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Things weren’t looking that good for the Red Sox heading into the bottom of the ninth. It was the home opener of the 1952 season at Boston’s Fenway Park. Jimmy Dykes and his Philadelphia Athletics held a 4-1 lead. Right-hander Bob Hooper was dealing. He’d allowed seven scattered hits and walked three, but the Red […]

The 1911 season began well for the Detroit Tigers. By May 19 they already had two six-game winning streaks and a nine-game winning streak, and their 27-5 record was 9½ games ahead of the second-place Chicago White Sox. They cooled off with two losses to the defending World Series champion Philadelphia Athletics and another loss […]

In late June of 1978 baseball historian Eugene Converse Murdock traveled to Albany, Oregon, to interview an old-time baseball player named Wes Schulmerich. During his chat with Schulmerich, the retired player asked Murdock if he was going to meet with any other baseball retirees from Oregon. Wes reminded the historian that his old friend and […]

The New York Giants played their first game on May 1, 1883, and their last game on September 29, 1957. On August 19, 1957, Horace Stoneham, the Giants owner since 1936, announced that the team would move to San Francisco for the 1958 season. Why leave New York after 75 seasons? “Lack of attendance,” he […]

Hall of Famer Don Drysdale won 209 games and hit 154 batters. He won the Cy Young Award in 1962. (SABR-Rucker Archive)   Los Angeles Dodgers pitcher Don Drysdale was known to inflict fear in batters. At 6-feet-5-inches tall, he was intimidating on the mound, unafraid to plunk a batter with one of his fastballs. […]

By 1907, Opening Day was one of the grand sporting and social events of the year in Cincinnati. It was a festival of music and parades, a day of noisy fun and high fashion, an occasion to skip school or knock off business and go to the ballpark, where the cream of Cincinnati society and […]

Phillies fans who sat down for an early-season contest against the visiting New York Giants saw that much had changed since their team’s previous, disastrous campaign. An offseason trade with the St. Louis Browns brought first baseman Klondike Douglass and shortstop Monte Cross. Several rookies, including outfielder Elmer Flick and pitcher Wiley Piatt, sat on […]

On the morning of Tuesday, June 24, 1947, two titans of sport made their final preparations before doing battle that evening. Linked not only by their race, but by the last name Robinson, Sugar Ray would fight in the ring while Jackie would fight on the diamond. Walker Smith Jr., better known as Sugar Ray […]

When a franchise endures two consecutive decades of sub-.500 seasons there are bound to be some close calls to breaking the cycle over the ignominious years (1997 and 2012, when Pittsburgh finished 79-83), and then there are seasons that are outright catastrophes (like 2001 and 2009, when they finished 62-100 and 62-99). The Pirates’ 2009 […]

The St. Louis Cardinals teams that won back-to-back National League pennants in 1967 and 1968 included four future Hall of Famers (Orlando Cepeda, Lou Brock, Steve Carlton, and Bob Gibson), not to mention household names like Roger Maris, Tim McCarver, and Curt Flood. Therefore, it easy to overlook the contributions of players such as Ron […]

A lifetime of baseball as a major league catcher, minor league manager, and major league coach would usually be thought of as a happy life; it was that for Larry Cox, but he unfortunately passed away at the age of 42 before he could complete his baseball journey. Larry Eugene Cox was born on September […]

Third baseman Charlie Hayes was a solid journeyman. He played for seven teams over 14 years in the majors from 1988 through 2001. He had a good glove, a strong arm, and some pop in his bat. His best offensive numbers came in 1993 with an expansion club, the Colorado Rockies. Yet the moment for […]

Without the benefit of hindsight, we can imagine that John Weldon Wyckoff thought himself lucky. Fresh from college at Bucknell and with a year of seasoning in the Tri-State League, he was called up to the big leagues in 1913, to the powerhouse Philadelphia Athletics no less, for which he pitched on two pennant winners. […]

A catcher who always seemed to be trying to win a starting spot, Barry Lyons showed occasional signs of power and a solid presence behind the plate. Described once by reporters as “quiet, conservative and even contemplative in appearance,” Lyons often found himself overlooked but still had a major-league career that spanned seven years between […]

Over his 22-year career, fleet-footed center fielder Bernard “Frenchy” Uhalt knocked out more than 3,000 hits and was elected to the Hall of Fame. His name might not be familiar to many baseball aficionados, though, since 21 of those seasons and all but 40 of his hits came in the minor leagues, and because he […]

Sammy Vick was noted as the only player to ever pinch-hit for Babe Ruth. Vick had been the regular right fielder of the Yankees in 1919, but New York had purchased Ruth from the Boston Red Sox over the winter and Vick lost his starting job. But he said he had an opportunity to pinch-hit […]

Outfielder Willie Tasby was one of the many major leaguers who graduated from Oakland’s McClymonds High School after playing for legendary coach George Powles. Robbie Henderson of probaseballscouting.com wrote, “Seventeen of Powles’ protégés made the major leagues. He coached and mentored so many athletes. I doubt any one scout coached/mentored the likes of Curt Roberts, Willie Tasby, […]

From May 6, 1992, to July 24, 1993, righty pitcher Anthony Young lost 27 consecutive decisions with the New York Mets. It was an astounding run of bad luck, since Young did not pitch that poorly — although it didn’t help that “The Worst Team Money Could Buy” was behind him. In a 2009 interview […]

If Joe Pepitone were a car, he’d be a Ferrari — powerful, Italian, and high-performance. Though his career .258 batting average may not evidence power, Pepitone placed in the American League’s top 10 in total bases twice, in RBI twice, and in home runs thrice in his 12-year major-league career (1962-1973). He also clouted seven […]

He was always Johnny Tobin in St. Louis but is listed in standard reference sources as Jack, which he was occasionally called on the road. Contemporary news coverage and players who knew him invariably called him Johnny. Tobin played his first 11 seasons in the major leagues for hometown teams – first the Federal League’s […]

With 358 major-league round-trippers, Carlos Lee is the all-time leader in home runs among players born in Panama.1 He was a career .285 hitter with a .339 on-base percentage and never struck out more than 100 times in a season. Lee had five consecutive 30-homer seasons and 11 consecutive 20-homer seasons. He also stole double-digit bases […]

John Donahue played 1,176 known minor-league games from 1914 to 1927. His only time playing in the majors saw him get into just 10 games as a right fielder for the Boston Red Sox at the tail end of their last-place 1923 season. He was one of just 22 Red Sox players, as of 2014, […]

Jay Tessmer pitched in parts of four seasons in his major-league career. Although he won only a single game, he was a member of three World Series championship teams, playing for the New York Yankees in 1998, 1999, and 2000. Appearing in 22 games during his major-league career, Tessmer pitched 23⅓ innings and finished with […]