.com)   Philip K. Wrigley, chewing-gum magnate and longtime owner of the Chicago Cubs, was an innovator and experimenter, and during World War II, he was committed […]

“You Called That a What . . . ?”The Newsletter of the Official Scoring Committee Society for American Baseball Research (SABR) November 2019, Volume 5, Number 1 Past newsletters   Editor: Stew Thornley From the Chair Conundrum of the Month (or Quarter or Whatever) Profile: Mike Dean Bloops and Bobbles Honchos   From the Chair […]