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A bright future appeared to lie ahead for Boston Braves outfielder Max West after he became a major-league regular in 1938 at the age of 21 and was the team’s top offensive performer a year later. Following a memorable appearance in the 1940 All-Star Game, when he hit a home run to win the contest, […]

“I don’t think there’s any play in baseball that excites more than someone really making a long home run. It’s one of the two best feelings a man can have.” – Sam Horn1   The beauty of his lefty swing had scouts swooning, epitomizing lethal power. At 6-feet-5, 215 pounds2, he seemed to tower over […]

Selected in the third round of the June 1976 amateur draft, 18-year-old pitcher Rich Dubee, the 66th overall draft pick, looked forward to a successful career with the Kansas City Royals following his brilliant high-school career. However, after six years in the Royals’ minor-league system, Dubee washed out as a professional pitcher at the age […]

Family, friends, and teammates could easily have called Charles E. Brown “Charlie Brown” instead of Buster Brown. Given that he would own the worst career winning percentage (.331) for a pitcher with a minimum of 150 decisions, a name that long after his death would have recalled the perpetually defeated Peanuts comic-strip character would have […]

Luther Clifford grew up in an atypical town for the Depression-era United States, a suburban melting pot largely free from racial tensions. What’s more, he could draw inspiration from noteworthy ancestors dating back to the early days of the Civil War. His baseball career may not have been as remarkable, but there’s little reason to […]

The Chicago White Sox won its only two championships of the 20th century in 1906 and 1917. In between those two glorious seasons, the team fell back to the middle of the pack in the American League, but were always competitive, due in large part to the unheralded and hard luck hurling of a burly […]

Fred “Bones” Ely did not become an everyday starter in the major leagues until he was 30 years old, but then he spent nearly a decade as one of the game’s top defensive shortstops. He gained lasting fame, however, for losing his job with the Pittsburgh Pirates to one of the greatest players in baseball […]

Outfielder Joe Kelley’s sensational play on the diamond earned him the well-deserved title “Kingpin of the Orioles.” He along with John McGraw, Willie Keeler, and Hughie Jennings made up the “Big Four” of the great Baltimore teams of the middle 1890s. Kelley was fleet of foot, sure-handed in the field, and blessed with a powerful […]

I was strictly a submarine pitcher, a lot of junk. I had a good fast one, but I didn’t throw it when I didn’t have to. With the hard hitters, I’d time them. I’d throw mixed pitches – “56 varieties” they used to call me. And then when I showed them a good fast ball, […]

Matt Murray spent seven seasons working his way up through the minor leagues, finally making it to the majors in 1995 — when he pitched briefly for two first-place teams, the Atlanta Braves and the Boston Red Sox. The Red Sox were swept in the Division Series by the Cleveland Indians, who went on to […]

Tom Alston tried to hit big-league pitching while hearing voices, battling chronic fatigue, and carrying the weight of being a racial pioneer in a Jim Crow city. Alston, the first African-American player for the St. Louis Cardinals, spent most of his life in torment and poverty. He never escaped the grip of mental illness that […]

Outfielder Frank Welch played 723 major-league games for the Philadelphia Athletics from 1919 through 1926, before spending part of one final season (and only 15 games) with the 1927 Boston Red Sox as the coda to his time in the big leagues. He played in the minors into the 1935 season. Welch was a 5-foot-9, […]

Without war and baseball, it is likely Wiley Lee Griggs III might never have left Birmingham, Alabama. He was born to Wiley Griggs II and Fair Bell Griggs on March 24, 1925, in Union Springs, Alabama. The Griggs family moved sometime before 1930 to Birmingham, which, except for a few seasons with other teams, would […]

Sam Nahem was a so-so pitcher who logged a 10–8 won-loss record and a 4.69 ERA in four partial seasons with the Dodgers, Cardinals, and Phillies between 1938 and 1948. Despite this unremarkable record, Nahem was a remarkable major leaguer in many ways. He was the only Syrian and one of the few Jews in […]

Bud Black spent 15 years as a major-league pitcher and followed that up with a long career as a manager. In 2018 he was in his 11th year as a big-league skipper. Harry “Bud” Ralston Black was born on June 30, 1957, in San Mateo, California. He graduated from Mark Morris High School in Longview, […]

On October 1, 1983, at Fenway Park, in the seventh inning Red Sox center fielder Lee Graham drove in Boston’s only run of a game against the Cleveland Indians. It was to be the only RBI of his brief five-game major league career. The Indians had scored one run in the top of the fourth […]

“Missed train by a hare!” – Familiar refrain in Rabbitt’s wires to Beaumont Exporters manager Al Bernsen during the 1924 Texas League season, explaining why he didn’t accompany the team1   Well, of course Joe Rabbitt led various minor leagues in stolen bases – six times altogether. It’s also not every day that a player […]

Few Flatbushers made the effort to attend the game on a cloudy, warm afternoon.1 Just 3,874 – only 12 percent of Ebbets Field’s capacity in 1955 – bore witness to a record-breaking 10th straight win to start the season.2 Before the season, Dodgers President Walter O’Malley reminded Brooklyn that the Dodgers had won four pennants […]

On Saturday, August 2, 1975, in the midst of a ferocious regional heat wave, the western Massachusetts town of Chester reported a temperature of 107 degrees. So did the city of New Bedford, on the state’s southern coast.1 As of January 2021, these readings remained the hottest officially recorded temperatures in the history of Massachusetts.2 […]

In late April of 1967, the Detroit Tigers traveled to Baltimore to play four games against the defending world champion Orioles at Memorial Stadium. The Orioles’ Dave McNally bested the Tigers’ Denny McLain in the first contest, 5-3. Detroit’s Mickey Lolich evened the score the following day by defeating Wally Bunker, 4-2. On April 30, […]

Mourning hovered over Brooklyn like a crib mobile. Charles Ebbets, a Brooklynite loyal to his core, had passed away.  It was Ebbets who scampered up the corporate ladder of Brooklyn’s professional baseball team from office clerk to owner. It was Ebbets who sold half his interest in the ballclub to finance the building of Ebbets […]

On June 6, 1921, Bill Gatewood of the Detroit Stars pitched the Negro National League’s first no-hitter, defeating the Cincinnati Cuban Stars, 4-0. Gatewood was a veteran pitcher, known for his spitball as well as for his versatility, and in 1921, he was part of a pitching rotation that included Bill Holland (real name Elvis […]

Aerial photo of Maryland Park taken by the Maryland Port Administration, circa 1927. Photo discovered by Professor Bernard McKenna, courtesy of Johns Hopkins University.   Prior to 1921 the Baltimore Black Sox were an independent team playing most of their home games at such places as Oriole Park (also known as Terrapin Park) and Westport […]

This article was originally published in SABR’s The National Pastime, Vol. 19, in 1999.   The whole history leading up to Jackie Robinson has usually been that an electric light went on in the head of the noble Branch Rickey one morning and he ended baseball discrimination.” As the lean, white-haired Lester Rodney speaks in […]