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The 1994 major-league baseball season remains infamous for the players’ strike that began on August 12 and resulted in the cancellation of the remainder of the regular season and the postseason. At the time of the strike, Matt Williams of the San Francisco Giants was on a pace to match Roger Maris’ single-season home run […]

Johnny Gray, a 6-foot-4, 220-pound right-hander, pitched without much success for four major-league teams between 1954 and 1958. His finest hour came July 30, 1957;1 in his first game with the Cleveland Indians and his first major-league appearance in nearly two years, Gray blanked the Baltimore Orioles on three hits, winning 6-0. Gray had joined […]

The reigning two-time world champion Yankees were mired in fourth place, 15½ games behind Baltimore, as they came to Fenway Park to face the Red Sox on September 12. The Sox were in third place, 13½ games behind the first-place Orioles. Both teams appeared to be going nowhere; their seasons were due to end, as […]

Chicago’s Comiskey Park, built in the heyday of the first wave of steel and concrete ballparks and opened in 1910, hosted its share of iconic baseball moments. A World Series championship in 1917 was followed by the infamous Black Sox Scandal two years later. It was the site of the first All-Star Game in 1933 […]

For two days in September 1921, four pitchers on two teams had no idea how to get Cleveland’s Elmer Smith out. Over the span of three games, beginning on Sunday September 4, the 28-year-old outfielder from Milan, Ohio,1 rapped out a record seven consecutive extra-base hits — four home runs and three doubles — while […]

The Syracuse Stars and Toledo Maumees both spent exactly one season in the major leagues – 1890. Manager Charlie Morton steered the Maumees1 – named after the river flowing into Toledo – to a 68-64 record, fourth-best in the American Association, while the Stars, guided by George Frazier, finished the season in seventh place with […]

Press previews of the opening game of the 1968 World Series understandably focused on the two starting pitchers.1 In what by midseason had been called the “year of the pitcher,”2 Detroit’s Denny McLain finished with a 31-6 record to become the first 30-game winner in 34 years,3 while Bob Gibson of the St. Louis Cardinals […]

The San Diego Padres hosted the Cincinnati Reds in a National League West Division game two weeks before the 1993 All-Star Break. Geoff Hobson of the Cincinnati Enquirer characterized the contest with, “Jose Rijo can’t catch a break, Barry Larkin can’t catch a ball out of his time zone, and the Reds still can’t catch […]

“Yes, Herrmann Day is a go in Chicago. The [Cincinnati] Blaine Club will be the guest of the Chicago American League team during the National Republican Convention, and I know it will be a joyous occasion for the boys. I do not see where there can be any harm in accepting this courtesy from our […]

Jacob deGrom’s pitching made him one of the leading contenders for the 2018 Cy Young Award. He was one of the few bright spots on a Mets team that had unraveled after starting the season with a 12-2 record. DeGrom’s 7-7 record did not reflect his feats from the mound. They were the result of […]

The 1943 World Series was a rematch of 1942’s fall classic, with the St. Louis Cardinals and the New York Yankees topping their respective leagues. However, in 1942, the first two games were played in St. Louis and the next three were played in New York. In 1943 the first three games were played in […]

Esteban “Steve” Bellán was the first Latin-born player in professional baseball. While Roberto Clemente, Tony Perez, David Ortiz, and Mariano Rivera, among others, are household names and heroes to both Hispanic and non-Hispanic baseball fans in the early years of the 21st century, the name of Steve Bellán is mostly unrecognized. The half-Irish, Cuban-born player […]

In 1977 the original Star Wars hit theaters; Jimmy Carter was sworn in as president; the first Apple II computers went on sale; and New York City lost power and was blacked out for 25 hours. But what most Oakland A’s fans of a certain age remember about that year — an otherwise dismal time […]

Clyde Sukeforth was a backup catcher who played parts of ten seasons in the Major Leagues for the Cincinnati Reds and Brooklyn Dodgers. Over those ten seasons, Sukeforth hit .264 with only two home runs and had ninety-six runs batted in. Although his accomplishments as a player were minimal, Sukeforth’s subsequent years as a minor-league […]

During the winter of 1935-1936 Connie Mack completed the destruction of his last winning dynasty. Since capturing his third straight pennant in 1931, Mack had traded or sold six of his regular position players and his top three pitchers to raise the cash he needed to keep his Philadelphia Athletics afloat during the Depression. The […]

In June 1947, three months before his husky right-handed hurler delivered the fifth no-hitter in franchise history, Philadelphia Athletics manager Connie Mack forecast the expected stardom of 26-year-old Bill McCahan. “[Y]ou will see another great pitcher in this boy,” Mack said. “Let me make a prediction. He will be another [Spud] Chandler.”1 Being compared to […]

He was not the first man to be recognized as a threat to break Babe Ruth’s record of 60 home runs in a season, but Frank Howard was surely one of the first to draw such attention while still in the minor leagues, or even in college. This gentle, humble man would be no match […]

Luke Stuart was a long-time minor league infielder who, in the course of a brief three-game major league sojourn in 1921 with the St. Louis Browns, established an American League feat that went unrecognized for more than seven decades. Through the efforts of SABR’s Records Committee in the mid-1990s, Stuart ascended from total obscurity to […]

Signed as a lanky, 16-year-old amateur free agent by the Detroit Tigers in December 1992, Juan Encarnación was the embodiment of a five-tool, can’t miss prospect. He could hit for average and power, run, play any of the three outfield positions with above-average range, and throw. He was blessed with all the tools for success. […]

The major league resume of right-handed pitcher-utilityman Dick Cogan is not particularly eye-catching, consisting of three brief and unimpressive stints with late-19th century National League clubs. But in his hometown of Paterson, New Jersey, Cogan (pronounced as if spelled Coogan)1 was a prominent figure, a force on the local athletic and political landscapes for decades. […]

On July 7, 1910, in New Bedford, Massachusetts, the hometown New Bedford Whalers squared off against the Lowell Tigers in a Class B New England League game. On the mound for the Whalers was 20-year-old Tommy Griffith who, in his second professional season, was on his way to winning 19 games for the pennant-winning New […]

Karl Kolseth owed his big-league career to two-way talent and a stroke of luck. When his pitching arm wore out, he had enough pop in his bat to reinvent himself as a slugging first baseman. Also, he was a star amateur player in Baltimore in 1915, when the Federal League’s Terrapins threw their doors open […]

In the American criminal justice system, and under the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights, a person accused of a crime is considered innocent until proved guilty. But often the mere fact that he is accused can deprive him of his chosen profession and forever alter his life. So it was with Jesse Levis. A […]

On February 2, 1958, in Hamilton, Ohio, Mrs. Marian H. Tabler introduced newborn Patrick to his dad, siblings, and the world. Patrick was born into a family of German heritage on both paternal and maternal sides. Sometime after the families were connected, it was discovered that, in fact, both sides immigrated from Alsace-Lorraine, a predominantly […]