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Charles Ernest Brinkman spent parts of six seasons as a backup catcher in the major leagues, all but four games of the last season with the Chicago White Sox. Despite a .172 career average, he remained in the majors as long as he did on the strength of his stellar defense. As a collegian at […]

Left-hander Mark Buehrle pitched in 518 games, starting 493 of them, over a 15-year career. He finished his career with a 214-160 career record with a 3.81 ERA and 1,870 strikeouts in 3,283⅓ innings pitched. Buehrle was a five-time All-Star, and won four Gold Gloves and one World Series championship. He pitched two no-hitters, one […]

Jack Gleason is the older of the two Gleason brothers who played on the inaugural St. Louis Browns team (the forerunner of today’s St. Louis Cardinals) in the American Association in 1882. Known as “Brudder Jack”1 and as one of the handsomest players in the league, he covered third base for the Browns for their […]

John O’Neill started his major league career with the Boston Americans on May 7, 1904. John, or perhaps Jack—numerous articles called him Jack—is listed in Baseball-Reference.com as “Bill O’Neill,” but we never once found him called Bill. O’Neill apparently played a number of years for other teams – typically playing second base – before making […]

On October 3, 1947, Bill Bevens stood on the mound at Ebbets Field one out away from baseball immortality. He had pitched the first 8 2/3 innings of the fourth game of the World Series without giving up a hit. All he had to do was retire Brooklyn Dodgers pinch-hitter Cookie Lavagetto and he would […]

“Judy Johnson was the smartest baseball player I ever came across.” — Ted Page1   Despite his father’s aspirations for William “Judy” Johnson to become a boxer, Judy never entered the ring. Instead, Johnson took his game to the diamond. For that, baseball owes him a debt of gratitude. In the Negro Leagues, if Satchel […]

The late-19th century hurler known as Roscoe Coughlin on the West Coast and Bill Coughlin most everywhere else possessed all the attributes seemingly required for success in the major leagues: good stuff, command of the strike zone, pitching intelligence, a durable arm, and temperate habits. And he was a consistent winner in the high minors, […]

“Taking hits away from people,” said Dwayne Murphy, “is the part of the game I love most. I know what my reaction is when it happens to me. It’s demoralizing. Once, during batting practice, a player on another team . . . came up to me mad as hell. He told me I had no […]

He was a very good ballplayer. Certainly good enough that he posted some outstanding numbers during a long and distinguished minor-league career. Probably good enough that he could have had a substantial major-league life. But Carlos Bernier managed to play only one season in “The Show.” As Steve Treder wrote, “The baseball career of Carlos […]

José Luis Meléndez García was born on September 2, 1965, in Naguabo, a small town on the eastern coast of Puerto Rico. The municipality is famous for its empanadillas de chapín, a tasty fried turnover stuffed with cowfish. Blessed with a powerful right arm, Meléndez was destined to toil not as a fisherman, but rather […]

Ronald Michael Diorio was born in St. Mary’s hospital in Waterbury, Connecticut, on July 15, 1946. His parents, Charles and Gilda (Follachio) Diorio, were first generation Americans, with roots in the Calabria and Abruzzi regions of Italy. Charles, a Waterbury native born in 1906, worked as a plumber. Gilda worked in the shop as well. […]

Serving as the pitching coach for the Big Red Machine is a bit like being the drummer in Billy Joel’s band. Even if you’re an integral part of an exceptional team, only the most devoted and hard-core observers will ever know your name as opposed to the headline-grabbing main attraction. While the Reds’ offense and […]

Personable, intelligent, and soft-spoken, the athletic Doug Clemens also brought a key intangible to his professional baseball career: a dedication to improving his skills. He played parts of nine seasons in the major leagues with three teams: the St. Louis Cardinals, the Chicago Cubs, and the Philadelphia Phillies. Emerging from the Cardinals’ farm system, Clemens […]

If you take a close look at some of the iconic Boston baseball photographs created at the turn of the 20th century by Elmer Chickering, you might see him. He’s the mustached chap in the bowler cap holding his Brownie camera with Hi-Hi Dixwell at the groundbreaking for the Huntington Avenue Grounds; he’s the guy […]

Ten weeks into his rookie season, Sandy Koufax finally made his long-awaited debut. Brooklyn’s $20,000 bonus baby1 had missed most of March with a sore back,2 and then the 19-year-old left-hander had a disastrous outing in an exhibition game against Brooklyn’s Double-A affiliate, the Fort Worth Cats, on April 3.3 Two weeks later, before Brooklyn’s […]

“If the wheels come off, it’s better they come off all at once” — Giants manager Dusty Baker.1 “A lot of balls were not hit very well, just grounders and balls in the gap. The balls managed to get through.” — Expos manager Felipe Alou.2   Scoring was the name of this game, as about […]

With their A’s once again mired in the American League cellar, an above-season-average 10,268 fans nonetheless found their way to Philadelphia’s Shibe Park on the last day of the 1941 season.1 A Lefty Grove Day observance celebrating their once-dominating southpaw held a degree of interest as the old-timer returned with the Boston Red Sox. But […]

Tom Lasorda is lucky Dodgers fans were willing to give him a second chance. Lasorda built a Hall of Fame career as manager of the Dodgers from 1976 to ’96, but his first stint with the franchise came as a minor leaguer in 1949. By the mid-’50s, he was a young pitcher trying to break […]

On July 8, 1952, it rained all morning in Philadelphia. It rained the previous night and more rain was predicted for the afternoon. It was not a day for baseball. Commissioner Ford Frick had a dilemma. The 1952 All-Star Game was scheduled for that day. Since the inaugural contest in 1933, no All-Star Game had […]

Following a last-place finish by the Orioles in 1902, the city of Baltimore was left without a major-league franchise. The team packed up and relocated to New York, leaving disheartened Charm City fans rooting for a series of minor-league franchises for the next 50 years.1 The Boston Braves’ move to Milwaukee in 1953 began a […]

On September 22, 1962, the second-place San Francisco Giants trailed the Los Angeles Dodgers by four games, with seven contests remaining in the regular-season schedule. One week later the Giants had closed the deficit to one game. In the final game on September 30, Willie Mays’ eighth-inning home run gave San Francisco a 2-1 victory […]

Hard-throwing Dazzy Vance was in agony. Brooklyn sportswriter Thomas W. Meany reported that Vance suffered from serious inflammation in his right shoulder caused by warming up too quickly six days earlier against the Pittsburgh Pirates.1 According to Robins beat reporter Thomas S. Rice, Vance’s right arm was “blue from the rupturing of a blood vessel,” […]

Despite the Seattle Mariners having made three playoff appearances in the previous six years, expectations for the team were tempered heading into the 2001 season. An aging roster, the oldest in the American League, had been stripped of three superstars in a tumultuous 2½-year span. First, a 1998 trade-deadline deal with the Houston Astros had […]

This material was gathered and re-typed from the original newspaper stories by Bill Nowlin, in 2016, to accompany publication of the SABR book Boston’s First Nine: The 1871-75 Boston Red Stockings.   Some Newspaper Coverage of the 1874 European Tour of the Red Stockings and Athletics The bulk of the material presented here is comprised […]