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Win Noyes was one of several ballplayers for whom service in World War I interrupted a promising big-league career. His brief stint with the 1919 White Sox was merely a footnote in a long, if not especially distinguished, baseball career. Various baseball references say Winfield Charles Noyes was born on June 16, 1889, in Pleasanton, […]

Outfielder Chaney White had a 17-year career in the Negro major leagues from 1920 through 1936. During that time, he was a member of numerous championship teams that included squads in various Negro Leagues, the Cuban Winter League, the Florida Hotel League, and the California Winter League. In 1934, at age 40, he was still […]

A big man with a famous scowl and a name that felt ripped from a James Bond film, Mo Vaughn was a hulking 6-foot-1, 225-pound lefty hitter whose frame dangled over home plate. Baseballs seemed to disintegrate on impact when he exploded out of his crouched stance, extending one arm to the sky on his […]

In the wee hours of July 7, 1920, near Wawa, Pennsylvania, George Herman “Babe” Ruth, prodigious New York Yankees baseball slugger and notorious automobile speeder, careened his $10,000 Packard around a tight corner, lost control, and overturned. Ruth’s passengers were his wife Helen, Yankees coach Charlie O’Leary, and two teammates: backup catcher Fred Hofmann and […]

Baseball Commissioner Kenesaw Mountain Landis called the 1935 World Series “the greatest ever.”1 Goose Goslin was the man of the hour after smacking a clutch ninth-inning single to cap the victory. Teammates mobbed the Goose; the incessant backslapping accompanied a bloody nose, mussed hair, and a torn uniform. The mood in the Chicago Cubs’ clubhouse […]

Certainly there were easier scenarios than facing Bob Gibson for one’s first major-league appearance, but the Milwaukee Braves’ Mack Jones made his debut on July 13, 1961, in St. Louis look like child’s play. His four consecutive hits, including a run-scoring double in his second at-bat, tied a National League record and reinforced the can’t-miss […]

It was one week into the 1977 season. Jim Kaplan of Sports Illustrated alluded to 34-year-old Bill Robinson’s frustrations in his 10th major-league season: “No matter where he is playing — be it Cincinnati or New York or Los Angeles — he is sure to hear it. ‘Weaser,’ someone will call to him from the […]

Hard-throwing right-hander Clay Bryant went 32-20 in parts of six seasons for the Chicago Cubs before chronic elbow and shoulder pain ended his career at the age of 28 in 1940. But for one summer, the affable Alabaman caught lightning in a bottle. En route to winning 19 games and leading the National League in […]

Over the years, the Pittsburgh Courier, one of the nation’s leading African-American newspapers, used the following superlatives to describe Pittsburgh Crawfords infielder Chester Williams: Peppy, snappy, aggressive, hustling, scrappy, flashy. He was also referred to as sure-fielding, hard-hitting, a sparkplug, and even an inspired devil. From 1931 through the team’s demise in 1938, Williams was […]

On September 27, 1920, suspicions about the integrity of the previous year’s World Series between the Chicago White Sox and Cincinnati Reds were given substance by a self-admitted fix insider named Billy Maharg. In an interview first published in the Philadelphia North American and syndicated nationwide immediately thereafter, Maharg maintained that a number of Chicago […]

Whenever the name Harvey Haddix is mentioned, there is usually a reference to a 115-pitch game he threw in Milwaukee in 1959. His career in professional baseball, however, was much more — lasting parts of five decades. Haddix was born on September 18, 1925, the third son of Harvey Haddix, Sr. and Nellie Mae Greider-Haddix. […]

Thirty men registered plate appearances for the 2004 Boston Red Sox, but one of the biggest contributors to the offensive juggernaut did not face a single pitch. Had it not been for the December 27, 2002, announcement of Ron “Papa Jack” Jackson as the team’s new hitting coach, Boston’s stunning rise to the zenith of […]

“The tallest thing on spikes in this neck of the woods.”1 Clarence “Shovel” Hodge, who earned his nickname by working as a railroad fireman, stood 6-feet-4 – without spikes. In his major-league debut for the Chicago White Sox on September 6, 1920, the righty pitcher allowed no hits against Ty Cobb and the Detroit Tigers […]

Lloyd Pepper Bassett made his name in Negro League baseball as the “Rocking-Chair Catcher.” If calling a game and receiving pitches while sitting in a rocking chair seems like a gimmick, the reason is that it was one. Bassett began his professional career with the New Orleans Crescent Stars, and low attendance led him to […]

Appearing in just one inning of one major league game in 1925 fresh from the semipro ranks, pitcher Spencer Pumpelly has gained a measure of mystique on the SABR Biographical Research Committee’s Top 20 List as the most recent player for whom knowledge of which side of the plate he batted from is lacking. Spencer […]

“Jarvis fires away … That’s a fly ball, deep to left, back, back … HEY HEY! He did it! Ernie Banks got number 500! The ball tossed to the bullpen … everybody on your feet … this … is IT! WHEEEEEEEE!”— Jack Brickhouse, WGN-TV, May 12, 19701 When the curtain rang down on the 1969 […]

Harry Luff was amenable to manning every position on the diamond except catcher. That afforded him brief tours of duty in four different 19th-century major leagues: the National Association (1875); National League (1882); American Association (1882-1883), and Union Association (1884). He also played in various minor leagues during an 11-season professional career that ended in […]

He was the eldest member of a quartet of baseball brothers unparalleled in the history of the game. The youngest, Ben Taylor, is a member of the National Baseball Hall of Fame, his just recognition after a career as one of the dominant first basemen and sluggers of the first part of the twentieth century. […]

The 1932 baseball season in Pittsburgh saw a strong challenge to the Homestead Grays’ decade-long lock on the city’s Black baseball supremacy. Professional ball was Grays owner Cumberland Posey Jr.’s sole source of income. But the Depression had wiped out the financial support that businesses and industries in the Smoky City had been pouring into […]

Prospect: “A minor-league player who appears to have enough potential and youth to eventually establish a productive major-league career.” – The Dickson Baseball Dictionary1 The season’s calendar is marked by those events that spark every baseball fan’s own sense of why they love the game. Perhaps it’s the anticipation when pitchers and catchers report to […]

Sunday games were the big games for Negro League teams, when Black fans of both genders, often coming from church still dressed to the nines, would head for the ballpark for social as much as athletic entertainment. To see the game, of course, each of them had to buy a ticket, making Sunday games financial […]

The 1952 baseball season had turned the page to May, and the season’s stories were just starting to bloom like ivy on the brick walls of Wrigley Field. The Chicago Cubs led the National League with nine wins (against four losses), yet were percentage points behind the first-place Brooklyn Dodgers, who had a record of […]

The long love affair between Minnie Miñoso, the first black player in White Sox history, and South Siders began with a bang in his first game with his new club. Traded as part of a three-team deal on April 30 that also involved the Athletics and the Indians,1 Miñoso, called by Chicago manager Paul Richards […]

With the war in Europe two months from the Allies’ victory, the 1918 World Series began. A meager yet patriotic crowd of 19,274 fans was on hand at Comiskey Park, “the smallest that has witnessed the diamond classic in many years.”1 The minds of the spectators were clearly on the overseas conflict, yet they came […]