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After a nine-year career in Japan, where he won an unprecedented seven consecutive batting titles, seven consecutive Gold Glove awards, and three consecutive MVP awards, Ichiro Suzuki became the first position player from Nippon Professional Baseball in the major leagues in 2001. Proving many doubters wrong, his stellar hitting continued in the U.S. against major-league […]

Wilson was meant to be. The no-hitter he pitched for the White Sox on August 11, 1991, changed not only his life, but also the way a country’s new generation embraced baseball. Asked about the game over the years, he would repeat, “It was a gift from God.”1 Indeed, it seems it was. Wilson Álvarez […]

Through the 2016 season, Chris Guccione has been a major-league umpire for eight full seasons. Before that, he was an “up and down” umpire, for the eight prior seasons (2000 through 2008), and he had worked five years in the minor leagues, from 1995 through 1999. Like most umpires, he had to work many years […]

He was a Furman University pitching ace who rocketed from college state championship to the majors in three months. He was a fellow 1907 Washington Senators rookie pitcher with, and first major league road roommate of, Walter Johnson. Sam Lanford was even spoken of in the same conversation as Shoeless Joe Jackson as among the […]

Roger McDowell kept his locker stocked with comedy props, costumes, and fireworks, blew bubbles while he pitched, played the notorious “Second Spitter” on Seinfeld and was known to set teammates’ shoes on fire. But he knew a little about pitching too. McDowell racked up 70 wins and 159 saves pitching almost exclusively in relief over […]

Starting pitcher Mark Lemongello spent parts of four seasons (1976-1979) with the Houston Astros and Toronto Blue Jays. An intense right-hander, he had good command of his sinker-slider repertoire, but a lack of control over his infamous temper contributed to his demise in professional baseball. Mark Limongello was born on July 21, 1955, in Jersey […]

The baseball epitaph for Deadball Era right-hander Del Mason might well be the familiar: Minor League Star/Major League Bust. Twice the best pitcher of a minor-league circuit, Mason was a disappointment in ensuing trials with the Washington Senators (1904) and Cincinnati Reds (1906-1907). In retrospect, it appears that Mason lacked that extra level of pitching […]

James Bradley “Brad” Mills was born on January 19, 1957, in Exeter, California, in the state’s Central Valley. As a young boy, he and his three brothers took frequent trips with their father, a cattle rancher and orange farmer, to San Francisco or Oakland to see the Giants or Athletics. The car rides were often filled […]

No one chooses to become a professional widow, and Eleanor Gehrig derived little satisfaction in being called one. Yet few ballplayers’ wives maintained a level of such prominence so long after their husband’s death as they had when he was alive. Mrs. Lou Gehrig was married less than eight years; she was a widow for […]

No less an authority than Ted Williams referred to him as “the greatest young hitter I’ve ever seen.”1 His immense power drew comparisons to Hall of Famers Harmon Killebrew and Eddie Mathews, while his value was glimpsed in an unexecuted one-for-one swap with the California Angels’ future Cooperstown inductee Nolan Ryan. (The talks collapsed only […]

During the 2000s, Carlos Zambrano was a mainstay at the top of the Chicago Cubs’ rotation. Though lacking the renown of teammates like Kerry Wood, Mark Prior, and Sammy Sosa, the three-time All-Star led the Cubs in wins above replacement during the first decade of the new millennium. Nicknamed El Toro (Spanish for bull) and […]

The New York Mets were in a middle of an eight-game homestand in May 2004. After being swept by the St. Louis Cardinals in a two-game series, they won the first two games of a weekend series against the Colorado Rockies, outslugging the Rockies with a 9-run, 14-hit attack in the opener and rallying behind […]

If you were listening carefully, you might have picked up on it — a subtle, perhaps unconscious acknowledgement that the curtain was falling. As Sportsman’s Park public-address announcer George Carson introduced the home team, he left something out. For the first time all season he didn’t refer to them as the “World Champion Cardinals.”1The New […]

As the Detroit Tigers and the Minnesota Twins prepared to square off at Metropolitan Stadium on Sunday, June 20, 1976, neither team had particularly distinguished itself to that point in the season. The Tigers, at 26-33, were at least so far staying out of the American League East basement, where they had finished every year […]

John “Beans” Reardon, left, wearing a flu mask underneath his umpire’s mask, prepares to call a pitch in a California Winter League game on January 26, 1919, in Pasadena, California. During a global influenza pandemic, all players and fans were required by city ordinance to wear facial coverings at all times while outdoors. The catcher […]

The California Angels were in first place in the American League West Division, four games ahead of the Minnesota Twins, as play began on August 10, 1979. For the past four seasons, the Angels had been steadily climbing the division standings, finishing second in 1978, five games behind the Kansas City Royals’ third straight AL […]

When the Washington Nationals last met the New York Yankees, it was March 12, 2020, at FITTEAM Ballpark of the Palm Beaches, the Nationals’ spring-training home since 2017. Just one day earlier, the World Health Organization assessed that the COVID-19 crisis warranted declaration of a global pandemic.1 The author was completing a weeklong trip to […]

The Detroit Tigers, led by player-manager Ty Cobb, got off to a slow start in the 1925 season. Going into St. Louis in early May for a four-game series against the Browns, the Tigers had a 4-13 record with one tie. The team was stuck in the American League cellar and had yet to win […]

Sportsman’s Park was home of the St. Louis Browns from 1902 to 1953. (National Baseball Hall of Fame Library.)   Introduction Achieving on-field success has often proved elusive to owners of the Baltimore Orioles and its predecessor teams, the St. Louis Browns and Milwaukee Brewers. The franchise, dating back to the inception of the American […]

Editor’s note: This article was originally published in 2022 as part of SABR’s Baseball and the Supreme Court Project. Trading cards have been produced depicting nearly every conceivable subject and judges are no exception. In 1888 W. Duke, Sons & Co. (at one time the largest manufacturer of cigarettes in the United States) issued a […]