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Miguel González enjoyed a long and prolific career as a major-league catcher and coach, and along with Adolfo Luque is considered to be one of the two true patriarchs of baseball in Cuba, where he was a player, manager, and owner in the Cuban League from 1910 through 1960. He was a coach on the […]

Bob Watson of the Houston Astros touches home plate to score what was widely reported as the 1 millionth run in Major League Baseball history on May 4, 1975. (COURTESY OF THE HOUSTON ASTROS)   Like many youngsters growing up in urban America in the 1950s, Bob Watson’s first at bat was in a game […]

This outfielder was the first member of the Lumbee people of Robeson County, North Carolina, to play in the majors. Throughout his playing days, Gene Locklear’s skill as an artist also got attention. “They are both individual things, and you have to have talent. You can’t just have desire,” Locklear said in 2005.1 One of […]

Shortstop Humberto “Chico” Fernández played the game with flair. It was a flair that endeared him to fans and fellow players, but often saw him at odds with his many managers. He was a daring, some would say reckless, baserunner. Playing for the Detroit Tigers, he showed that special flair in the second game of […]

Rookie sensation Willie “Bubber” Hubert hurled the final pitch of the 1939 Negro National League championship, completing a four-out save for the victorious Baltimore Elite Giants over the Homestead Grays. Hubert, plucked into the NNL from the barnstorming Miami Ethiopians Clowns a year earlier, became a frontline starter for the Elite Giants the next season […]

4,256. 755. 5,714. 511. .366. As baseball has often been described as a game of numbers, fans, reporters, and students of the game would most certainly recognize the preceding list of significant digits. These were the career accomplishments forever linked to the respective immortals Pete Rose, Hank Aaron, Nolan Ryan, Cy Young, and Ty Cobb. To that list, another […]

Given future Hall of Famer Ray Schalk’s mastery of the catcher’s position with the Chicago White Sox for nearly two decades, Byrd Lynn had little chance to land the starting job during his short major-league career. His prospects likely became even slimmer once the 1919 Black Sox Scandal episode went public. Although no evidence has […]

Clarence Bruce belongs to the majority of Negro League players who toiled in relative obscurity and whose stories can never be told in their entirety. Though the Negro Leagues became a subject for research in the late 1980s, the focus tended to be on the superstars who already had gained belated induction into National Baseball […]

Hitting for average and power and stealing bases with aplomb, the diminutive infielder was the star of the Castlemont High School baseball team in Oakland, California. Major-league scouts were well aware of the quality of play in the East Bay. Among alumni of Oakland schools were such recent luminaries as Frank Robinson, Vada Pinson, and […]

The heir to Moe Drabowsky, Tug McGraw, and Roger McDowell, Turk Wendell kept the tradition of lovable zany relievers alive. Wendell had a unique litany of on-field antics, plus a trademark necklace of animal teeth and claws – from beasts he’d hunted himself. “Turkey spurs too,” said the avid outdoorsman, “but no shark teeth.” Yet […]

“Saul was a great man and one of my best friends. He was a pretty good player, quite a lady’s man, and one of the greatest people I ever met in my life. He was a good hitter and a good glove man. If things were like they are today, he would have played in […]

Shortly after his birth, Fred Lee Valentine’s aunt dubbed him “Squeaky” for the noises he made as a toddler. Since he was too young to argue with her about the name, it stuck and remained with him through high school and college and even into his pro career. It bespeaks the constancy of the man, […]

It took 72 years for the first Black man to play for the Cincinnati Reds. The second one arrived merely minutes after the first. The franchise, one of the National League’s founding clubs, has a complicated record on racial matters. Despite being very early to appreciate the quality of white Cuban players — Armando Marsans, […]

Bill Killefer began his 48-year career in Organized Baseball in 1907 as an unlikely professional, weighing only 125 pounds when he played with Jackson of the Southern Michigan League. According to his brother Wade, “the bats he used were almost as big as he was.” It would be years before he grew to be 5’10 […]

In 1960, Tony Curry became the third man from the Bahamas to play big-league baseball. He followed his close friend André Rodgers (preceding them was Negro Leaguer Ormond Sampson). Curry got just one full season and bits of two others in the majors, but he joined Rodgers in inspiring many young Bahamians. Throughout his life, […]

Harry Simpson first saw life as a child in the segregated South. He went on to be one of the first black players to break the color line. Born in Atlanta, Georgia on December 3, 1925, (many accounts list his birth year as 1923 or 1924), Harry was the fourth child of Frank and Maggie […]

This article appears in SABR’s “Pride of Smoketown: The 1935 Pittsburgh Crawfords” (2020), edited by Frederick C. Bush and Bill Nowlin.   Baseball spring training had a long run in Hot Springs, Arkansas, from 1886, when the Chicago White Stockings came to town, to 1955, when the Detroit Stars prepared there for their season. Within […]

This article was originally published in the December 2024 edition of the SABR Black Sox Scandal Committee Newsletter.   Judge Hugo M. Friend presided over the Black Sox trial during the summer of 1921, less than a year after he was tabbed to fill a temporary vacancy on the Cook County circuit court bench. (Photo: […]

While volumes have been written on Arnold Rothstein — who was NOT indicted — and on the Eastern-based gamblers involved in the 1919 World Series fix, historians have largely ignored the Midwestern-based gamblers who WERE indicted. Early reports on the Black Sox grand jury findings included the names of brothers Benjamin and Louis Levi, who […]

It was a groundbreaking event in White major-league baseball’s southernmost city when the Negro National League St. Louis Giants engaged the St. Louis Cardinals in the first game of a barnstorming exhibition series at Sportsman’s Park on October 3, 1921. The monumental series occurred just four years after Phil Ball, owner of the ballpark and […]

Professional baseball leagues began in 1871 with the founding of the National Association, which many consider the first major league. Its demise in 1875 opened the door to the National League, and minor leagues then followed. Leagues rose and crumbled in those early days, franchises came and went (or switched home cities), but one thing […]

After the full 162-game schedule had been played, the Colorado Rockies and San Diego Padres were tied for second place in the National League West at 89-73. That was better than any other wild-card contender, so a 163rd-game tiebreaker was required to determine the wild-card team. On both September 29 and 30, the Padres had […]

A full-page ad in the August 6, 1951, issue of the Corning (New York) Evening Leader promoted an event “Important to All Local Baseball Enthusiasts.”1 Hall of Famer Connie Mack, legendary president of the Philadelphia A’s and recently retired after 50 seasons as their manager,2 was coming to the small city in New York’s Southern […]

In the waning days of December 1873, a small group of National Association executives known as the Championship Committee voted to award that season’s pennant to the Boston Red Stockings in a contentious 2-to-1 decision.1 The deciding vote was cast by Elias Hicks Hayhurst, a representative of the Philadelphia Athletics. In siding with fellow committeeman […]