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Frank Skaff’s big-league playing career spanned a mere 38 games and 75 at-bats in 1935 and 1943. That was far fewer than observers projected when the talented athlete emerged on the stage. However, Skaff spent six decades in Organized Baseball as a player, coach, manager – including 79 games with the 1966 Detroit Tigers – […]

Dominican infielder Luis Ortiz forged a life in baseball. He began his career in pro ball in 1991 with the Boston Red Sox organization and made it to the top level with Boston in 1993. He got into 60 big-league games for the Red Sox and Texas Rangers from 1993 through 1996. Then after a […]

When you examine the life of Abner Doubleday you eventually have to come to the point expressed by classic detective Joe Friday: “Just the facts, ma’am, just the facts.” Okay, so here are two facts about General Abner Doubleday’s life. First, his military career was lengthy and he “was the highest ranking officer in the […]

Horace Wilds is pictured in the middle row, second from right, in a photo of the 1887-88 Oakland Tribunes baseball team published in the Oakland Tribune newspaper on September 6, 1908. (Courtesy of Stephen V. Rice)   Horace Wilds, an African American catcher, excelled on white semipro teams in Oakland and San Francisco from 1886 […]

A big man with a famous scowl and a name that felt ripped from a James Bond film, Mo Vaughn was a hulking 6-foot-1, 225-pound lefty hitter whose frame dangled over home plate. Baseballs seemed to disintegrate on impact when he exploded out of his crouched stance, extending one arm to the sky on his […]

Gregg Olson, the only son of a highly successful high-school baseball coach, distinguished himself on the diamond at Omaha’s Northwest High School and went on to “pioneer the position of late inning college closer at a time when no one put their most talented pitcher in the bullpen.”1 That talent made him a first-round draft […]

When you review how professional baseball integrated, it is easy to begin and end with the story of Jackie Robinson’s struggles. Scant attention is given the fact that African Americans faced tremendous resistance to their presence throughout the 1950s and 1960s, especially in the Deep South. One such player who experienced this was Blue Moon […]

Midre Cummings is the ninth of 14 major leaguers (as of 2016) from the U.S. Virgin Islands. He may be as close to a complete player as the territory has ever produced. Thus he was saddled with high expectations as a prospect in the early ’90s. But the young Midre displayed only tantalizing glimpses of […]

Ornery, rambunctious, and immensely talented, Leslie Nunamaker became one of baseball’s stoutest hitting and best throwing catchers during the last decade of the Deadball Era—and one of the game’s colorful personalities. Cut from the same temperamental cloth as contemporaries Ty Cobb and John McGraw, Nunamaker was prone to explosive on-field behavior that resulted in an […]

Mothers will do anything for their children. If you were Patty Kendall, those selfless duties would have included hitting ground balls to your son Jason, sometimes for hours on end, until he missed one. “That was the deal,” said Patty. “If he missed one, I went in. He used to keep me out there for […]

Fred Heimach’s grandfather was a house painter from Pennsylvania. Edward and Margaret Heimach both came from the Quaker State, but had been living across the river in Camden, New Jersey, since the 1880s.  Their son George was Fred’s father, but he and his wife had separated early, and the young Frederick Amos Heimach was raised […]

Known as “Gentleman Jim” and the “Ice Man,” Tennessee native Jim Hickman toiled for six years in the St. Louis Cardinals’ organization before the newly formed New York Mets selected him in the 1962 expansion draft. While the Mets compiled a 260-547 record under managers Casey Stengel and Wes Westrum, Hickman had his share of […]

Throughout his 14-year major league career, John Anderson became accustomed to change. As one of the era’s few switch-hitters, one might say he even had a knack for it. From 1894 to 1908, Anderson played for six different franchises in seven different cities. He played for winners, such as the pennant winning 1899 Brooklyn Superbas […]

Cuban entrepreneur Roberto “Bobby” Maduro was a singular baseball man. When he passed away in 1986, the news made the front page of El Nuevo Herald, the Spanish newspaper of Miami, where he and so many of his countrymen made their home after Fidel Castro took power. In that story, Fausto Miranda (the dean of […]

“Although Father Time has tried to mock the dean of pitchers in either major leagues,” opined a sportswriter poetically about 36-year-old Walter Johnson in 1924, “the old man with the scythe could not have the cunning and strength from that great arm today.”1 The Washington Senators hurler continued his season-long resurgence by holding the St. […]

When the New York Yankees arrived in Boston in April 2007, the Boston Red Sox had not swept a series from the Yankees at Fenway Park for 17 years. The last time had been August 31-September 2, 1990, part of Boston’s only season home sweep of the Yankees in franchise history. The last time the […]

In a 21-year career that was honored by his 2024 election to the National Baseball Hall of Fame in his first year of eligibility, Adrian Beltré spent one season – 2010 – with the Boston Red Sox. At age 31, it was one of Beltré’s best years, and it reignited the Dominican-born third baseman’s path […]

Bottom of the 11th. Runners at first and third. One out. Edwin Encarnacion digs in at the plate,1 ready to have one of the most memorable plate appearances of his career. Ubaldo Jimenez takes a deep breath and looks at catcher Matt Wieters for the sign as 49,934 people inside a cramped Rogers Centre create […]

This article appears in SABR’s “Bittersweet Goodbye: The Black Barons, the Grays, and the 1948 Negro League World Series” (2017), edited by Frederick C. Bush and Bill Nowlin.   To people familiar with the historical relationship between the cities of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and Birmingham, Alabama, it must seem appropriate that the last Negro League World […]