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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 […]
As a New York Yankee in the late-Joe DiMaggio, early-Mickey Mantle era, Bobby Brown sprayed line drives, an appropriate style of hitting for a man whose life has turned out to be a line drive of constant achievement in many directions. The ballplayer, cardiologist, highly-demanded banquet speaker, and current American League President is the only […]
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) […]
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 […]
Stan Musial doubled, then scored by sliding past catcher Ernie Lombardi on Walker Cooper’s sixth-inning single at Braves Field on September 16, 1942. The Cardinals won, 6-2. (SABR-Rucker Archive) One of the most celebrated facets of Cardinals historical lore is Stan Musial’s remarkable home/away symmetry of career base hits: 1,815 at home and 1,815 […]
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 […]
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 – […]
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 […]
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 […]
“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 […]
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 […]
Baseball’s 1950s are remembered by different people in different ways: stagnant, brilliant, racist, progressive — it all depends on the perspective of the fan. But one thing is certain and incontrovertible: baseball during the ’50s became a contest of raw power. Sixteen players have hit 500 or more career home runs. Seven of them played […]
How does one assess an individual player’s contribution to his team’s score? Baseball statisticians have attempted to answer this question countless times. It’s not just the runs he scores himself because that often relies on who batted him in. And it’s not just the runs he bats in, because that depends on who batted previously. […]
“I’d love to be the man going into Washington. I’ve always felt that city is one of the top two or three franchises in the nation.” – Frank Lane, general manager, Cleveland Indians1 October 26, 1960, started a new era of Washington Senators baseball. It began auspiciously enough. Senators’ president Calvin Griffith was relocating his […]
One would guess that several factors influence a player’s ability to score runs, including speed, his position in the lineup, the batting ability of other players in his lineup, and his own power. Players who combine these factors could be expected to score a high percentage of the times that they reach base. Rare players […]
The more Hall of Famers a team owns, the more championships it wins, right? Research suggests a far different picture. For one thing, those Famers may be finished. ALTHOUGH MUCH IS WRITTEN about Hall of Fame players, little is written about the teams they have played on together. Fans who know the answer to […]
Pitcher Dick “Turk” Farrell was selected in 1962 to represent the expansion Houston Colt .45s franchise at both All-Star Games. In the expansion draft to fill the rosters of the new clubs in New York and Houston, the Mets elected to go with veterans, while Houston built on youth. Under manager Harry Craft and general […]
IN THE six seasons following the transfer of the St. Louis Browns’ franchise to Baltimore, the pattern of losing that had been established in the Midwest was not broken. From 1954 through 1959, the Orioles attained a winning percentage as high as .500 only once (in 1957) and never finished in the first division of […]
In the six seasons following the transfer of the St. Louis Browns’ franchise to Baltimore, the pattern of losing that had been established in the Midwest was not broken. From 1954 through 1959, the Orioles attained a winning percentage as high as .500 only once (in 1957) and never finished in the first division of […]