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Cuban outfielder Leo Posada played in 155 games for the Kansas City Athletics from 1960 through 1962. However, his pro baseball career spanned 16 seasons as a player (1954-69) in the U.S. minors, plus a stint in Mexico. He also spent five winters in his homeland’s league, from 1955-56 until the circuit ceased to operate […]

Louis Frank Klein, Jr. was an international baseball lifer who had a travelogue of experiences. Perhaps best known as one of 22 major league players who jumped to the outlaw Mexican League and for his tenure as a rotating manager in the Chicago Cubs’ College of Coaches, Klein had a varied and colorful career. The […]

Kurt Bevacqua played in 15 major league seasons with the Cleveland Indians, Kansas City Royals, Pittsburgh Pirates, Milwaukee Brewers, Texas Rangers, and San Diego Padres from 1971 to 1985. Bevacqua crafted a career as a pinch hitter and utility player at a time when that role was needed on a major league roster and for […]

As a young player, Jason Giambi advertised his ideals on a T-shirt: “Party Like a Rock Star, Hammer Like a Porn Star, Rake Like an All-Star.”1 Whatever his proclivities toward pleasure seeking, Giambi certainly could “rake” (hit). From 1999 to 2002, Giambi was arguably the second-best player in the American League, accumulating 30 wins above […]

An aggressive right-hander who threw mostly fastballs, Roger Erickson pitched six years in the majors (1978-1983) for the Twins and Yankees. One of the top rookies of 1978, he bounced back from elbow surgery to enjoy another fine season, but threw his last big-league pitch at age 26 because of shoulder woes. Roger Farrell Erickson […]

The National League boasted some of the hardest-throwing and most intimidating starting pitchers in baseball history during the 1960s, from Sandy Koufax and Don Drysdale to Bob Gibson, Juan Marichal, and Jim Bunning. But one pitcher has faded from our collective memory of the great ones from that era: Jim Maloney. Troubled by chronic shoulder […]

In the first years of Tommy Lasorda’s Hall of Fame career as manager of the Los Angeles Dodgers, he kept several large photographs on the walls of his office at the team’s spring-training complex in Vero Beach, Florida. There was one of himself and Walter Alston, his legendary predecessor, and another with Hall of Fame […]

Normally when a pitcher sustains a serious arm injury, it might have a career-ending ramification. But adversity did not seem to bother Ted Abernathy. Instead, he made a habit of treating setbacks like challenges. He adapted by becoming a sidearmer and then a submariner. He appeared in 681 big-league games, saving 148 of them, from […]

Steve Bilko was a heavy hitter. Baseball encyclopedias list him at 6-foot-1 and 230 pounds, the greatest tonnage that baseball allowed in print in the 1950s until the mammoth Frank Howard came along. When anyone asked Bilko how much he weighed, as so many did, he’d say between 200 and 300. Years later he told […]

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. […]

Patience and power made Ken Singleton one of baseball’s premier switch-hitters. After beginning his 15-year career (1970-1984) with the Mets and Expos, he was a three-time All-Star right fielder for the Orioles and the designated hitter for Baltimore’s 1983 World Series champions. After retiring, Singleton became a popular Yankees broadcaster. Kenneth Wayne Singleton was born […]

On Friday, June 13, 1958, the Milwaukee Braves, holding a 1½-game lead atop the National League standings, opened a weekend series in St. Louis. The Braves’ starting pitcher was Joey Jay. Connecticut native Jay had not yet succeeded as a major-league pitcher, but he already held two distinctions: He was one of the original “bonus […]

The first major-league ballplayer to play on championship teams in both the United States and Japan was John Logan, Jr., known to the baseball world as Johnny. For 14 straight years (1948-1961) he was Milwaukee’s shortstop, the first five with the American Association Brewers, the last nine with the National League Braves. A four-time All-Star, […]

From his key contributions as a rookie on the pennant-winning Boston Red Sox of 1967 to his final games spent entangled in one of the most controversial incidents in World Series history, Mike Andrews packed plenty of memorable moments into seven-plus big-league seasons. And while his baseball career may not have lasted as long — […]

Frank Verdi accumulated 1,832 hits across 18 seasons playing minor-league baseball (1946-63) — but appeared in just one major-league contest. He played a single inning at shortstop for the Yankees in 1953 and never got to bat. Verdi is perhaps most remembered for his 24 years of managing in the minor leagues and independent ball, […]

Tony Oliva stands at the forefront of an exceedingly select group – one that also includes Tany (Atanasio) Pérez, Rafael Palmeiro, and Orestes “Minnie” Miñoso. These are the few unrivaled candidates for recognition as the greatest major-league hitter ever to emigrate to the professional big time from the baseball-rich island nation of Cuba. Palmeiro (with […]

Immortalized by two dramatic World Series home runs, one in 1984 for the Detroit Tigers and another in 1988 for the Los Angeles Dodgers, Kirk Gibson was noted for his competitiveness and clutch hitting. Plagued by injuries, he never lived up to the hype created by his manager, Sparky Anderson, when he referred to Gibson […]

A Wisconsin hero on the football gridiron and the baseball diamond, Robert James ‘Red’ Wilson was a bright, talented, and dedicated student-athlete who later enjoyed a good major league career as a catcher for the Chicago White Sox, the Detroit Tigers, and, briefly, the Cleveland Indians from 1951 to 1960. One of the greatest athletes […]

The tale is familiar to followers of baseball legend: Young boy growing up in rough-and-tumble circumstances, running roughshod over parents and teachers, unrepentantly scoffing at law and decency, finally ends up in front of the local magistrate who has him declared incorrigible and packed off to the nearest reformatory. There, the lad discovers an outlet […]

Eddie Plank fidgeted. On every pitch, Plank went through a seemingly endless ritual: Get the sign from his catcher, fix his cap just so, readjust his shirt and sleeve, hitch up his pants, ask for a new ball, rub it up, stare at a base runner if there was one, look back at his catcher, […]

  Baseball only decrees 90 feet between bases and 60 feet 6 inches from home plate to the mound. Elsewhere, look backward, angel.“Thanks to Alexander Cartwright,” said former Commissioner Bowie Kuhn, “the outfield distance, fence height, and space between the seats and lines vary. Parks could do as they liked.”1 Some have been liked better. […]

Ruppert Stadium was the home of the Kansas City Monarchs beginning in 1923. The stadium was first known as Muehlebach Field (1923), then Ruppert Stadium (1937), and later Blues Stadium (1943). It was completely rebuilt and renamed Municipal Stadium in 1955. (Courtesy Noir-Tech Research, Inc.)   Satchel Paige left the mound in Kansas City’s Municipal […]

Pitcher Gordon Zabasky winds up on the mound at Montgomery Field, April 1957, in Carlsbad, New Mexico.   In the spring of 1984, the decaying remains of Montgomery Field – a former minor-league ballpark in Carlsbad, New Mexico – were removed to make way for a multi-field youth soccer complex.1 It symbolized the way America’s […]

New York Giants manager John McGraw, left, and team owner Charles Stoneham in the early 1920s. (NATIONAL BASEBALL HALL OF FAME LIBRARY)   INTRODUCTION The New York-San Francisco Giants baseball club is among the most storied franchises in the annals of professional sport. To fans, mention of the club’s name promptly evokes images of Willie […]