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Even after the integration of minor- and major-league baseball in the mid-1940s, the Negro Leagues continued for another decade and a half. The top black players were now in Organized Baseball, but others filled the rosters of all-black teams. One was a Minnesota native, Marcenia Lyle Stone, better known as Toni Stone. In 1953, Stone became the […]
Known for his fielding prowess and head-first slides, Terry “Cotton Top” Turner is Cleveland’s all-time leader in games played with 1,619. The quintessential utility player, the 5’8″, 149-pound Turner was, in the words of sportswriter Gordon Cobbledick, “a little rabbit of a man with the guts of a commando.” He was also one of the […]
As a big leaguer, Ed Charles was perhaps the most accomplished player in the brief history of the ill-fated Kansas City Athletics, and he achieved fame as a baseball poet, reciting his poetry on television a few times per year and mailing verse to young fans with requested autographs. But he is best remembered today […]
Garry Wilson played only three games in the major leagues, within a three-day stretch of late September in 1902. The three games were for the Boston Americans, in the middle of 13 seasons of minor-league ball, with all but 22 of his 1,084 games played for New England teams. In April 1897, only recently 18 […]
“It is hard to keep me out of the game when I’m in shape to play. I play the game because I love it.” – Mike Roach, March 17, 1910, age 401 From amateur teams in Renovo, Pennsylvania, to the major leagues with the Washington Senators, Mike Roach’s life was a North American baseball odyssey. […]
Dave Ricketts was a bespectacled catcher who looked as much like a math teacher as he did a professional athlete. Indeed, he was a schoolteacher for several years and nearly gave up baseball to teach full-time. The statistics on the back of his baseball cards may give the impression that Ricketts had little impact on […]
Newly recruited from the Pacific Northwest League, boyish left-hander Jimmy St. Vrain pitched capably for the Chicago Cubs in early part of the 1902 season. Plagued by poor defensive support – more than one-third of the runs surrendered by St. Vrain were unearned – he posted a hard luck 4-6 record, with a fine 2.08 […]
George Boehler is “the ace of the minor leagues.”1 — Nathan E. Jacobs, Omaha News, 1923 Pitcher George “Rube” Boehler had a blazing fastball and a sweeping curve.2 In the minors from 1911 to 1930, he won 249 games3 and was a seven-time 20-game winner. For the 1922 Tulsa Oilers, he won 38 games, […]
If it were not for the San Diego Padres, this biography on the lives of Ray and Joan Kroc would never have to be written. Not that the reader would be bereft of materials on this celebrated billionaire couple. Ray and Joan Kroc were both American celebrities long before they ever became associated with baseball. […]
Nicknamed the “Iron Man,” the remarkably durable Ray Mueller caught an average of 153 games per season between the Pacific Coast League and National League from 1942 to 1944. He set the NL record by catching 233 consecutive games, including all 155 for the 1944 Cincinnati Reds. Mueller was a backstop for 1,598 total games […]
“That night might have been the best thing anyone has done in baseball in the last 10 years.” — Mike Downey, August 28, 1985 ***** In 1985 Eddie Murray drove in a career-high 124 runs, had a career-high 37 doubles (a total he matched in 1992), and reached the 30-home-run mark (31) for the fourth […]
One of the first tragic figures in major-league baseball, Charles Ferguson might have become one of the greatest players of all time had it not been for his untimely death at the age of 25. An all-around natural athlete who starred for the Philadelphia Quakers of the National League from 1884 through 1887, Ferguson had a […]
Read me some names from a faded box score Culled from the distant ago; Anson, Dalrymple, Williamson, Gore, Flint, Delahanty and Lowe. –Verse, author unknown Maine’s only batting champion as of 2010 was most definitely one of the outstanding performers of his day. That his day was a long, long time ago should not detract […]
Any objective summary of Eddie Bennett’s contributions to baseball makes him seem at best a minor figure in the game’s history. Yet during the 1920s and early 1930s, his evident devotion for the game made him a powerful symbol to many fans. Although his time in the limelight was brief, there are signs that […]
Alfred L. Shaw’s parents James and Annie (Beech) Shaw emigrated to America around 1880. This was almost 40 years after the famous Pottery Riots of 1842, emerging from a general strike that year in the Stoke-on-Trent area of England. Coal-mine owners were trying to impose wage cuts on their workers. The resultant organization of workers […]
Known as one of the feistiest players in baseball history, Edd Roush channeled that energy into a Hall of Fame career. An old-timer was quoted in the Brooklyn Daily Eagle in 1919 saying that Roush was more like the fiery old Baltimore Orioles of the 1890’s than any other player in the National League. The […]
“Excellence may have many definitions, but Tip-Top Bread defines excellence: the supreme, clean, healthful loaf,” touted a 1914 newspaper advertisement.1 Robert B. Ward’s bakeries produced nearly 250 million loaves in 1913.2 Ward became a baseball magnate in 1914 when he acquired the Brooklyn franchise in the upstart Federal League. The team was named the Tip-Tops […]
Saturday, July 12, 1975, was probably the high point of Al Hrabosky’s eight-season tenure with the St. Louis Cardinals. After Los Angeles Dodgers manager Walter Alston declined to select Hrabosky for the National League All-Star team, the Cardinals front office responded with a special recognition day for Hrabosky when the Dodgers came to St. Louis […]
The year 1962 represented a solid start for Red Sox catcher Bob Tillman. He began his nine-year major-league career with a home run in his first at-bat. The following month, on June 26, Tillman caught a no-hitter thrown by Earl Wilson – a game in which Wilson himself provided the winning run with a third-inning […]
The Pittsburgh Pirates suffered through a miserable 1955 season, and entered the final weekend hosting the NL-leading Brooklyn Dodgers. Back in April, Pittsburgh GM Branch Rickey was optimistic heading into the season opener, citing outfield and pitching improvements, with third base as his major concern: “This 1955 club will be the best Pittsburgh has had […]
“Never was Paige more tantalizing,” mused the St. Louis Post-Dispatch about 45-year-old “Old Satch’s” remarkable 12-inning shutout of the Detroit Tigers. “[He] wins games [and] entertains in the process. He whirled his arm twice in a full windup; sometimes just once. His slow ball … seemed to hang in the air, as though manipulated by […]
The Philadelphia Phillies were 4-9 when manager Nick Leyva was fired early in the 1991 season.1 They lost three of their first five games under new manager Jim Fregosi2 and were in fifth place in the National League East Division heading into the third game of a four-game series with the San Diego Padres on […]
The middle of August is often called the “dog days” of summer and of the baseball season. It can be hard to generate interest or excitement because the season has been going for more than four months but late-season pennant races have not yet gotten red-hot. The Chicago Cubs found a way by scoring a […]
A crowd heads toward Braves Field. The ticket and administration building (shown at left) still stands and today serves as the headquarters for the Boston University police. Note the trolley tracks in the foreground, indicating the path of transit vehicles exiting from within the ballpark itself. (NATIONAL BASEBALL HALL OF FAME LIBRARY) Introduction Braves […]