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On a beautiful, sunny Sunday afternoon, the Colorado Rockies and San Francisco Giants finished a four-game series in front of a sellout Father’s Day crowd at Coors Field. The game-time temperature was 78 degrees, and the there was a slight wind blowing out to left field. The first 15,000 fans received a Rockies BBQ spatula […]

When would-be saboteurs tried to pull distractions on Bob Gibson, it never seemed to diminish his work. Rather, it merely poked the bear. Before pitching the seventh game of the 1967 World Series in Boston, Gibson was disturbed in his hotel room three times in the middle of the night by “mistaken” wake-up calls. And […]

Coming into this Saturday night game in St. Louis, the focus was on the Florida Marlins’ new catcher, superstar Mike Piazza, who had just joined the team in a blockbuster trade with the Los Angeles Dodgers. Afterward, however, all anyone could talk about was another slugging All-Star, St. Louis Cardinals first baseman Mark McGwire, and […]

Roberto Clemente played his entire 18-year career with the Pirates and recorded exactly 3,000 base hits, one of 32 players to reach that coveted mark as of 2021. He had a .317 batting average in 2,433 games. Clemente had four hits in 39 games and five hits in eight games, the final time on August […]

“I was a damn effective pitcher. It pains me to be remembered for one unfortunate pitch — and, unfairly, a pitch surreptitiously signaled to the hitter — as opposed to a hurler who, for a number of years, had good stuff.” — Ralph Branca1   The young Brooklyn Dodgers fan raced home from school on […]

This is a true baseball story. In 1969 two minor-league teams were supposed to play each other 28 times. Somehow they lost count and played 29. When the Elmira Pioneers beat the Waterbury Indians on August 11, 1969, the daily newspapers covering the Eastern League reported that the Pioneers had won the teams’ season series, […]

There may have been no one more surprised to find Chick Fullis playing for the St. Louis Cardinals in Game Seven of the 1934 World Series than Fullis himself. In his only start in the World Series (in Game Five), Fullis had misplayed two balls in center field that directly led to two runs in […]

Tommy Umphlett had a superb rookie year in 1953, finishing second to the Detroit Tigers’ Harvey Kuenn, in American League Rookie of the Year voting. It wasn’t close. Kuenn received 23 first-place votes and Umphlett received the other one. Umphlett drove in more runs (59 in 137 games, compared to Kuenn’s 48 RBIs in 155 […]

Ray Collins might have been on his way to the Hall of Fame but for an abrupt and mysterious end to his career after only seven seasons. In 1913-14 he won a combined 39 games for the Red Sox, and his lifetime 2.51 ERA is impressive even for his low-scoring era. Collins was a good […]

Right-handed pitcher Bill Hogg seemed destined for stardom when his 33 wins on the Pacific coast in 1904 earned him a ticket to the New York Highlanders in the American League. Two years later combined with Al Orth and Jack Chesbro to help the Highlanders climb to second place. But like so many other tragic […]

Although he was never provided the steady playing time he felt he needed to establish himself as a regular outfielder, Kevin Romine forged a career as a utility outfielder for the Boston Red Sox for six seasons. However, Romine’s lasting legacy in professional baseball may not be as a player, but as a father; both […]

It was strawberry fields forever where Kenny Rogers grew up, on a 15-acre strawberry farm in Dover, Florida, in the heart of Hillsborough County, just a bit west of Plant City, home of the annual state Strawberry Festival. Plant City was also where the Cincinnati Reds held spring training for many years, so Rogers grew […]

Mike Dorgan was the older brother of major league outfielder Jerry Dorgan, who died at an extremely young age of alcohol poisoning. Both brothers dealt with a severe alcohol problem during their playing days, but Mike eventually won the battle. Michael Cornelius Dorgan was born on October 2, 1853 to Cornelius Joseph Dorgan and Mary […]

It was a small story in a national publication, and it suggested the possibility of a baseball first. Under the headline “Brothers Constitute a Battery,” the May 28, 1914, issue of Leslie’s Illustrated Weekly wrote, “The Boston Nationals have a battery this season composed of brothers, George and Fred Tyler. It is said that this […]

Before the age of television, umpires worked in anonymity, only a handful of dominant personalities gaining widespread recognition. Among the virtually unknown arbiters is Ernest Cosmos Quigley, an outstanding and influential umpire who also was the greatest sports official in history. Indicative of how overlooked he has been is the fact that even a fairly […]

In March of 1935 Mickey Rocco boarded a train in his hometown of St. Paul, Minnesota, headed for Hot Springs, Arkansas, to start his career in professional baseball. The St. Paul Saints of the American Association had offered him a tryout and the opportunity to make the team as a 19-year-old rookie.  Sixteen years later, […]

Outfielder “Jack” Dalton had a short, but relatively successful, major-league career prior to World War I before becoming a lay preacher in his church in the 1930s and ’40s. Then, inexplicably, he went missing on July 4, 1948, and was never heard from again.1 Dalton debuted with Brooklyn, then known as the Superbas, in 1910. […]

Jordan Jankowski was a record-setting high-school power hitter in Western Pennsylvania, but a full-time turn to pitching in college opened his path to the pros. Taken by the Houston Astros in the 34th round of the June 2012 draft out of Catawba College, an NCAA Division II school in Salisbury, North Carolina, Jankowski reached the […]

When Jess Barnes was at the top of his game, the right-handed pitcher from Circleville, Kansas, held his own with the elite of his day. Named to Baseball Magazine’s All-American team following the 1919 season, Barnes shared the honor with such luminaries as Walter Johnson, Rogers Hornsby, Ty Cobb, Babe Ruth, George Sisler, and Joe […]

With the game in the balance, Lee Smith would walk ever so slowly1 from the bullpen to the mound. The 6-foot-6, 250-pound Louisianan was in his time one of the most feared relief pitchers in the game.2 In his 18 major-league seasons (1980-1997), the right-hander pitched for eight different teams, and his records are notable […]

“It’s a thankless job, this catching business,” sighed Charley Schmidt in 1908.1 The stocky Tiger was not one of the era’s more dexterous backstops, but instead demonstrated an often overlooked physical bravery in helping his team to three memorable American League pennants. Yet, more so than many of his Detroit teammates, Schmidt is better remembered […]

The baseball fortunes of hard-throwing right-hander Frank Pfeffer turned on a single event: an offseason trade in the winter of 1905. The transaction dispatched Pfeffer from a Chicago Cubs club poised on the brink of National League domination to the sad-sack Boston Beaneaters, arguably the worst NL team of the Deadball Era. Worse yet for […]

East Field as pictured in 2021.   Over the course of a month and a half in March and April 1980, East Field in Glens Falls, New York, went from an unremarkable city-owned baseball field notable mainly for its swampiness to a showcase for some of the Chicago White Sox’ top prospects.1 It happened this […]

Many minor leagues folded after Pearl Harbor. Most of the rest went under during or after the 1942 season. By 1943, the American Association, the Eastern, International and Pacific Coast leagues and the Southern Association were still operating, providing a reserve source of talent for the major leagues. Below those levels there was a problem. […]