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John (Jack) Burwell Reed played the outfield in the regular and post-season for the fabled 1961 New York Yankees, and contributed to their pennant-winning efforts in 1962 and 1963. He was Mickey Mantle’s defensive replacement for most of these three seasons. Jack was a terrific high school/college athlete in Mississippi, winning the state quarter-mile run […]
When the Washington Senators called up right-handed hurler Jim Heise from the minor leagues in early summer 1957, the team was “desperate” for pitching.1 They were in last place with a major-league worst 22-47 record and had dropped 11 of their previous 15 games on their way to their third consecutive sub-.400 season. At that […]
When Shufflin’ Phil Douglas arrived on the baseball scene in 1910 at the tender age of 20, he brought with him size and a fastball impressive enough to draw comparisons to Walter Johnson’s. Douglas, a product of Cedartown, Georgia, was a big man, especially for that era, standing 6-feet-3 and weighing 190 pounds, who threw […]
Meteoric: transiently brilliant; as a meteoric rise to fame1 Southpaw pitcher Karl Spooner exploded onto the Major League Baseball scene with two record-setting games at the end of the 1954 season. His flame quickly faded following a shoulder injury during spring training 1955, and he struggled through that season. A member of the only […]
Norm Cash would have loved it. The story drew upon metaphors including baseball, the Old West, and the camaraderie of friends. Its title, City Slickers, was evocative of the relationship between the burly cowboy and the legions of brewers, auto manufacturers, and teamsters who became his fans. The director, Billy Crystal, who also played the […]
The Great Depression is remembered as a time that ruined many a man. People could no longer rely on help from their families, money and shelter were hard to come by, and hunger was commonplace. Long before these hardships started hitting the average man, Herman Clifton had grown to expect hardship as everyday life. In […]
Rocky Ellis is one of the many Negro League players whose statistics tell only a fraction of the full story. Sandwiched between official league contests were the numerous battles against teams of varying skill. These games made up the meat of a player’s diet but usually are not taken into consideration when the breadth of […]
Gary Sheffield was known for a swing so quick “he could turn on a .38-caliber bullet.”1 The menacing way he waggled his bat and the screaming line drives it produced caused a frustrated Cincinnati Reds coach to promise to ban his pitchers from throwing Sheffield a strike.2 Sheffield emerged as a star in 1992, when […]
Chris Von der Ahe, owner of the St. Louis Browns in 1892, was known for his irrational and confrontational behavior. Rookie Frank Genins had a puzzling run-in with Von der Ahe to start his career. According to a 1913 Baseball Magazine article by William A. Phelon, Genins was acquired from Omaha over the winter, but […]
A standout on the sandlots of Detroit, Willie Horton became the first black superstar for his hometown Tigers and spent parts of 15 seasons with the team. A tremendously powerful right-handed slugger, Horton was one of the strongest men in the game and launched 325 homers in his career. Extremely popular in Detroit, Horton worked […]
The first professional baseball team Jack O’Brien played for lasted only 14 games (they were 7-7) – the 1895 Troy Trojans of the New York State League. On May 22 Troy withdrew from the league, and the following day the Albany team was dropped from the league. The players dispersed, most of them, to other […]
On August 3, 2015, the Texas Rangers opened a three-game series with their in-state and division rivals, the Houston Astros. Although the Rangers (51-53) sat eight games behind the AL West Division-leading Astros (60-46) with about two months left in the season, the home team had won four of its last five games and was […]
Years before he would become infamous for inadvertently starting the Black Sox Scandal,1 the Chicago Whales’ Claude Hendrix pitched a dominating no-hitter, defeating the Pittsburgh Rebels, 10-0, on May 15, 1915. It was just the second no-hitter thrown at Pittsburgh’s Exposition Park III, and third no-hitter thrown in the Federal League. In 1915 right-hander Hendrix […]
Ed Sanicki didn’t believe in saving his best for last. In his first official at-bat in a minor-league-exhibition game, the right-handed-hitting Sanicki hit a two-run homer off Vic Raschi in the fourth inning, helping the Wilmington Blue Rocks past the Binghampton Triplets, 6-3, in late April 1946.1 In the Blue Rocks’ first regular-season game a […]
During a homestand in late April 2013, Boston Red Sox pitchers started striking out a lot of the opposition. It began when the Red Sox lost both games of a doubleheader to the Kansas City Royals at Fenway Park on April 21. Boston’s seven-game winning streak was snapped, but Red Sox pitchers had struck out […]
The Detroit Tigers “waited until late in the waning season to unlimber their greatest offensive show of the 1947 season,” as they swept a doubleheader from the Washington Senators at Griffith Stadium. A small crowd of 11,170 gathered to watch the double defeat. The Washington Post declared, “Defeat is hardly the word to use to […]
Boasting a three-games-to-one lead after four tilts, the Reds had all but started counting their share of the 1919 World Series take. “With three victories to our credit, nothing will stop the Reds now of winning the world’s championship,” Cincinnati skipper Pat Moran declared before they were to face the White Sox at Comiskey Park […]
Buoyed by a pregame band performance, Chicago Cubs center fielder Hack Wilson collected three home runs in a 16-2 blowout of the Philadelphia Phillies at the Baker Bowl on July 26, 1930. His accomplishment was noteworthy for two reasons. First, Wilson became the first Cubs player in the twentieth century with a three-homer game, a […]
What a difference a year makes. In 1979 the California Angels were flying high, winning the AL West Division with an 88-74 record. The Oakland A’s had finished last in the AL West at 54-108. Notwithstanding the records, in spring training Billy Martin declared that his A’s would beat the Angels and win the division. […]
On the day of Whitey Herzog’s first game as manager of the St. Louis Cardinals, he found himself, somewhat baffled, in Marietta, Georgia, trying to get to the team hotel in nearby Atlanta. His misadventure began when he was given the wrong departure time for his flight. Then, after catching a later plane to Atlanta, […]
St. Louis Cardinals great Bob Gibson hurled a high fastball from the Busch Stadium mound at 8 P.M. on July 17, 1974. César Geronimo, the Cincinnati Reds’ lithe centerfielder, swung and missed, making him the 3,000th strikeout victim in Gibson’s Hall of Fame career. Only the Washington Senators’ Walter Johnson had ever fanned that many […]
Brothers Norm and Larry Sherry shared one of the highlights of their careers for the Los Angeles Dodgers on May 7, 1960. They were batterymates for the final four innings of the Dodgers’ game against the Philadelphia Phillies, with Norm entering at catcher and Larry pitching in relief. Larry claimed the win when Norm’s walk-off […]
The Polo Grounds was an odd name for an odd series of stadiums in different parts of New York. The final Polo Grounds opened on June 28, 1911, less than three months after the previous one was destroyed by fire. The first Polo Grounds was aptly named, as it was a polo field, extending from […]
This article appears in SABR’s “Puerto Rico and Baseball: 60 Biographies” (2017), edited by Bill Nowlin and Edwin Fernández. Major-League Spring Training in Puerto Rico The 1936 Cincinnati Reds “The Cincinnati Reds put on the first major league baseball game in Puerto Rican history yesterday” was lead of an AP wire story on February […]