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Lou Kretlow displayed outstanding stuff over parts of 10 seasons (1946, 1948-56) with the Detroit Tigers, St. Louis Browns, Chicago White Sox, Baltimore Orioles, and Kansas City Athletics. Yet the right-hander finished with a major league record of just 27-47 and walked an average of six batters per nine innings. Late in Kretlow’s career, his […]

The velocity of his fastballs earned him the nickname “The Hoosier Thunderbolt.” Amos Rusie played long before the invention of the radar gun, so we don’t know how fast his pitches were. John McGraw said of Rusie’s fastballs, “You can’t hit ’em if you can’t see ’em.”1 Sportswriters of the day claimed that batters were […]

Right-handed pitcher Bob Spade had one notable season in the majors (17-12 with 2.74 ERA) with the 1908 Cincinnati Reds but it almost never happened. An ill-advised trade attempt and paperwork nightmare necessitated the Reds ownership formulating a deal for Spade even while he was still in uniform with them. Spade had two more lackluster […]

When he made his debut in a mid-August 1923 game against the Philadelphia Athletics, Chicago left-hander Paul Castner secured a line for himself in the record book of the national pastime. That entry, however, would be a slender one, as Castner made only five more big-league appearances before abandoning the game at the close of […]

He was the Bill Buckner of his era. Mickey Owen only committed four errors during his best year as a major league catcher, the 1941 campaign with the Brooklyn Dodgers. Three came in the regular season and one in the postseason. That last error, a dropped third strike with two out in the ninth inning, […]

“Baseball’s clichés remain largely unchanged through the years,” observed the writer Mordecai Richler in a 1986 essay for GQ.1 His first examples were the types of gripes from marginal pitchers and backup fielders: “If only they give me a chance to start, I know I can help this team,” and “I know I’m a .300 […]

Throughout his 12-year major-league career, Ted Sizemore was known for his versatility and competitiveness, as well as for his love of baseball. When he was playing youth sports, some skeptics told him he was too short to be a major leaguer (sources would later claim he was either 5-feet-9”1 or 5-feet-10”; but in high school, […]

Brooklyn boy John Franco grew up watching the New York Mets at old Shea Stadium, which became his home park for 14 of 21 seasons in the majors. There the pitcher entered games to the ringing chords of Chuck Berry’s “Johnny B. Goode.” Franco was good – he had to be, to play until the […]

Contemporary accounts of Cleveland second baseman Bill Wambsganss’ fielding almost universally used the word “slick” to describe his play. Ever since his final year in the majors, 1926, he’s largely been remembered as the man who pulled off the only unassisted triple play in World Series history but he was also an important member of […]

All across the world, when it comes to moments in baseball there are various scenes that play out in the minds of boys and girls. Most will think of hitting a home run to win the World Series a la Bill Mazeroski off Ralph Terry or Joe Carter off Mitch Williams or even Warren Morris […]

A name can sometimes be confusing. Four years into his major-league career, Joel Edward Horlen said that though the news media and fans knew him by his proper name, Joel, “All my friends call me Joe and that’s what I go by. When I got into baseball, it became Joel somehow. I guess because that’s […]

Lefty Grove may have been baseball’s greatest all-time pitcher. He was certainly its most dominant. No one matched his nine ERA titles, and his .680 winning percentage (300-141) is the highest among 300 game winners (eighth best overall). After winning 111 games in a minor-league career that delayed his major-league debut until he was 25, Grove led […]

A generation after Johnny Bench’s last game, he remains the gold standard for baseball catchers of any era. By the age of 20 he had redefined how to play the position, and by 22 he was the biggest star, at any position, in all of baseball. Catching eventually took its toll, moving him to the […]

With his 29th pitch of the game on October 21, 1975, Cincinnati Reds relief pitcher Pat Darcy retired his sixth consecutive Boston Red Sox batter, Carl Yastrzemski, on a weak grounder to shortstop Dave Concepción to end the 11th inning and keep the score tied in the most pressure-packed game of his life: Game Six […]

Like his contemporary in the National League, Mickey Doolan, George McBride was the prototypical “good-field, no-hit” shortstop during the Deadball Era. Widely viewed as the best defensive shortstop in his league, McBride struggled mightily at the bat. A relatively large shortstop, standing 5’11” and weighing 170 pounds, McBride was described in the press as an […]

“I prided myself on being a good defensive catcher,” three-time All-Star and two-time Gold Glove winner Johnny Edwards told the author.1 Edwards debuted on the Cincinnati Reds’ pennant-winning squad in 1961, inaugurating a 14-year career, including a one-year stop on the 1968 NL champion St. Louis Cardinals before spending his final campaigns with the Houston […]

Steve Crawford was a pitcher who spent most of his 10 major-league seasons fighting for a job on a major-league roster, the majority of them with the Boston Red Sox. He was a once-promising prospect, but became almost a forgotten man by 1986. He would have been left off the Red Sox’ postseason roster that […]

On October 19, 1981, the Los Angeles Dodgers came from behind to defeat the Montreal Expos in the rubber match of the National League Championship Series. The next day, they found themselves in New York for Game One of the World Series against their longtime “bitter” adversary, the Yankees.1 The well-rested Yankees had swept the […]

Chet Laabs of the St. Louis Browns is carried off the field by his teammates after hitting two home runs in the Browns’ pennant-clinching victory over the Detroit Tigers on October 1, 1944. (St. Louis Star/Newspapers.com)   By October 1, 1944, the United States was fully engaged in World War II. War had raged for […]

This 1865 photograph of the Atlantics of Brooklyn by Charles H. Williamson depicts the “Champion Nine” of 1864 and was given to opposing teams who played the Atlantic Club. (Library of Congress)   The Atlantic Club of Brooklyn had every reason to feel confident as they traveled to Newark, New Jersey, on August 18, 1865. […]

After the Atlanta Braves staved off elimination with a win in Toronto two nights earlier, Game Six of the 1992 World Series once again began with the historic possibility of the Toronto Blue Jays becoming the first non-US and first Canadian-based team ever to win the fall classic. In Toronto’s first at-bat, Devon White singled, […]

Astronaut L. Gordon Cooper Jr. had a wonderful day on Wednesday, May 22, 1963. He was feted to a ticker-tape parade in New York City and an audience with President and First Lady John and Jacqueline Kennedy.1 A week earlier, Cooper had commanded the Faith 7 spacecraft and orbited Earth 22 times in the last […]

The New York Mets were struggling to stay in contention in the National League East in July 1989. After winning six games in a row in the middle of July, they closed out the month by losing seven straight. At the trade deadline on July 31, Mookie Wilson was traded and Frank Viola joined the […]

This article was originally published in SABR’s Bittersweet Goodbye: The Black Barons, the Grays, and the 1948 Negro League World Series (2017), edited by Frederick C. Bush and Bill Nowlin.   It has been asserted that baseball makes an effective metaphor for the history of the United States, reflecting the changing circumstances and values of […]