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“Why pitch nine innings when you can get just as famous pitching two?” — Sparky Lyle He did just that. Albert Walter “Sparky” Lyle never started a game in his 16-year major league career, has 238 career saves, and was the first American League relief pitcher to win a Cy Young Award (1977). “I wonder […]

Some former major-league ballplayers are remembered for hitting an unforgettable home run, while others are remembered for a very successful business career after retiring from playing baseball. Charlie James, a St. Louis native who played for the Cardinals from 1960 to 1964, is remembered for both. Charles Wesley James was born on December 22, 1937, […]

What Tommy Davis accomplished as a major leaguer on one good leg, most players would be proud to do on two. Not that this sums up his athletic career, but it is an important backdrop to his improbable baseball odyssey. Davis seemed ready to have his ticket punched for Cooperstown as he entered his ball-playing […]

America loves an underdog. It favors stories of players who weren’t given a chance because they were too small or didn’t have a traditional background, but they pushed and persevered and in the end made the team. Wayne LaMaster’s baseball career isn’t widely remembered today, but it is the classic underdog story of a player […]

Al Smith was an accomplished ballplayer whose major-league career spanned 12 seasons with four American League teams. Primarily an outfielder, he played six positions as a major leaguer and was a fine defender with a strong arm and good speed. Smith finished with a .272 lifetime batting average, hit 164 home runs, and reached base […]

Helen Dettweiler was “The Girl of Summer” in 1938 when she became the first woman to broadcast professional baseball, according to The Sporting News. A promotional stunt for a radio sponsor, it was just one stop in a life of adventure. She served as a World War II code-breaker and military pilot, and was one […]

On Monday evening, September 22, 1947, the “sizzling steaks [were] on the house . . . [and] free gravy down the shirt front” was de rigueur at 600 Flatbush Avenue.1 Pitcher Hugh Casey, proprietor of Hugh Casey’s Steak and Chop House, was optimistically throwing a victory dinner party for his Dodgers teammates. Brooklyn’s beloved “Bums” […]

The Mike Ivie story is so illogical it was once called the strangest in baseball history.1 A young catcher picked first in the 1970 MLB draft and hailed as “the next Johnny Bench” failed to realize his potential because he wouldn’t try. Consequently, neither Ivie nor anyone else would ever know whether he truly had […]

In three different seasons — 1939, 1941, and 1944 — Frank McCormick hit home runs more often than he struck out. In his entire 13-year career, encompassing 5,723 at-bats and more than 6,200 plate appearances, the slugging first baseman had just 189 strikeouts — 10 fewer whiffs than Ryan Howard achieved in only 529 at-bats […]

It can rarely be said that a major leaguer has more success with homers after his playing days than during them, but the careers of George Twombly provide an example. Though he lacked for homers in baseball’s Deadball Era, he later found success in raising homing and fancy pigeons and as an author and publisher […]

Former major league player and scout Lenny Yochim once said in a New Orleans Times-Picayune interview, “I had a good life doing something I love.”1 From his teenage days in the Crescent City in the 1940s until his retirement in 2002, Yochim spent practically every summer participating in some aspect of the sport to which […]

At times, it looked like José “Coco” Laboy would never get a shot in the majors. When he finally did, ten years after his professional career began, his rookie year made many wonder why it took so long. On his way up, no one would have ever accused Coco Laboy of having it easy. He […]

Darrell Dean Johnson worked in baseball as a catcher, a coach, a manager best known for taking the 1975 Red Sox to Game Seven of the World Series, and as a scout. He was born in the small community of Horace, Nebraska, on August 25, 1928, but grew up on the West Coast, so much […]

Ron Luciano was a football All-American, baseball umpire, TV broadcaster, and best-selling author. He barged through the world like a gnu amid a herd of Shetland ponies, entertaining many, offending a few, and hiding behind a cheerful and outrageous persona until life somehow proved unbearable. Everyone knew him, but nobody did. He was born June […]

Everyone has his baseball dream when growing up, but few get the opportunity to realize that one special moment. On October 12, 1956, the New York Yankees and the Brooklyn Dodgers played the seventh game of the World Series. The Yankees had lost the first two games but had come back to win the next […]

Baltimore Elite Giants pitchers at Oriole/Terrapin Park, 1940. Left to right: Emery Adams, Satchel Davis, Eddie Dixon, Woody Williams, Willie Hubert, and Bill Barnes. (Courtesy of David Stinson and Bernard McKenna)   The 1939 Negro National League Championship Series featured a matchup between the Homestead Grays, in pursuit of their third consecutive league championship, and […]

Anticipation grew with each home run. It was late summer 1998, and Roger Maris’s single-season record of 61 homers appeared in reach by not one but two players: the St. Louis Cardinals’ Mark McGwire and the Chicago Cubs’ Sammy Sosa. But throughout that two-man race to 62, few had acknowledged another milestone possibility: two perfect […]

The Brooklyn Dodgers were all smiles after they swept the Yankees at Ebbets Field, leaving them just one game away from their elusive World Series championship. Duke Snider, the hero of the fifth game after hitting two home runs, was asked if it was his biggest day as a player. Snider responded, “No, that’ll be […]

What happens when the worst team in the American League meets the worst team in the Class B Interstate League for a late-season offday exhibition game? Only 956 people could have told you firsthand, because that was the paltry reported crowd on the night of September 7, 1943, when the Philadelphia Athletics (44-84, 35½ games […]

The New York Mets came into existence in 1962 and were one of the worst teams in baseball history, losing 120 games. The 1963 season was much of the same for Casey Stengel’s Mets. They lost 111 games and finished last for the second straight year. The Mets of that era were lovable losers, with […]

David Ortiz addresses the crowd at Fenway Park on April 20, 2013. (MICHAEL IVINS / BOSTON RED SOX)   Monday, April 15, 2013, was Patriots Day in Massachusetts, a state holiday commemorating the Battles of Lexington and Concord. Patriots Day is famous for two sporting events — the Boston Marathon, and the morning Boston Red […]

Kevin McReynolds and Rich “Goose” Gossage were teammates for three years with the San Diego Padres and were major contributors to a Padres team that played in the 1984 World Series. After McReynolds was traded to the New York Mets during the 1986-87 offseason, Gossage had some unkind words for his former teammate. The outspoken […]

The Brooklyn Dodgers, who had won 11 in a row between May 5 and May 16, 1945, had fallen on hard times. They went on a six-game losing streak, the last three of which were the first three games of the four-game set in St. Louis. The Dodgers’ futility at the Cardinals’ home field had […]

Sunday, September 30 was supposed to be the last day of the most memorable 1951 National League season. The New York Giants, 13 ½ games behind the Brooklyn Dodgers on August 26, had come roaring back to tie the Dodgers for the lead heading into that last day. They were playing the Braves in Boston […]