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Editor’s note: This article was selected as a winner of the 2014 McFarland-SABR Baseball Research Award.   The Montreal Expos played 36 seasons (1969-2004). For the last 28, their home was Olympic Stadium – a cavernous concrete edifice built for the 1976 Summer Olympic Games. From the outset, “The Big O” was notorious: hailed as […]

In 1888, Athletic Park replaced the Wright Street Grounds as Milwaukee’s primary baseball park. Not only did Athletic Park enjoy two separate lives, but it housed a major league team (1891), a Negro National League club (1923), and an All-American Girls Professional Baseball League team (1944). During its second term, Athletic Park, most often remembered by Milwaukeeans […]

Most famous for his wildly successful tenure in the New York Yankees front office from 1920 through 1945, Ed Barrow left his mark on the Deadball Era as well. Though he never played a game of professional baseball, the ubiquitous Barrow was a key participant in the careers of countless players and a major actor […]

“He was the greatest manager I ever played for, perhaps the greatest manager who ever lived, and that includes managers in the big leagues. I’ve never played for a guy who could get more out of every ballplayer than he could. He knew how to communicate with everybody and to treat every player as an […]

Horacio “Rabbit” Martínez (1912-1992) was the prototype for the long line of shortstops from the Dominican Republic: slick-fielding, quick, and a threat on the basepaths. He had an outstanding career in the Negro Leagues with the New York Cubans (1935-36, 1939-47). Though professional ball was largely absent in his homeland while Martínez was active, he […]

Major leaguers have been blessed (or cursed) with colorful nicknames, such as “Pudge,” “Prince Hal,” “Pops,” “Pie,” “Pee Wee,” “Putt Putt,” and those are just some of the ones starting with the letter “P.” To that list, add Tomás “Planchardón” Quiñones, a Puerto Rican right-handed pitcher whose four games in 1947 with the Cincinnati-Indianapolis Clowns […]

“And in no field of American endeavor is invention more rampant than in baseball, whose whole history is a lie from beginning to end. … The game’s epic feats and revered figures … all of it is bunk, tossed up with a wink and a nudge.” — John Thorn, Baseball in the Garden of Eden […]

A light-hitting, rifle-armed shortstop who played a key role in baseball’s biggest scandal, Swede Risberg was a rising young player in the American League when he was banned from the game at age 25. The youngest member of the Black Sox, he always found his home state of California and the Pacific Coast League preferable […]

Before Minnie Miñoso’s cup of coffee with the Indians in 1949, another Black Cuban was the toast of Cleveland. Although Avelino Cañizares’s story is not as well-known as the Cuban Comet’s, Cañizares led the city to a coveted championship. But then, in a flash, the “Cuban Wonder” was gone. Avelino Cañizares Martínez was born on […]

Pittsburgh’s historic Ammon Field was renamed Josh Gibson Field in 2008 to honor the Baseball Hall of Famer who started his semipro career there in 1928. Harold “Hooks” Tinker, the Ammon Field regular who signed Gibson while player-manager of the Pittsburgh Crawfords, once spoke very fondly of a mutual teammate, middle infielder Charlie Hughes: The […]

“Charleston not only has the speed of a Carey, the arm of a Meusel, the brains of a McGraw and the hitting ability of a Hornsby, but he is a singer of rare ability, a writer of parts, a billiard player of more than ordinary skill and a happily married man. Charleston is a rare […]

Of the Jefferson brothers who briefly constituted one of the most formidable one-two punches in any Negro League pitching rotation, Willie “Bill” Jefferson was the more accomplished. Yet unlike his brother, Willie was a late bloomer, not reaching his prime until he was approaching his 40s. Also unlike his brother, who had a well-documented and […]

Racial discrimination did not miraculously disappear in 1863 with the Emancipation Proclamation, nor did it cease with Civil War’s end in 1865. However, even as race relations remain a topic in 2011, the process for dealing with race faced an evolution. Speaking to this evolution, Jerry Malloy, in his Introduction to Sol White’s History of […]

In the summer of 1946, Pittsburgh Courier columnist Wendell Smith gave Newark Eagles manager Biz Mackey all the credit for molding “together the best all-around pitching staff in Negro baseball.”1 Assembling talent is one thing, using it wisely and coping with obstacles that arise is a totally different talent. Mackey’s ace, Leon Day, opened the […]

A talented African-American athlete and a fleet-footed outfielder who raced through the minor leagues with flattering comparisons to Willie Mays and Jackie Robinson, Ted Savage had the unique distinction of having to seek legal assistance in confronting one major-league team in order to stay with the franchise that ultimately promoted him to the big leagues […]

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 […]

Future Hall of Famer Lefty Grove was coming off a 1928 season with Connie Mack’s Philadelphia Athletics in which he was 24-8, leading the American League in victories. He had a 2.58 earned-run average and struck out a league-leading 183 batters. His 2.86 strikeouts-to-walks ratio led the major leagues. He was the starting pitcher for […]

“Things just kept happening, unexpected things, rare things, exciting things, dramatic things,” wrote John Wilson of the Houston Chronicle after the Astros doubleheader split with the visiting San Diego Padres that involved everything from dramatic home runs, controversial plays at home plate, and game-interrupting disputes to stellar defensive plays and even occasionally good pitching.1 “It […]

Baseball takes on an extended mythology when accompanied by a subplot of conflict, whether national, local, or personal. The game parallels our image of the human experience, of the randomness of life no matter how much we try to control or improve it. Perhaps this is due to its democratic nature, each player getting a […]

There had been a Negro Leagues all-star game since September 10, 1933, when the first one was played at Chicago’s Comiskey Park. Often called the East-West Classic, or the Dream Game,1 by the early 1940s it attracted as many as 51,000 fans. Yet no matter how high the attendance figures were, the White-owned newspapers, including […]

The crowd – estimated at 20,000 by the Kansas City Sun – packed the stands on August 1, 1920, and spilled onto the playing field of Kansas City’s Association Park. Fans had flocked to the ballpark to witness the hometown Kansas City Monarchs and their new pitching sensation, Bullet Rogan,1 challenge Rube Foster’s Chicago American […]

The Dodgers and Pirates broke off what New York Daily News sportswriter Dick Young called their “weird affair”1 at just before midnight on June 24, 1950. Brooklyn led, 19-12. A report from the Associated Press boasted, “The crowd of 22,010 was treated to one of the wildest games in Ebbets Field history.”2 And it wasn’t […]

After winning the 1919 World Series, the Cincinnati Reds had slipped to a third-place finish in 1920. One of the moves the team made to bolster its hopes for 1921 was the acquisition of 29-year-old left-hander Eppa Rixey from the Philadelphia Phillies in a November 1920 trade for right-hander Jimmy Ring and right fielder Greasy […]

The Washington Senators line up on the field for Opening Day festivities, April 5, 1971, at Robert F. Kennedy Stadium in Washington, D.C. (Library of Congress, U.S. News & World Report Magazine Photograph Collection.)   Related link: Click here to read Part I of the Washington Senators team ownership history, on the original team from […]