Search Results

“We’re just like everyone else. When good things are happening, sad things happen as well.” – Joe Torre, October 27, 19991 “Making good on your moves does make you seem smart. Getting help from everyone makes you even smarter.” – Writer Shaun Powell describing Joe Torre and his cast of heroes after the 1999 World […]

For years, the major-league baseball season began in mid-April. The leagues expanded to a 162-game schedule beginning in 1961, but it wasn’t until 1984 that the Boston Red Sox started the season before April 5. They opened that year on April 2 in Anaheim against the California Angels. You win some; you lose some. So […]

Well after midnight, as July 21 turned to July 22, Mike Napoli’s solo home run with two outs in the bottom of the 11th inning allowed those remaining from the Sunday night crowd of 38,138 who had packed Fenway Park to head home after seeing the Boston Red Sox beat the New York Yankees, 8-7. […]

Emerging as one of the American League’s top young pitching talents in his first full major-league season, 20-year-old Boston Red Sox left-hander George Herman “Babe” Ruth matched up against one of the greatest pitchers in baseball, Walter “The Big Train” Johnson of the Washington Senators, for the first time in August 1915. Ruth, who had […]

The World Series headed into a seventh game for the third year in a row. Brooklyn’s come-from-behind victory in the sixth game gave Dodgers fans hope that this might be their year. The team had never won the championship in three previous appearances. The last time they appeared in the postseason classic, the Dodgers lost […]

If the last word on the 1986 World Series was “unforgettable,” the first word was “freezing.” The heaters were on full blast in both dugouts at Shea Stadium, pitchers were allowed to blow on their hands, and bats were wrapped in towels. The fall classic felt like winter, but both teams would rather be in […]

Like Three-Fingered Brown after him, Hugh “One-Arm” Daily was saddled with a sobriquet more fanciful than factual. For, as sure as Mordecai Peter Brown had digits enough to count to four on his right hand, so Hugh Ignatius Daily was possessed of a full complement of brachial appendages: the left one, owing to an accident […]

“I would not rate myself a great ballplayer, but I think I do a lot of things well – things which beat the other team.”1 – Jim Gilliam   Just before the start of the 1964 season, The Sporting News featured a full-page story on Los Angeles Dodgers utilityman Jim “Junior” Gilliam. Under the headline […]

Cleveland in the summer of 1936 was a city of spectacles. First came the Republican National Convention, then the Great Lakes Exposition, gatherings that drew thousands. Equally if not more compelling for local baseball fans was the jaw-dropping emergence of Cleveland Indians pitcher Bob Feller.1 It all started when the 17-year-old Feller, fresh off his […]

“Always smiling, made you feel good to be around him.” Cleveland sportscaster Joe Tait on Tom Ragland.1     Tom Ragland wanted his mother to get him a baseball glove when he was 5 years old. There was no money for one, and it was a few years later when he found a discarded one […]

Haywood Cooper Sullivan was many things during his life: passing record holder at Dothan High School (Alabama), college All-SEC quarterback and baseball standout (Florida), bonus baby, American League catcher, manager, general manager, and major-league ballclub owner, and to top it off, a self-made millionaire. Sullivan was born in Donalsonville, Georgia on December 15, 1930, and […]

Gambling posed a serious threat to baseball in 1919. Rumors of a “fixed” World Series were widespread. Owners of major- and minor-league teams were anxious to get control of the situation and restore the public’s confidence in the sport. “The very life of baseball depends upon keeping it above suspicion of any sort,” said Dr. […]

Baseball defined the essence of Ethan Allen. The game was his life’s work. A true student athlete who earned two degrees, Allen went from the University of Cincinnati to his hometown Cincinnati Reds in 1926 and remained in the majors for 13 seasons, never playing in the minors. He also played for the New York […]

Burly, 6-foot-7 reliever Tim Stoddard remains (as of 2023) the only man to win an NCAA Division I basketball title and a World Series ring. Before he grew his big walrus mustache and began to lose his hair, he was the starting power forward for the 1973-74 North Carolina State Wolfpack. Although baseball’s January 1975 […]

A diminutive lefty who was one of baseball’s biggest stars of the rollicking 1890s, Wee Willie Keeler continued to “hit ’em where they ain’t” through the first decade of the Deadball Era. The tiny (5-feet-4½-inches, 140 pounds) right fielder’s career covered 19 big-league campaigns, and in 13 of them – every year from 1894 to 1906 […]

Bill Harman was a shy country boy who became a leader. He was a star basketball and baseball player at the University of Virginia. As the basketball team’s captain, he led the Cavaliers into the 1941 National Invitational Tournament. And then he played one summer for the Philadelphia Phillies, collecting exactly one base hit. He […]

Pat Corrales spent more than 50 years in professional baseball as a player, coach, and manager. Although he will never be confused with a slugging catcher like Mike Piazza, Corrales was an excellent defensive catcher and a student of the game who parlayed his knowledge and experience into a long and successful career as a […]

Floyd “Jelly” Gardner was a prototypical leadoff hitter who played 13 seasons in the Negro Leagues, from 1919 to 1931, most notably for Rube Foster’s Chicago American Giants. The speedy Gardner stood just 5-feet-6½ and weighed 160 pounds, and his base stealing prowess created constant pressure on opposing defenses. He was a left-handed hitter, threw […]

Mike Rochford pitched in eight games over parts of three very good seasons — 1988-1990 — for the Boston Red Sox. The team finished in first place in 1988 and again in 1990, and in third place in the year in between. It was a tough time for the left-handed native New Englander to try […]

There have been countless cosmetic changes in how baseball has been played during the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, but the tools and rules of the game — and of the professional sport — have not been radically altered. A spectator from 1901 would recognize the game in 2021. The revolutionary advances occurred in the 19th […]

Philip Henry Niekro Jr. was born in Blaine, Ohio, on April Fools’ Day — April 1, 1939. That was appropriate, for he spent much of his career fooling batters with a pitch that most other pitchers wanted no part of. The first of the Niekro family in America were Jozef Niekra, from Slodkow, Polish Russia, […]

Art Fowler’s journey through the world of baseball took him from rural South Carolina to the New York Yankees and three World Series rings. A friendship with Billy Martin that started with a brief encounter in 1950 would lead him to a second career as a pitching coach, and make him half of one of […]

This article was published in the SABR Black Sox Scandal Research Committee’s December 2025 newsletter.   A 1919 Chicago White Sox team photo includes three young boys without baseball uniforms: two batboys at the far left and a clubhouse boy called “Sharkey” sitting on the ground with Eddie Collins’s hands on his shoulders. The two […]

In baseball history there have been certain street corners that through the years have become synonymous with the ballparks located at them. At the corner of Michigan and Trumbull was Detroit’s Tiger Stadium. 21st and Lehigh was Shibe Park in Philadelphia. Findlay and Western was Cincinnati’s Crosley Field. On the South Side of Chicago, 35th […]