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In 1976, Dennis Martínez became the first Nicaraguan to play in the big leagues – and he remains by far the most successful. Indeed, his 245 major-league wins stood for more than 20 years as the most by any Latino pitcher, two ahead of Juan Marichal. (Bartolo Colón finally broke that record in August 2018.) […]

During his late 19th-century heyday, right-handed pitcher Ad Gumbert was regarded as one of the game’s most well-rounded performers. That status was founded on 123 major league victories led by two seasons of 20-plus wins; fielding skills that made him an outfield option; and a formidable bat with extra-base power. Gumbert was just 29 years […]

Omar Linares is widely considered the best third baseman found anywhere in the world outside of the U.S. major leagues during much of the 1980s and 1990s. What Josh Gibson, Buck Leonard or Satchel Paige may have been to the first half of the 20th Century (potential national sporting icons barred from the big-league stage […]

In the first round of the June 1973 amateur draft, the Cleveland Indians selected 18-year-old high-school slugger Glenn Tufts as the fifth overall pick, immediately after Milwaukee selected Robin Yount as the third pick and San Diego selected Dave Winfield as the fourth pick.1 While Yount and Winfield both went on to have Hall of […]

Three times, Nick Esasky hit 20 or more home runs in the major leagues – in 1985, 1987, and 1989. His peak season came at age 29 with the 1989 Boston Red Sox, when he played first base most of the season and hit 30 homers while driving in 107 runs, leading the ballclub in […]

The answer to that long-fought debate as to which baseball player was the best violinist of all time is Sonny Senerchia, who appeared in 29 games with the 1952 Pittsburgh Pirates. Perhaps his toughest competition was Eddie Basinski, a violinist with the Buffalo Symphony Orchestra, who played with the Pirates in 1947.1 Emanuel Robert Senerchia […]

Joe Quinn’s 17 seasons between 1884 and 1901 marked the first appearance by an Australian in major league baseball. For 102 years, Quinn was the only player from “Down Under” to feature at the top level of American pro ball, and he remains the only Australian to manage in the major leagues. He played on […]

Jim Dyck’s major-league career was relatively short and undistinguished. It spanned six years, four of which involved stints in the minors, only one season with more than 400 at-bats and a mediocre .246 average. In his brief stint with the 1954 Indians, Dyck had only two plate appearances. Yet during his career Dyck helped set […]

Rodney McCray is known as “Crash” for the time he made his mark and then some on an outfield wall in the minor leagues. But though his major-league time was brief and he totaled only three hits at the top level, McCray left a positive impression on the game and baseball did likewise to him. […]

A hard-throwing right-hander and ball-crushing left-handed slugger, Erv Brame was a genuine double-threat who rode those skills from humble beginnings in rural Tennessee to the major leagues. In parts of five seasons, all with the Pittsburgh Pirates, he batted .306 and also won 52 games, leading the NL with 22 completes games in 1930. Here’s […]

He was the Montreal Expos’ Jim of all trades. As general manager, manager, vice president, scouting director, even broadcaster, Jim Fanning held almost every position a ball club could have, primarily for the Expos, but for the Atlanta/Milwaukee Braves, Colorado Rockies and Toronto Blue Jays as well. This baseball Renaissance man was an only child […]

Pitcher Gene Stechschulte made 116 appearances for the St. Louis Cardinals from 2000 to 2002, all in relief. In fact, he started just once in his entire professional career, which lasted from 1996 through 2002, plus brief stints in the independent Atlantic League in 2004 and 2005. As described by The Sporting News in 2002, […]

The scene has been played out in every backyard, schoolyard, and makeshift ball diamond across the country. If not on a ball field, then the scene certainly unfolded in a child’s dreams. Hit a game-winning home run in the World Series. Better yet, make it Game Seven, bases loaded, full count, a packed stadium. Then […]

During a fifteen-year major-league career that spanned the Deadball and Lively Ball Eras, Jack Fournier was one of the premier power hitters in baseball. His batting accomplishments were impressive: While compiling a lifetime .313 batting average, he led the National League in home runs once; led the American League in slugging percentage once; hit three […]

In the first years of the 20th century, almost anyone with the given names Frederick Nicholas had a good chance to be nicknamed “Fritz,” and so it was with Fritz Coumbe, though his ancestry was British rather than Teutonic. But most of the papers of the day called him Fred. Fred’s father George Coumbe had […]

The 13-year professional baseball career of Bill Pleis almost ended before it even got started. Pleis, a St. Louis native, was signed after a tryout camp in late August of 1955, several weeks after his 18th birthday and several months after graduating from Kirkwood High School. Scout Danny Menendez signed the left-handed pitcher to a […]

Vaughan Pallmore “Bing” Devine, a soft-spoken, modest man, spent more than a quarter-century as a baseball executive and played a major role in building four National League champions and three World Series winners. Devine left his biggest mark as the general manager of the St. Louis Cardinals, whose owner fired him in 1964 just as […]

Albert William Kaline was born December 19, 1934, to Nicholas and Naomi Kaline in Baltimore. His father, a broom maker by trade, was a semipro baseball player, and began working with young Al to develop a pitcher’s arm. Nicholas would squat down, while his son threw a variety of pitches. By the time he was […]

“The best birthday present I ever got.” – Ralph Mauriello, September 6, 19581 Ralph Mauriello had been born on August 25, 1934, in Brooklyn, New York, and less than two weeks after his 24th birthday, after six minor-league seasons, he joined the Los Angeles Dodgers. Within two weeks of joining the club, he had his […]

Over the final six weeks of the 1982 season, right-hander Brian Denman started nine games for the Boston Red Sox. The last of the nine was a six-hit shutout of the New York Yankees. They were the only nine times he appeared in the majors. He’d worked four-plus seasons in the minor leagues before getting […]

“I know what everyone knows: Cuba is the worst place on the globe to be an athlete today. But I’m sure I know something even stranger. It is also the best.” — S.L. Price, Pitching Around Fidel   Cuban “defectors” have been one of the biggest MLB stories of the early twenty-first century and the […]

Going into the Saturday night Double-A Eastern League game in Akron, the hometown Aeros, with a league-best record of 49-31, were in first place in the league’s Southern Division, 3½ games ahead of the Harrisburg Senators. In stark contrast, with the league’s worst record at 30-48, the Reading Phillies occupied last place in the Southern […]

If you were listening carefully, you might have picked up on it — a subtle, perhaps unconscious acknowledgement that the curtain was falling. As Sportsman’s Park public-address announcer George Carson introduced the home team, he left something out. For the first time all season he didn’t refer to them as the “World Champion Cardinals.”1The New […]

The Milwaukee Brewers’ last home game in 2000 was played on Thursday, September 28, against the Cincinnati Reds. A day contest, it featured two teams well out of any postseason consideration. Despite the seeming lack of attraction, 56,324 people attended. It was the largest regular-season crowd in County Stadium’s history. Fans were there not just […]