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A sunny, breezy afternoon in Tiger Stadium before a crowd of 41,774 was the setting for the NBC Saturday Game of the Week on June 22, 1985. Vin Scully and Joe Garagiola were on hand to broadcast the contest between the defending World Series champion Detroit Tigers and the New York Yankees.1 Detroit manager Sparky […]

Every good recipe starts with the right ingredients. In baseball, start with some speed and power, solid swings on the right pitches, and good bounces or caroms off the wall, and add some good fortune. In other words, possess the offensive skills of a “five-tool player”1 and it might lead to one of the rarest […]

The 1890 Louisville Colonels – dubbed the “Cyclones” in newspapers in Louisville and other American Association cities1 – had already doubled their 1889 win total when the Syracuse Stars came to town for a three-game series on August 9. Baseball’s first-ever 100-game losers at 27-111-2 in 1889, a season that included the majors’ first players […]

Wednesday, September 20, 1961, offered the last chance for Roger Maris to pass Babe Ruth’s record of 60 home runs within Commissioner Ford Frick’s 154-game deadline for being credited with breaking The Babe’s sacrosanct mark.1 Maris came into the game with 58 home runs. To beat Ruth’s mark, he would have to do something he […]

It’s not so much what Ernie Banks did on Thursday, September 17, 1953. Rather, it’s what the game meant to the Chicago Cubs’ franchise and major league baseball in general. The 22-year-old Dallas, Texas, native went hitless in three at-bats, scored one run, and made an error at shortstop in his major league debut. The […]

The romantic affection which Boston always has for the players who have made big league history throbbed into thunderous beat.” – Burt Whitman, Boston Herald.1   The band began to play some old familiar favorites, including “Silver Threads Among the Gold” and “Love’s Old Sweet Song,” a grand beginning on that picturesque Boston day. Then, […]

There was no reason to expect St. Louis Cardinals catcher Glenn Brummer to play a significant role in the team’s Sunday afternoon game against the San Francisco Giants on August 22, 1982. Though manager Whitey Herzog called Brummer “the best third-string catcher I’ve ever seen,”1 that was more a reference to his willingness to work […]

At the end of the day on September 8, 1934, the Detroit Tigers, who had not been to the World Series since 1909, stood 4½ games ahead of the powerful New York Yankees. This lead had been constricting around the neck of the Tigers since September 5, when the lead stood at 6 games. Fans […]

Few prospects have fallen to earth quite as dramatically as pitcher Brien Taylor, the number-one pick by the New York Yankees in the June 1991 amateur draft. Signing a record $1.55 million contract negotiated by agent Scott Boras and Taylor’s mother, Bettie,1 the hard-throwing North Carolina high schooler became one of baseball’s top-rated, most-anticipated prospects.2 […]

In his first three professional seasons, James “Wickey” McAvoy played for a World Series champion, an American League champion, and a team that lost 109 games. This dramatic shift of fortune required no action on McAvoy’s part: The catcher joined Connie Mack’s Philadelphia Athletics in 1913 and lingered there as Mack traded some of his […]

Between games of a doubleheader in Chicago on May 5, 1963, on a day the White Sox honored Minnie Minoso for his outstanding seasons there, a 31-year-old rookie with the Washington Senators was feted by a marching band and presented with a new car and other gifts.1 The player was Richard Eugene Phillips, the pride […]

When Wally Moon came to bat for the first time in the majors, some of the home fans in St. Louis booed. Others yelled, “We want Eno.” Two days earlier Enos Slaughter, a Cardinal favorite for 16 years—the hustling, hard-nosed, red-necked Country Slaughter, who left the dugout running and kept running until he hit the […]

The elevator speech for Johnny Barney Wyrostek (pronounced Wy-ROSS-tek) would summarize his career as: outfielder, batted left, threw right, two All-Star Game appearances, three teams, seven seasons in the minors, 11 seasons in the majors, 58 homers, and 1,149 hits. But he was also a father of five, a deputy sheriff, a union carpenter, and […]

Pitcher Jack Sutthoff, whose 90-game career in the major leagues spanned the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, recorded his best big-league season in 1903, when he went 16-9 for his hometown Cincinnati Reds. His status as a former Red, the pitcher who in 1904 broke the Reds’ losing streak on Opening Day, and his pleasant personality […]

On April 26, 1969, pitcher Al Raffo of the Triple-A Eugene Emeralds received the good news from his manager, Frank Lucchesi, that he was moving up to the parent Philadelphia Phillies. In his eighth season and eighth team in the Phillies organization, Raffo was asked shortly before he was called up if he thought he […]

From 1953 through 1956, Jim Woods was Mel Allen’s and Red Barber’s partner on New York Yankees radio/TV. One day, eying Woods’ slight overbite and gray buzz cut, Enos Slaughter jibed, “I’ve seen better heads on a possum.” In 1958 Jim moved to Pittsburgh, where announcer Bob Prince’s wife called Woods’ spouse “Mrs. Possum.” In […]

“You can’t win ’em all.” It’s said with a shrug, a human acknowledgement that nobody goes undefeated, that nobody is perfect, that even if you do everything possible sometimes you will lose. The origin of this phrase could be Connie Mack after the 1916 Philadelphia A’s went 36-117. But it could also be from Cliff […]

A three-sport star in high school, Don Gullett became a professional baseball player at the age of 18. After a short stint in the minors, he became the mainstay of the Cincinnati Reds pitching staff. Before he was 25 years old he was being compared to Sandy Koufax and seemingly was headed for Cooperstown. But […]

The short shortstop drew the shortest straw. On September 29, 1913, diminutive (5-foot-4) 21-year-old rookie Monte Pfeffer started at shortstop for the American League champion Philadelphia Athletics. The “Lilliputian wonder” had recently been promoted to Connie Mack’s squad from the Wilkes-Barre (Pennsylvania) Barons of the Class B New York State League, a team he had […]

Even before he was born into this world, Mickey Mantle was being prepared for life as a future big-league baseball player. His father, Elvin “Mutt” Mantle, a former semipro player and a lifelong baseball fanatic, proclaimed that if his first child turned out to be a boy, he would name him Mickey, in honor of […]

One could make a strong case for Joe McGinnity being the most durable pitcher in baseball history. In just 10 seasons in the major leagues, “Iron Man” McGinnity worked 3,441 innings and won 246 games. During the month of August in 1903, he pitched and won both ends of a doubleheader three times; he accomplished […]

With a competitive, sometimes combative, spirit and a devastating split-fingered fastball, Jack Morris became the pitcher of the 1980s and continued his dominance into the early 1990s. His 162 victories in the 1980s were 22 more than runner-up Dave Stieb of Toronto. Four times he was a member of a world-championship team, including a one-year […]

Almost every scout considered him too short (5-feet-6½) to be a major-league pitching prospect. One scout was not deterred, however, and dared to sign the left-hander, setting off Bobby Shantz on a 16-year odyssey in the major leagues. Shantz reached the heights of success early in his career by winning the American League’s Most Valuable […]

It must have been difficult living in the shadows of two older brothers: Harry, hailed as “The Father of Professional Baseball,” and George, a baseball legend, top cricket player, successful sporting goods businessman, and a pioneer who helped bring golf and tennis to the United States. It is not surprising that what we know of […]