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David Wright, who possesses more team batting records than any New York Met,1 was arguably the team’s best position player ever. Wright finished in the top 10 in NL MVP voting four times, including 2007, when he finished fourth. He represented the Mets as a National League (NL) All-Star five consecutive years and seven times […]

Four men named Dave Roberts have played major league baseball. David Leonard Roberts, who appeared in 91 games in the 1960s for the Houston Colt .45s and Pittsburgh Pirates, is probably the least known, at least in the United States.1 But across the Pacific in Japan, that Dave Roberts is by far the best known […]

Suter Sullivan was a standout player on what was arguably the worst ballclub in major league baseball history, the woefully inept 1899 Cleveland Spiders. After the Spiders lost their 100th game of the season, the New York Times wrote, “Sullivan seems to be out of place on such a poor team as the Clevelands. He […]

When manager John McGraw needed a clutch win for his New York Giants during their four-year run as National League champions (1921-1924), he often relied on ace southpaw Art Nehf, winner of 184 games for four teams in his 15-year career (1915-1929). Described as a “money pitcher” by sportswriter Frederick G. Lieb, Nehf won the […]

In a pitching career that lasted 10 years in professional baseball, and considerably longer in adult-league competition, all 22 of Dan Morogiello’s major league appearances came in 1983. The lefty was an unsung hero for the Baltimore Orioles team that won that season’s World Series. Daniel Joseph Morogiello was born on March 26, 1955, in […]

“Cannon Ball Redding and others of days gone by had plenty of speed, but Frank Wickware, speed ball artist from Coffeyville, Kan., was recognized as the king until LeRoy (Satchel) Paige arrived on the scene with his fast ball.” — Chicago Defender, 19301   Frank Wickware was one of the premier Negro pitchers from 1910 […]

Eleanor Callow was more than just the greatest power hitter in All-American Girls Professional Baseball League (AAGPBL) history. On top of being the all-time leader in home runs and triples, Callow was perhaps the league’s best all-around position player. A speedy outfielder with a strong throwing arm, Callow ranks in the Top 10 in career […]

Cecil Duff was a fixture of the semiprofessional circuits of northeast Oregon before pitching three games for the Chicago White Sox in September of 1922. When his playing days were done, Duff returned to Oregon to work in the lumber mills, briefly managing a semipro team called the Loggers. With the ponderosa pine forests depleted […]

Australian Chris Oxspring pitched in just five big-league ballgames in September 2005. However, he also performed in Nippon Professional Baseball, the Korea Baseball Organization (KBO), and the Australian Baseball League (ABL). In addition, the righty represented his homeland in international competition — most notably in the 2004 Summer Olympics. In the semifinal against Japan’s “Dream […]

In a nine-year career spent with three teams, outfielder Tito Landrum never received more than 205 official at-bats in a season. Yet he earned two World Series rings and was a League Championship Series hero for both the 1983 Orioles and 1985 Cardinals. Terry Lee Landrum was born on October 25, 1954 in Joplin. Missouri. […]

Mark DeJohn was never a household name. As of 2015 he was monitoring minor-league practices for the St. Louis Cardinals. Though his title, field coordinator, was modest and his public profile was low, DeJohn fulfilled his two primary goals: “I just want to stay in the game and be a Cardinal.”1 DeJohn was a light-hitting, […]

In retirement, former major leaguer Johnny Romano took up flying radio-controlled model airplanes near his retirement home in Florida. He liked to fly them high and far. There was a time, though, when those terms — high and far — also referred to his ability as a hard-hitting All-Star catcher for the Cleveland Indians and […]

The school system in Jackson, Michigan, discontinued the baseball program about the time Benny Frey reached high school. Undaunted, Benny learned to pitch on the sandlots and from his brothers. He played summer ball for a variety of teams in Michigan, Indiana, and Ohio before being signed by the Toledo Mud Hens of the Double-A […]

On June 12, 1996, the Birmingham Barons returned to historic Rickwood Field after an eight-year absence for the first Rickwood Classic. Before the game with the Memphis Chicks, the team honored former Baron Walt Dropo and Birmingham baseball legend Lorenzo “Piper” Davis. As the capacity crowd of over 10,000 cheered Davis, he must have reflected […]

“I’m going to have a good year because I’m Al Oliver. I always have a good year. The question is how good.”1 That confident self-assessment came in 1978, a little over halfway through this slashing line-drive hitter’s long and successful career. In 18 seasons, the lefty-swinging first baseman-outfielder amassed 2,743 hits and posted a .303 […]

Three years before Willie Mays made perhaps the most famous catch in baseball history, he made a throw for the ages. Although Mays’s iconic over-the-shoulder catch of a long drive by Vic Wertz in Game One of the 1954 World Series is better known, the finest defensive play of his career might have been on […]

The 1961 World Series between the Cincinnati Reds and the New York Yankees moved to Cincinnati’s Crosley Field for a pivotal third game with the Series tied at a game apiece. The Reds, under temperamental manager Fred Hutchinson, had won the National League pennant by four games over the Los Angeles Dodgers.1 They were in […]

Richie Hebner entered the 1976 season without a contract. Given what the Pittsburgh Pirates wanted to pay him, it’s understandable. General Manager Joe L. Brown offered a 20 percent pay cut—the highest reduction allowed—after Hebner, who had broken into the majors playing in two games with the Pirates in 1968, refused to agree to an […]

The Los Angeles Dodgers entered Game One of the 1966 World Series against the Baltimore Orioles on October 5 as 8-to-5 favorites.1 They had swept the New York Yankees in 1963 and had defeated the Minnesota Twins in seven games the previous season, so it was understandable that the oddsmakers predicted a third title in […]

After the Cubs had split the first two games of the 2016 World Series in Cleveland, they returned home to the friendly confines of Wrigley Field for what would be the first fall classic game at the venerable stadium since October 10, 1945. On that date, Chicago’s North Siders had lost the seventh game of […]

“It was the kind of game that made you talk to yourself,” wrote Lou Smith of the Cincinnati Enquirer.1 Lou Chapman of the Milwaukee Sentinel suggested that the game made fans, players, and the coaching staff “ready for the psychiatrist’s couch.”2 Somehow the Braves were held hitless for 9⅔ innings, yet won the game. Coming […]

The 1880 Chicago White Stockings were unstoppable, winning 67 against only 17 losses. Their .798 winning percentage has never been equaled by another National League team.1 During that dominant season, no pitcher gave Chicago more trouble than Jim McCormick. A first-year captain of the Cleveland Blues,2 McCormick defeated the White Sox four times, including twice […]

The wins pile up as the years pass by. The first win for Boston’s American League franchise came on April 30, 1901. The Boston Americans had lost their first three games before beating the Philadelphia Athletics, 8-6, in 10 innings. Cy Young was the winning pitcher. First named the Red Sox in 1908, they hit […]

Utility infielder John Kennedy joined the Boston Red Sox on June 26, 1970, purchased from the Milwaukee Brewers and arriving from the Triple-A Portland Beavers.1 Kennedy had broken into the big leagues with the Washington Senators on September 5, 1962, and he broke in with a bang. In his first big-league at-bat, Kennedy – pinch-hitting […]