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June 14 was the day before the 1949 trade deadline.1 According to the Boston Globe, the Boston Braves had sought Pittsburgh Pirates outfielder Wally Westlake “for a couple of weeks.”2 The 1948 Braves had made it to the World Series and were looking to repeat as National League champion. Could they add one bat to […]

Barry Bonds’ home runs typically identified themselves at impact, soared dismissively over outfield fences, and culminated in ceremonially paced processions around the bases.1 But one Bonds homer, hit in his second big-league season of 1987, broke from the norm, bounding past the glove of a diving infielder, taxing the full capacity of his game-changing footspeed, […]

The evening of Friday, August 6, 2010, was to be a very special night at Turner Field in Atlanta. The Braves would play the San Francisco Giants in the second game of a four-game series, and before that game Tom Glavine, the former star pitcher of the Atlanta Braves, was to have his number 47, […]

For nearly 30 years Minnesota baseball fans had a conflicted relationship with the Hubert H. Humphrey Metrodome in Minneapolis. Though the multi-functional stadium had less charm and character than toilet paper, and even though it kept fans indoors when they’d rather watch their baseball while experiencing pleasant summer days and evenings, it produced fond memories […]

With one day left in the American League schedule, Detroit’s Heinie Manush was battling New York’s Babe Ruth for the league batting crown. Both batters were hitting .372; Manush was 182-for-489 (.37219), while Ruth was 184-for-494 (.37247). The outcome would be decided on this Sunday afternoon. Just below them was Detroit’s Bob Fothergill, at .360. […]

The Minnesota Twins couldn’t have been happy to be facing Orioles left-hander Dave McNally in Game Two of the 1969 ALCS after losing Game One of the first-ever American League Championship Series. McNally faced the Twins three times during the 1969 season, including a game in Minnesota in May when he carried a no-hitter into […]

The year 1923 was a special one for fans of the New York Yankees and baseball. The team’s majestic new baseball cathedral, Yankee Stadium, opened on April 18, as the Yankees defeated the Boston Red Sox 4-1, with Babe Ruth hitting the ballpark’s first home run. Ruth would go on to bat .393, hit 41 […]

Inconsistency is not usually a recipe for success in baseball, but you couldn’t tell that to the 2000 Oakland Athletics. After starting the season with a lackluster 25-26 record, their young hitters, led by Ben Grieve and Terrence Long, went on a tear, and the A’s won 20 of their next 24 games. The club […]

Dave Cole, a gregarious right-hander who spent six seasons in the big leagues with the Braves, Cubs, and Phillies, was the kind of pitcher who has been frustrating scouts and managers for over a century: he couldn’t control the lively fastball and sharp curve that he possessed. Cole pitched only 237 2/3 innings in the […]

Name the catcher who caught both pitcher Babe Ruth and pitcher Ted Williams in regulation major-league ballgames. That’s a decent trivia question. The two sluggers are best known for their batting, but Williams did pitch in one game, on August 24, 1940. “My greatest claim to fame was striking out Rudy York with two men […]

Venezuelan catcher Bo Díaz played for all or part of 13 seasons in the majors, plus 14 more in his homeland’s winter league. He helped the Philadelphia Phillies win a National League pennant in 1983 and was part of six champion teams with the Leones del Caracas. Díaz made it to the majors on the […]

One might think Ed Kenna was a genteel soul who overachieved in his baseball life by appearing in two games with the Philadelphia Athletics in 1902. After all, the “poet pitcher” was a well-educated son of a US senator who authored two volumes of verse.1 Yet for years after his Philadelphia stint, Kenna starred in […]

Lewis “Buttercup” Dickerson was a stocky little outfielder – 5-foot-6 and 140 pounds – who played in the big leagues for seven seasons (1878-81; 1883-85). When in form, he was a capable hitter, batting .284 overall at the top level and leading the National League in triples with 14 in 1879. However, he was also […]

“Catchers are in demand,” declared the Fort Worth Record in 1907; they “are scarcer than snowflakes in July.”1 Catchers’ equipment was primitive, and injuries were common. Who wanted to endure abuse from fastballs and foul tips? Tommy Hess was willing. From 1890 to 1911, he caught for minor-league teams in at least 10 U.S. states […]

When a batter steps into the box, his most important goal is to get on base – unless he’s been asked to sacrifice to advance a preceding baserunner. One talent in terms of getting on base is exercising the patience to work a walk. No one ever did that better than Ted Williams. His walks […]

Jackie Jensen, the blond rugged Californian who attained great heights on both the football gridiron and baseball diamond, also waged a complex struggle with anxiety that he seemed to have conquered only at the very end of his life, a life that ended too early. A member of the College Football Hall of Fame and […]

Mike Lowell was a New York Yankees prospect who won a world championship with the 2003 Florida Marlins (beating the Yankees). He then became part of a salary dump that saw him sent to the Boston Red Sox, where he picked up a second world champion ring and was accorded the honor of being named […]

Like cats, many left-handed pitchers seem to have multiple lives. Drafted by four clubs five times over five years in the 1960s, lefty Rich Hinton pitched for five clubs in six years in an erratic career that largely spanned the 1970s. A star at the University of Arizona who also played in Mexico, Hinton pitched […]

Bronson Arroyo played 16 years of major-league baseball and helped the Boston Red Sox end the Curse of the Bambino with the 2004 World Series championship. His controversial tag of Álex Rodríguez in Game Six of the ALCS, when the umpires reversed their original call, spurred the Red Sox on to a victory. Boston closed […]

When the 1952 season ended, Hank Sauer, the heavy-hitting left fielder of the Chicago Cubs, had enjoyed a career year. Even though he averaged just .213 with three homers and seven RBIs during the month of September (due to a neck injury), the 35-year-old right-handed batting slugger was tied with the Pittsburgh Pirates’ Ralph Kiner […]

“I’m just a guy who worked hard to get into this position. Nobody recruited me out of high school. The Houston kids got all the publicity. If a scout came to town, we all figured he was from the marines. I had to go to a tryout camp to get a junior college scholarship. I […]

In 1942 St. Louis Cardinals’ farm director Branch Rickey singled out a particular right-handed hurler among a small army of top-flight pitching prospects: Max Surkont “can become another [Bob] Feller for us,”1 declared the future HOF executive. But by the end of spring training the Cardinals, blessed with the major leagues’ best pitching, assigned Surkont […]

Julio “Monchy” de Arcos (1922-1966) was a Cuban executive and scout. He was associated with the major leagues as early as 1941, when the Brooklyn Dodgers trained in Cuba’s capital, La Habana. Thanks to his friendship with Leo Durocher, then Brooklyn’s manager, he was the Dodgers’ interpreter and batboy. In the mid-1940s, de Arcos became […]

A pitcher whom the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette first identified as Charles “Lefty” Bell posted a 3-0 record for the Homestead Grays in 1948. The fact that Bell’s first name was likely James, rather than Charles, is only the first obstacle in attempting to identify this player, whose life and career provide a prime example of the […]