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While we take radio for granted today, when it came onto the scene in 1920, it was considered a marvel. It was the first mass medium that brought entertainment and information into people’s homes in real time. Most baseball fans were delighted. There were a few games on the air as early as 1921 (including […]

Hard-throwing Dazzy Vance was in agony. Brooklyn sportswriter Thomas W. Meany reported that Vance suffered from serious inflammation in his right shoulder caused by warming up too quickly six days earlier against the Pittsburgh Pirates.1 According to Robins beat reporter Thomas S. Rice, Vance’s right arm was “blue from the rupturing of a blood vessel,” […]

The Cincinnati Reds arrived in New York for a three-game series on June 1, 1904, with a 26-12 record, only percentage points behind the Giants, who stood atop the National League at 25-11. The Reds kicked away the opener 2-1 the next day, with a couple of errors in the eighth. In the second game, […]

“You could see the skyline without the towers. You could see the smoke. Eerie. An eerie feeling,” — Mark Johnson on flying past Manhattan en route to Pittsburgh on September 161   On the morning of September 11, 2001, the early morning calm in western Pennsylvania was shattered when an airplane crashed into the countryside […]

July in Chicago can feel like a sweltering, steamy greenhouse, with occasional respite from the heat offered only by stray gusts of cooler air off Lake Michigan. July 14, 1914, by contrast, was a far more pleasant day. By 3 P.M. the temperature sat in the low 80s, and clear, sunny skies were the backdrop […]

Ninth-inning home runs by Pedro Alvarez and Starling Marte rallied the struggling Pittsburgh Pirates to a 6-5 win over the Toronto Blue Jays, overcoming a night of missed connections and providing the first ripple of Pittsburgh’s surge toward a repeat postseason appearance. Rising up from two dismal decades,1 the 2013 Pirates notched the franchise’s first […]

Nearing the midway point of the 1900 season, Noodles Hahn made history by shutting out one of baseball’s most potent offenses without allowing a base hit. Hahn, a 5-foot-9, 160-pound left-hander with the Cincinnati Reds, blanked the Philadelphia Phillies on July 12, prompting the Cincinnati Enquirer to report, “No-hit games have been pitched before, but […]

“You kept looking in right field, and he wasn’t there,” said Pittsburgh Pirates manager Bill Virdon on Opening Day in 1973. “I kept looking out there.”1 It was the dawn of a new era for the Pirates. Immensely popular Roberto Clemente had died about three months earlier, on New Year’s Eve, when his plane crashed off the coast of […]

Ted Wills lived in 2009 at the end of a quiet cul-de-sac in a planned community on the outskirts of Clovis, California, near Fresno in the central park of the state. His house overlooks seasonal wetlands protected by the Department of Reclamation, a setting that suggests a lifelong love of hunting and fishing. Wills’s cheerful greeting at […]

Tom Butts stood 5-feet-8 and weighed just 142 pounds, but his size was not the reason he acquired the nickname Pee Wee. Rather, the strong-armed shortstop’s defensive prowess reminded observers of his White contemporary, Pee Wee Reese.1 “I’d compare Butts with Reese or [Phil] Rizzuto or anyone I’ve seen in the big leagues,” opined Roy […]

“How good was Stan Musial? He was good enough to take your breath away.” – Vin Scully1   Twenty-eight miles south of Pittsburgh, roughly along the Monongahela River (Western Pennsylvanians call it the Mon and the Mon Valley) lies the town of Donora. Donora and the surrounding communities were once a fairly thriving multi-ethnic area […]

Estalella was a pudgy, happy-go-lucky sort of a guy who struck people the right way.” — Ossie Bluege1   The 12th player among those in Dave Frishberg’s “Van Lingle Mungo” lyrics lineup is Roberto Estalella, and he is united by rhyme with Danny Gardella, the song’s sixth man.2 There may not have been anything intentional […]

Juan Pizarro was a talented, durable Puerto Rican pitcher. The lefty pitched in all or part of 18 major-league seasons, starting as a rookie with the 1957 Milwaukee Braves. The Braves rushed him to the big club after one eye-opening season in Class A, yet their very deep pitching staff limited Pizarro’s opportunities. He did […]

During Harry Grabiner’s four-decade-long tenure as a front-office official with the Chicago White Sox, he saw the team experience its highest highs and lowest lows. Beginning his career as a scorecard salesman in 1905 and serving for many years as the team’s secretary and vice president, Grabiner was involved with the White Sox’ first two […]

It is often the fate of those who are the second to complete a remarkable feat to be relegated to the dust bin of history. Any school child can tell you that Ferdinand Magellan was the first explorer to circumnavigate the world. But can you name the second? Most Americans know that Alan Shepard was […]

Many major leaguers are more remembered for their accomplishments in the minors. Ron Necciai’s 27 strikeouts in a minor-league game outshone his lackluster performance with the Pittsburgh Pirates. Ox Eckhardt’s lifetime minor-league average of .367 overshadowed two brief trials in the majors. And Leo Kiely’s achievement of winning 20 games in relief during a season […]

Like the real estate business that he would later enter, success and failure during the career of late-19th century pitcher George Haddock was often a matter of location. When on the roster of bad clubs, Haddock regularly tasted defeat, losing a staggering 72 games over his first three full professional seasons. Yet once assigned to […]

In the late 1930s, Monty Stratton of the Chicago White Sox was one of the best and most praised pitchers in major-league baseball and was about to enter the prime of his career. “Monty Stratton looks as if he is going to furnish many a page in baseball history before he gives up,” Philadelphia sportswriter […]

Frank Albert “Fay” Young was one of the most influential sportswriters in the Black press, during a career that spanned five decades. Modern scholars have praised him for his thorough coverage of Negro Leagues baseball,1 as well as for reporting on athletic events at historically Black colleges.2 Writing at a time when few Black newspapers […]

“His rise from the ‘bushes’ to the big show has been phenomenal,” gushed one report about Big Bill Steele.1 Two years removed from the sandlots, Steele jumped from a Class B league to the majors, debuting with the St. Louis Cardinals as a September call-up in 1910. That fall the spitballer won his first three […]

John “Jack” Britton played professional baseball in four countries — the United States, Mexico, Canada, and Japan. He was even a pioneer in Japan, joining pitcher Jimmie Newberry as the first two African American ballplayers on a Japanese team. But he never had the opportunity to play in the major leagues. Britton played in the […]

Ebbets Field has been gone for more than half a century, but the place still has a remarkable grip on our consciousness. At least three books have been devoted to the lovable old ballpark in Crown Heights.1 Yet even these in-depth works don’t shine much light on what happened after the Dodgers left Brooklyn. They […]