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“He would come in and relieve Satchel, and when they put Johnson out there, we thought we’d have it easy then. And he would come in and throw harder than Satchel did! Just like jumpin’ from the frying pan into the fire.” – Warren Peace, Newark Eagles1   Connie Johnson made his White major-league debut […]

“Being the best is great, it means you’re number one. But being unique is greater, because you’re the only one.” This quote, which can be found all over the internet (reportedly anonymous, a bit ironically), applies to Marty Pattin in at least one regard: On April 8, 1969, he became the only Opening Day starting […]

“He’s worth a bonus,” Cleveland Indians scout Jimmy Gruzdis told farm director Walter Arthur “Hoot” Evers.1 “He” was Tyrone Alexander Cline, a 1960 first-team All-American outfielder for the Clemson University Tigers who batted .335 in two varsity seasons, including a career-best .348 for the 1959 Atlantic Coast Conference champions. He also won five of six […]

Arturo (Art) López had 49 at-bats with seven hits for the 1965 New York Yankees. He was the first player born in Puerto Rico to be originally signed by the Yankees and play for them.1 The outfielder was also the first boricua to play for a Japanese professional baseball team. During a professional career that […]

Outfielder Lou Jackson, once described as a “wrist hitter with extraordinary pull ability,” appeared in 34 games for the Chicago Cubs and Baltimore Orioles between 1958 and 1964.1 In his dozen years in professional ball, the lefty swinger went deep as many as 31 times in a single Triple-A season, and twice ranked among the […]

A goal of every major leaguer is to play on a team destined for the World Series.  While individuals are in the game for money and personal achievement, being part of a team going to the fall classic is a treasured experience. Nearly 50 years after Minnesota took the 1965 championship, Jerry Fosnow – who […]

“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 […]

From the moment he was born in the back seat of a car in the parking lot of the East Orange (New Jersey) General Hospital, during a snowstorm on December 21, 1948,1 Elliott Maddox showed a knack for doing things on his terms. He was a premier defensive outfielder who had just begun to show […]

John Young carried an impressive 6-foot-3, 210-pound frame during his baseball playing days. Even more impressive than his physical stature on the field, however, was the stature he later gained as a baseball ambassador for the underprivileged. In founding the Reviving Baseball in Inner Cities program, Young left an indelible mark on the game that […]

East of Puerto Rico lie the isles of Vieques and Culebra. Along with a sprinkling of cays, they are sometimes known as the Spanish Virgin Islands. As of 2018, pitcher Julio Navarro was the only viequense ever to make the majors, largely because the island is an undeveloped place with a population of only about […]

In 1989, following his junior year of high school, 16-year-old Marc Newfield led his Orange County, California-based Mickey Mantle League team to a national championship. That summer, Newfield demonstrated such prodigious power that his teammates nicknamed him “Captain Crunch.”1 One teammate recalled, “You should have seen him in the league. He just bombed balls … […]

On September 22, 1959, with one out and the bases loaded in the ninth inning at Cleveland’s Municipal Stadium, Chicago White Sox manager Al Lopez signaled to the bullpen for his top reliever, Jerry Staley. (Although his first name was Gerald and he was commonly referred to as “Gerry” both during and after his career, […]

During an International League game between the hometown Ottawa Lynx and the Toledo Mud Hens, a Mud Hens runner was called safe in a play at the plate. The call angered Lynx fans, who booed the call lustily. When the inning ended, as the Mud Hens manager/third base coach returned to the dugout, a fan […]

Pitcher Vicente Romo won well over 400 games as a professional player from 1961 through 1986.1 Just 32 of those wins came in the majors, where he played during eight seasons (1968-74; 1982) for five teams. Yet many experts in his homeland consider this man the finest right-handed pitcher that Mexico has ever produced — […]

Trying to throw a baseball as hard as you can from 60 feet, six inches and hitting a target 17 inches wide by approximately 24 inches high is hard enough as it is – but when that target is shrunk down to a height of less than three inches, it’s nearly impossible. That’s the task […]

A biography may be defined as a “remarkable odyssey through life and the lessons learned.”1 This description could have suited virtually anyone, but Bart Mindszenthy adapted it to introduce Ron Taylor before the Empire Club of Canada. Taylor’s odyssey ranged from the University of Toronto (the only alumnus to play major-league baseball), to the Ontario […]

Because he was born on an Indian reservation, Roy Johnson was considered a ward of the government. He and his younger brother Bob Johnson, who joined the Red Sox in 1944, were both born in Pryor, Oklahoma (some 35 miles east of Tulsa) – before Oklahoma became a state. Roy was the eldest of the […]

Few players have been as synonymous with a team as George Brett and the Kansas City Royals. Yet the amiable, self-deprecating, and sometimes volatile Brett never viewed himself as being greater than the team he loved. A throwback to an earlier time, Brett favored pine tar over batting gloves, chewing tobacco over bubble gum, and […]

In the early 1920s, the New York Yankees began the assembly of a professional sports dynasty, with many pundits rating the 1927 Yanks the best team in major-league history. Yet during the first half of the decade, the New York Giants outdid their local rival. Piloted by John McGraw and with a lineup featuring future […]

“A real man is Bill Tuttle – someone who will stand up and tell the truth.” – Joe Garagiola, 1998[1] Bill Tuttle was a capable journeyman outfielder who played during 11 seasons in the American League (1952; 1954-63). He had his best year at age 25, manning center field for the 1955 Detroit Tigers. He appeared […]

Nellie Fox was the heart of the 1959 Go-Go White Sox, the team that brought Chicago’s South Side its first pennant since the tarnished Black Sox season 40 years earlier. The image of Little Nel in his batting stance has become iconic — a choked-up grip on his bottle bat with a wad of chewing […]

With their first-round pick in the 1978 amateur draft, the Minnesota Twins selected Lenny Faedo, a high-school shortstop from Tampa, Florida. Sixteen rounds later, the Twins selected Kent Hrbek, a first baseman from Kennedy High School in Bloomington, Minnesota. Faedo and Hrbek both rose through the Twins farm system quickly. Faedo made his major-league debut […]

The son of a brilliant but combative Hall of Fame baseball executive, Lee MacPhail inherited his father’s intelligence and a love of baseball, but a wholly different personality. While Larry had a short and somewhat mercurial baseball career colored by both triumph and controversy, his son Lee spent four decades in baseball and earned the […]

When the Washington Senators1 were founded in 1891, they played their games at Boundary Field in Northwest Washington. Boundary Field was named for its location on the northwest boundary line of the District of Columbia at Boundary Line and Seventh Street. The field is labeled on the 1904 Sanborn Fire Insurance Map as “Athletic Fields,” […]