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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 […]

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 […]

In 37 seasons as an infielder and third-base coach for the Yankees, Frank Crosetti was on the field for 23 fall classics, of which New York won 17. After a while “The Crow” had collected so many rings that the Yankees started giving him engraved shotguns instead. Sandwiched between Tony Lazzeri and Joe DiMaggio as […]

He terrorized teammates with snakes. He tossed firecrackers under benches and into bullpens. He was a master of the fine art of the hotfoot. Often forgotten is that Moe Drabowsky could pitch a little, too. In a 17-year major-league career with eight teams, it was his two stints with the Orioles that brought him lasting […]

“Oh, Gertrude, when sorrows come they come not as single spies but in battalions.” – Hamlet, Act 4, Scene 5, a favorite quote of Ned Martin when the Red Sox were having a particularly bad day   “With this back and these knees? Mercy,” Ned Martin asked rhetorically, using his trademark exclamation when asked if […]

Charlie French led off for the White Sox in the very first game played at the original Comiskey Park, on July 1, 1910. He played in 105 games for two Sox teams, Boston and Chicago, in 1909 and 1910, and then returned back to the minor leagues. French’s family background was England, not France. His […]

Del Pratt was arguably the second-best second baseman of the second decade of the 20th century. And his argumentative nature led The New York Times’ John Kieran to call him “the greatest clubhouse lawyer baseball ever knew.” Pratt was born into a well-off family on January 10, 1888, in Walhalla, South Carolina, near the Georgia-North […]

Through the 2012 season the Cy Young Award has been bestowed to relief pitchers on only nine occasions, the first time in 1974. Eleven years before, three relievers were cited as potential candidates for the prestigious honor – “Dick Radatz of the Red Sox, Ron Perranoski of the Dodgers and, perhaps the most surprisingly improved […]

Many players played for National and American League teams in Boston, Chicago, New York, Philadelphia or St. Louis. Just a dozen men played for Washington teams in both leagues. Some of the best known are John Anderson, Jack Doyle, Win Mercer and Kip Selbach. Most of the rest are recognizable to fans of Deadball Era […]

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 […]

Baseball is a game of numbers, so it is fitting to begin this story with the number Four Thousand Two Hundred Seventy-Two. No one had ever taken longer to get to the World Series – 4,272 major-league games as player and manager before his first Series game in 1996. As Joe Torre stated in Chasing […]

Joe Heving was born four years later than his brother Johnnie, but made his major league debut 10 years afterwards. John was a catcher who played professional ball from 1919 to 1946, including five years with the Red Sox from 1924-1930. Joe Heving heaved for a living – he was a right-handed pitcher, an early relief specialist […]

When it comes to players who pitched for both the New York Yankees and the New York Mets, Vito Valentinetti’s name is seldom mentioned. Yet he took the mound for the Mets from 1962-1982 and for the Yankees from 1967-1986. He was paid $20 a day, working roughly 15 minutes. The retired major-leaguer – 108 […]

Like thousands of youth pitchers, Frank Castillo dreamed of winning a game in the major leagues. He was drafted out of Eastwood High School in El Paso, Texas, in the sixth round of the June 1987 amateur draft by the Chicago Cubs and progressed quickly through the minors. After reaching Triple-A Iowa to start the […]

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 […]

After starting their 1967 season with a loss, just as they had for the previous six years, the New York Mets sent their newest young star, Tom Seaver, to the mound for the second game of their season-opening series against the Pittsburgh Pirates.1 An audience of 5,005 “polar bears,” among them movie director Alfred Hitchcock, […]

Federal League Park in Indianapolis struck fear into the hearts of pitchers – and it wasn’t just because the park was built on top of a former burial ground.1 The spanking-new facility, constructed specifically for the city’s Federal League entry, was the most hitter-friendly ballpark in the majors.2 Its dimensions were 365 feet down the […]

Using an apparatus they’d devised themselves, industrious J. Wallace Page and his younger cousin, Charles Lamb, began manufacturing woven wire fencing in the 1880s as a low-cost, livestock-friendly alternative to barbed wire.1 By 1894 their business had grown into a thriving enterprise, the Page Woven Wire Fence Company, with 100 employees manufacturing fencing for farms […]

“We play the game the right way” is a phrase commonly bandied about in baseball. But baseball players are judged and rewarded based on their personal performances. What happens when these two sometimes disparate philosophies collide? Such was the case on September 26, 2019, at Globe Life Park, where the Texas Rangers beat the Boston […]

The New York Mets were in a middle of an eight-game homestand in May 2004. After being swept by the St. Louis Cardinals in a two-game series, they won the first two games of a weekend series against the Colorado Rockies, outslugging the Rockies with a 9-run, 14-hit attack in the opener and rallying behind […]

The 2007 and 2008 seasons had ended in disappointment when the New York Mets missed the playoffs on the final day of each season. In 2008 the team also bade goodbye to Shea Stadium, its home for 45 seasons. It was hoped the opening of the Mets’ new ballpark would bring better days in 2009. […]

Editor’s note: This article first appeared in SABR’s “The National Pastime,” Vol. 6, No. 1, Winter 1987. To read more from the TNP archives, click here. Cincinnati Reds GM Larry MacPhail and manager Chuck Dressen watch a spring training game in the mid-1930s. (AUTHOR’S COLLECTION)   Just over fifty years ago, on March 5, 1936, […]

Tampa Bay Devil Rays Opening Day program from March 31, 1998. (Courtesy of the Tampa Bay Rays) Nestled along Florida’s Gulf Coast, St. Petersburg exudes a charm that has captivated both residents and visitors for decades. However, beneath its sun-soaked exterior lies a history enriched by the sport that has captured the hearts of many: […]