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The outlook wasn’t brilliant for the Mudville nine that day:1 The score stood four to two, with but one inning more to play,2 And then when Cooney3 died at first, and Barrows4 did the same, A pall-like silence fell upon the patrons of the game. A straggling few got up to go in deep despair.5 […]

This article was originally published in “Baseball in Pittsburgh,” the 1995 SABR convention journal.   Dale Long, who appeared in over 1,000 major league games and tagged 132 big league home runs, is one of a select number of former Pittsburgh Pirates whose name elicits immediate recognition from those familiar with baseball’s rich heritage. When […]

The names of so many Hall of Famers convey a magical, almost mystical quality — Cobb, Ruth, Wagner, Hornsby, Gehrig, Foxx, and, more recently, DiMaggio, Williams, Musial, Mays, Mantle. Earl Averill, who turned 80 last May, is not always remembered as one of the great players, yet for a period of ten years, from 1929 […]

“Most of what I learned about style I learned from Roberto Clemente.” — John Sayles, filmmaker   A ballplayer’s life is rarely if ever finely crafted finish-work carpentry; rather it is almost always rough framing, with all the gaps and gouges exposed to critics and admirers alike. Polishing and puttying and sanding the rough edges […]

It’s the top of the 10th inning, and there is one out in this hotly contested All-Star Game. A runner is on third by way of the triple, another on first via the intentional walk, but now the pitcher has this batter on the ropes with a 2–2 count. The crowd is evenly split between […]

Perry Barber was just the second woman to umpire at Yankee Stadium, in 1985. (Courtesy of Perry Barber)   On Sunday, September 9, 1973, Ronnie Bromm became the lone member of the most exclusive club on the planet: Women Who Have Umpired at Yankee Stadium. She held that title all by herself for a long […]

New York Giants owner Andrew Freedman fired 13 managers between 1895 and 1902. He wasn’t the first to second-guess the actions of a manager, though he did help establish a time-honored tradition. In the years since, more than a few reputations and careers have suffered the ill-effects of the practice. Fans, owners, and journalists rightly […]

The good hot stove question is: What ballplayer, at the peak of his career, could you most solidly say, “I wouldn’t trade him for anybody“? Stated another way, if we take all major leaguers and track their careers as they progress (with no future knowledge), which one would have been perceived as having the highest […]

Freddie Fitzsimmons of the New York Giants gives a pitching clinic for the All-Japan team. (Courtesy of the San Francisco Giants)   On the morning of June 29, 1953, readers of the Globe Gazette in Mason City, Iowa, were greeted by a headline on page 13: “New York Giants Invited to Tour Japan This Fall.”1 […]

In the run-up to the 2015 All-Star Game, Kansas City Royals fans caused a stir when early rounds of announced vote totals showed a potential American League lineup dominated by their hometown team. Over the course of the remaining weeks of balloting, other fan bases had time to mobilize and counteract the early trends. Though […]

Until the Dodgers and Giants come to their senses and return home to New York, Casey Stengel remains the only figure in history to have worn the uniform of these four New York City teams: the Dodgers, Giants, Yankees, and Mets. The coincidence of this was no small thing to Casey, who died in 1975, […]

  Long before Aaron Judge broke the single-season American League home-run records formerly held by fellow New York Yankees Babe Ruth and Roger Maris, a young man from a small farm on the Maryland Eastern Shore was on pace to hit more dingers than any of them.1 His name was Jimmie Foxx, nicknamed “the Beast” […]

Walter Johnson Wasn’t That Wild When Phil Niekro, the Braves’ ace knuckleball pitcher, mad four wild pitches in the sixth inning of the second game at Houston on August 4, 1979, he set a new modern major league record. The baseball record books also list Walter Johnson with four wild pitches in the fourth inning […]

Even most casual sports fans are aware of the 1967 NFL title game, commonly referred to as the Ice Bowl. Played in subzero temperatures at Lambeau Field on New Year’s Eve of 1967, and won by the Green Bay Packers, this game cemented the legacy of Vince Lombardi and gave the Packers their third consecutive […]

Background Baseball was going through a time of transition as the 1968 Winter Meetings approached. Most dramatically, the major leagues were about to add four new teams beginning in 1969, and had recently held two expansion drafts to stock the new clubs. On Monday, October 14, the National League held its draft for the Montreal […]

The mentor-mentee relationship is a bedrock of Hollywood storytelling: Dr. David Zorba and Dr. Ben Casey. Obi-Wan Kenobi and Luke Skywalker. Mr. Miyagi and Daniel LaRusso. Mickey Goldmill and Rocky Balboa. Three movies and one TV-movie set in baseball’s minor leagues exemplify the dynamic.   Stud Cantrell (William Petersen) and Dixie Lee Boxx (Virginia Madsen) […]

I reached Michael Haupert in his car as he was driving home to Wisconsin from his annual trip to Cooperstown. My email in-box tells me the date was May 22, 2015. Tom Shieber, senior curator at the Hall of Fame, had told me Mike, a professor of economics at the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse, was […]

Joe Torre’s frustrating 1975 season was “highlighted” by the July 21 game against the Astros where he grounded into four consecutive double plays. Batting ahead of him was Felix Millan, who had 4 singles, but was wiped out each time Tone hit the ball. For Torre, it was a National League record for grounding into […]

Lobby card for “Kill the Umpire” (1950) starring William Bendix. (Author’s collection)   Most baseball fans would agree that the best umpire is the invisible umpire. Sure, the umps on the field ensure that the rules of the game are followed. They call balls and strikes. They determine if the fielder who dives for the […]

Granted, numerous screen biopics have charted the lives of ballplayers from Hall of Famers to major leaguers with unusual, marketable life stories.1 One legend – Lou Gehrig – has been portrayed twice, in 1942’s The Pride of the Yankees and A Love Affair: The Eleanor and Lou Gehrig Story, a 1977 made-for-television movie. Another – […]

Babe Ruth is seated in a bistro. A waiter takes his order. William  Bendix, wearing a putty-flattened Ruth nose, orders milk. Babe Ruth??? Milk??? That scene was enough to curdle “The Babe Ruth Story,” a  cheaply made production of the great slugger’s life. And Ty Cobb doesn’t fare any better. In 1916, Cobb was coaxed […]

On October 13, 1985, a Pittsburgh resident by the name of Saul Finkelstein decided to personally commemorate the 25th anniversary of the seventh game of the 1960 World Series. Finkelstein went to the corner of the University of Pittsburgh’s campus where Forbes Field was once located to listen to a tape recording of NBC’s broadcast […]

“These men couldn’t do what I did because they didn’t have the chance. But they dreamed the dreams I did when they were 15, too. And they taught me and they gave me the combat training so that I could do it.” – Willie Mays on the Birmingham Black Barons.1   Performance can mean two […]

In 1989, Larry Fritsch sat in a rural Wisconsin warehouse—big enough to fit a full-sized baseball field and filled with 35 million cards—searching for a player who best exemplified the hobby of cardcollecting. Honus Wagner? Mickey Mantle? Hank Aaron? “No, no,” said Fritsch, collector extraordinaire and pioneer of the baseball card business. Then his face […]