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The year 1942 was a pivotal one in baseball. Concerns that the season might be canceled were put to rest when President Franklin D. Roosevelt sent the “Green Light” letter to baseball Commissioner Kenesaw Mountain Landis, ensuring that the season would be played. The US war effort was in full swing and many of the […]

Shortstop Johnny Rawlings had the game of his life leading the cellar-dwelling Boston Braves to their most convincing win in the twentieth century (to that date) by clobbering the visiting Brooklyn Robins, 16-0. It was the 189th game at the huge Wigwam, just off Commonwealth Avenue, and never had the home team won by that […]

 Thanks in no small part to Bruce Markusen’s 2009 work, The Team That Changed Baseball: Roberto Clemente and the 1971 Pittsburgh Pirates, even non-Pirates aficionados are now familiar with the story of how, at Three Rivers Stadium on September 1 of that year Danny Murtaugh filled out a lineup that featured, for the first time […]

The Reds were on the brink. Twenty years removed from their only World Series championship, against the infamous Black Sox in 1919, Cincinnati was poised to become NL champions. Hosting the second-place St. Louis Cardinals in the final home game on the 1939 schedule, the Reds could clinch the pennant at Crosley Field by defeating […]

Boston lost a home game to the visiting Baltimore Canaries, 17-14, at the South End Grounds on Saturday, July 26, 1873, in a game marred by both poor pitching and poor fielding. The game was Boston’s 28th of the 1873 season. The Red Stockings, 17-10 (.650), entered the game in third place in the National […]

New York Mets ace Tom Seaver was not having a terrific September in 1972. After averaging nearly eight innings per game through August, “Tom Terrific” had to leave his next three starts after five or six innings due to various minor injuries.1 He was also charged with losses in two of those three starts, putting […]

Dan Shay was a hard-nosed infielder at the turn of the twentieth century, playing 231 major league games during his long professional career. His style of play can best be imagined by the nicknames he accrued: Scrappy and Hustlin’. His major league resume, though, was scant. He preferred the employment conditions, lifestyle and climate of […]

June 14, 1908, South Side Park, Chicago. The White Sox had won 10 straight games. Manager Fielder Jones might well have uttered what would become a Hawk Harrelson catchphrase more than a century later: “Don‘t stop now, boys!”1 But Jones could see win 11 slipping away. After four innings, the New York Highlanders led 4-1. […]

Eight major-leaguers died while serving in World War I.1 The third of these casualties, Eddie Grant, had the longest playing career and is also well remembered because he received a plaque in center field at the Polo Grounds. The shortest career on this list belonged to Alexander Thomson Burr, a pitcher who played just one […]

Lennie Pearson was one of the mainstays of the Newark Eagles for more than a decade, but it wasn’t until the 1946 Negro World Series that Pearson came out of the shadows. The first baseman batted an astounding .393 in the Series against the Kansas City Monarchs to help the Eagles put their stamp on […]

Godsends always arrive on schedule. But God sends great baseball hitters far less frequently than are promised by even the most clairvoyant of baseball prophets. SABR-sophist Bill James once proclaimed the Los Angeles Dodgers’ Pedro Guerrero “the best hitter God had made in a long time.”1 It was the mid-1980s, and Guerrero was in the […]

Born on January 21, 1959, in San Cristobal, Dominican Republic, José Uribe found a path from the pockmarked, rock-and-dirt baseball fields of the Dominican Republic to international baseball success. Named the All-Decade Shortstop of the 1980s for the San Francisco Giants,1 he played well in an unforgettable World Series with the team in 1989. In […]

After postponing his wedding when he was unexpectedly called up to the Boston Red Sox in June of 1967, Ken Poulsen collected one base hit in five at-bats during his brief two-week major-league career. That lone base hit by Poulsen was witnessed by the author, then 13 years old, who was at Fenway Park that […]

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 […]

During a late season call-up in 1986, Kevin Seitzer burst upon the American League looking like the next Kansas City Royals star, the heir-apparent to future Hall of Famer George Brett at third. He arrived with his trademark hunched-over batting stance that produced sensational batting averages in the minor leagues and a brash attitude that […]

Back in an era when a manager’s responsibilities often included both the duties of a modern skipper plus those of today’s general manager, Pat Moran excelled at each role. In a span of six years Moran took over two mediocre franchises with little history of winning, rebuilt and reassembled their players, and managed each to […]

Andrew Lawrence Patterson was born on December 19, 1911, in Chicago.1 Both of his parents died while he was extremely young, so the duty of raising the boy fell to his maternal grandparents.2 Pat, as he became known, discovered athletics early on and augmented his classroom education as a multisport athlete at integrated Washington High […]

Big Bill James’s involvement, if any, in the 1919 Black Sox Scandal remains curiously unexplored by most baseball historians. Yet the tall right-handed pitcher from Michigan pops up in three different game-fixing incidents during the Deadball Era. As a member of the Chicago White Sox for just two months in 1919, James saw little action […]

Bob Chance – a lefty-hitting, righty-throwing right fielder and first baseman – played on three major-league teams in six seasons in the 1960s. At 6-foot-2, Chance was big and powerful. Gripping the bat with his right palm wrapped around the knob of the bat, he hit colossal home runs, some of which allegedly traveled over […]

During a relatively short late 19th century playing career, Tommy McCarthy forged a reputation as an inventive baseball strategist, a fine defensive outfielder, and a good, if not exceptional, batsman. A significant member of pennant winners in both the American Association and the National League, McCarthy lingered in memory as the lesser half of the […]

Milt “Pinky” Shoffner was destined to be a ballplayer. He was born on November 13, 1905, in Sherman Texas, the only child of minor league pitcher Herman Daniel Shoffner and Jessie Lee ( Combs) Shoffner. Herman played throughout Texas and Oklahoma for nearly a decade during which Milt was born. Herm taught Milt the game […]

Retired Air Force Lieutenant General William Eckert was named commissioner of baseball in late 1965 from a list of candidates that included more than 150 names. The owners wanted someone from outside the game who would be respected by Congress. Truth was, few even knew who William Eckert was at the time. One sportswriter quipped […]

Here are the SABR Bookshelf listings for Summer 2014. To get your NEW book listed on The SABR Bookshelf, make sure a review copy is sent to: The SABR Bookshelf, Society for American Baseball Research, 4455 E. Camelback Rd., Ste. D-140, Phoenix, AZ 85018. An e-book file will also suffice; please send the e-book in […]

Philadelphia Phillies pitcher Tug McGraw celebrates after closing out Game Six of the 1980 World Series, clinching the first championship in franchise history. (Courtesy of the Philadelphia Phillies)   In the Beginning The first National League game in Philadelphia was played in 1876 with the Boston Red Stockings facing the Philadelphia Athletics, one of several […]