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Among the smiling faces seated in the front row in the 1970 Naugatuck High School baseball team photo is that of senior tri-captain John Caneira. There was good reason for Caneira and his teammates to be happily posing for the camera despite losing a marathon struggle in the previous year’s Connecticut Class A final, for the […]

Fritz Buelow exhibited many positives. A “hard working and conscientious backstop”1 with a strong arm, he was popular with teammates and kept them on their toes as a prankster. “His humorous quips and quick repartee irked umpires,” but made him a fan favorite.2 He was a student of the game and was used frequently as […]

Harry Arthur “Cookie” Lavagetto is best known for one swing of the bat against Bill Bevens of the New York Yankees on an October day in 1947. But his baseball career, as a player and manager, was much more than that. The six-feet, 170-pound Lavagetto played professional baseball for ten seasons over a fourteen-year span, […]

“It happens every time. They cheer him even before he throws a ball. It’s the way he comes across. He’s a humble person, the underdog making good. People can relate to him. He’s not that big in stature (6 feet, 180 pounds) and he is not overpowering on the mound. Randy’s the common man’s pitcher.” — John […]

J. Leslie Wilkinson (1878-1964) was one of the most respected and influential figures in the history of Black baseball. His trailblazing role in helping to found the Negro National League in 1920, in addition to his establishing and operating the renowned Kansas City Monarchs for many years, earned him a plaque in the National Baseball […]

1986 – a season that tugs at the heartstrings of every Boston Red Sox fan who watched and listened to the American League Championship Series and the World Series. The World Series was a classic seven-game affair. If the Red Sox had kept a two-run lead going with two outs in the bottom of the […]

Early in his 16-year major-league career, Johnny Callison was labeled “the next Mickey Mantle.” His manager with the Phillies, Gene Mauch, said Callison could “run, throw, field, and hit with power. There’s nothing he can’t do well on the ball field.”1 These encomiums proved burdens that the always sensitive Callison found difficult to live up […]

John Milner idolized Hank Aaron, lockered next to Willie Mays, and on his best days could hit home runs with as much authority as either man. While injuries and inconsistency prevented Milner from becoming an elite slugger, he carved out a 12-year career for the Mets, Pirates, and Expos, helping each of those clubs reach […]

“Hometown boy makes good” is a classic trope of film, fiction, and sports pages. The dirty-faced boy from the sandlots grows up to be the star of the local nine, the surrogate son or brother, buddy or boyfriend of every fan. When the hometown boy fails to make good — or good enough — the […]

There is a dream of baseball that most Americans know. A small-town boy from a working-class family making it to the major leagues and pitching. Few realize their dream. David Sanders did. He progressed from being an all-state player for his high school in rural Kansas to contending for pitching records at the collegiate level […]

Bill McCool was once one of the most promising pitchers in baseball – a teenager with a fastball that was often too much for major leaguers to handle. But bad luck and injuries derailed his career before he turned 25. William John McCool was born on July 14, 1944, to Carl and Dolores McCool. He […]

Paul Snyder was the indispensable man behind the scenes of the Atlanta Braves’ success. If anyone has said a bad word about him, it has not been recorded in the hothouse world of baseball. A baseball lifer since he started his career as a Braves minor-league outfielder-first baseman in 1958, Snyder is a rarity in […]

John Clapp was a part of so many beginnings in baseball history that his middle name should have been Genesis. He was the second batter that the Cincinnati Red Stockings faced in their Eastern tour of 1869; in the opener of Al Spalding’s groundbreaking tour of the British Isles in 1874, he delivered the game-winning […]

“You might say I’ve seen some pretty good pitching. But I’ve never seen anything like Smoky Joe Wood in 1912. He won 34 games that year, 10 of them shutouts, and 16 of those wins were in a row. It so happened that that was the same year Walter Johnson also won 16 in a […]

For as long as baseball has kept official statistics, those statistics have been subject to change. Many of the more prominent recalculations involve records of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.1 Multiple revisions to the career win total of nineteenth-century workhorse Charles “Old Hoss” Radbourn have brought it back to 310, a number first cited […]

Román Mejías spent only one season with the Houston Colt .45s, but he made the most of it. In 1962, the Colts’ first season in the National League, right fielder Mejías – an expansion-draft pickup from the Pittsburgh Pirates1 – led the team in many offensive categories, including hits, home runs, and runs batted in.2 […]

Just four years after playing sandlot ball in Toronto, highly-touted Vince Barton appeared to be on the verge of stardom with the Chicago Cubs.1 The 23-year-old slugger had just blasted a pair of homers and driven in four runs in the second game of an August 4, 1931, twin bill against the Cincinnati Reds. Herbert […]

Veteran New York sportswriters were impressed with 21-year-old Sandy Koufax’s overpowering four-hitter with 11 punchouts at Wrigley Field in the Brooklyn Dodgers’ one-sided win over the Chicago Cubs on August 1, 1957. “Sandy’s strikeout record against the Cubs is remarkable,” declared New York Times scribe Roscoe McGowen.1 Dick Young of the Daily News quipped, “Koufax, […]

The 1959 New York Yankees (79-75) posted the franchise’s lowest win total since 1925, finishing a distant third behind the first-place Chicago White Sox (94-60) and the second-place Cleveland Indians (89-65). It was a significant dip in the Yankees’ fortunes after 10 American League pennants and 8 World Series titles in the previous 12 seasons. […]

Between 2008, when PitchF/X systems began measuring pitch speeds in every major-league ballpark, and the end of the 2023 season, nearly 11 million pitches were thrown in regular-season games.1 Roughly 0.2 percent of those (21,712) traveled at speeds of 100 mph or more. Only 10 – fewer than 1 in 1 million – touched 105 […]

It’s often assumed that boys and men play baseball and girls and women play softball, but girls and women have played baseball – at both the amateur and professional levels – for as long as the game has existed. Students at all-female Vassar College formed two baseball teams in 1866 but didn’t get to play […]

The last time the Boston Red Sox had played a game in Buffalo was on July 6, 1917 – and that was an exhibition game. In the first two decades of the twentieth century, the team played four exhibition games there, all against local minor-league teams: April 18, 1903: Boston 8, Buffalo 7 April 13, […]

When an active player or manager dies during the regular season, surviving teammates face a difficult choice: Play the next scheduled game in their honor, or postpone it in their memory? In the twenty-first century the trend has been to stay off the field. Teams – or front offices – that have chosen to postpone […]

Editor’s note: During our Stay Home With SABR initiative, enjoy these light-hearted Dispatches From the Mudville Bureau by Joanne Hulbert of SABR’s Boston Chapter to stay engaged with baseball until the games return. Check out what’s new and keep up with all the news in the Boston Chapter on Facebook at BostonSABR or on Instagram […]