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William Edward White, from a Brown University team photo   For fans attending the June 21, 1879, game between the Providence Grays and the Cleveland Blues, there didn’t seem anything very special about the day. The only odd note was, perhaps, Providence’s first baseman. Providence’s usual starter, veteran Joe Start, had broken his finger and, […]

Growing up in the Pacific Northwest, John Leovich excelled at baseball, football, and hockey with the talent to play each sport professionally. He made national headlines in 1941 when he decided to leave college to pursue a baseball career with the Philadelphia Athletics. That same summer Leovich joined the elite fraternity of players who have […]

“I didn’t like how my baseball career ended, particularly because I was so young. I won only 19 games total. But I realized how fortunate I was to have made it to the majors. Not many make it. And how many guys who played for many years didn’t get to play in the World Series […]

Do we call him Junior or Gene? Was Junior his given name or a nickname? Could it be both? No matter. As a fresh-faced youngster Junior Thompson helped the Cincinnati Reds win two consecutive National League pennants. As a mature veteran Gene Thompson impacted the game of baseball for half a century. Junior Eugene Thompson […]

Willie Ramsdell, nicknamed “Willie the Knuck,” mixed a colorful personality with the unpredictable knuckleball to produce a 13-year professional baseball career. Ramsdell made two brief pitching appearances for the 1947 Brooklyn Dodgers, but was ineligible for the World Series. He subsequently pitched in 32 games for the Dodgers over the next two seasons, and then […]

The frail young boy was undersized for his age and sickly. His doctor recommended outdoor exercise. Although he certainly did not look like an athlete, the lad took up baseball, despite the objections of his overprotective mother. Though smaller than his teammates (as an adult he stood 5-feet-7 and weighed 140 pounds), he developed a […]

When asked to name the best catchers of the nineteenth century, most baseball historians wouldn’t have to name very many before they mentioned Charlie Bennett, a fan favorite who was admired for his intense toughness and true love of the game. He was one of the most durable and best defensive catchers during an era […]

A first-round draft pick by Pittsburgh in the 1973 amateur draft, Steve Nicosia made his major-league debut with the Pirates on July 8, 1978. Plagued by injuries throughout his eight-year career in the majors, Nicosia had a lifetime batting average of .248 and hit 11 home runs in 938 at-bats. Though he was mainly a […]

Outfielder Algie McBride is not a household name today. Yet at the end of the 19th century and into the first year of the 20th, he was a staple of the Cincinnati Reds lineup, playing alongside future Hall of Famer Jake Beckley. While not Hall of Fame material himself, he was a solid player who […]

“I had reached the point where I simply lived to hit. How can I say it without sounding foolish? I craved hitting a baseball in the way a samurai craved following the Way of the Sword. It was my life.” – Sadaharu Oh, A Zen Way of Baseball (1984)   Easily the most lionized athlete […]

Day after day at Salt Lake City, Utah in 1925, Bill Essick, a scout for the New York Yankees, watched a young infielder named Tony Lazzeri. Essick reported to Ed Barrow, the Yankees’ business manager (general manager) that Lazzeri was hitting the ball exceptionally well, batting .355 and hitting 60 home runs. “But the air […]

Baseball lore is filled with stories of players who distinguished themselves on the diamond despite physical limitations. Examples include Dummy Hoy, Three-Finger Brown, One-Armed Pete Gray, Monty Stratton, and more recently, pitcher Jim Abbott. But Washington Senators left-handed pitcher Bert Shepard remains the only player to have ever played in the major leagues on an […]

A tall, lanky South Carolinian, Nate Snell didn’t debut in the majors until age 32. “It didn’t come as quickly as I would have liked,” he said. “But the point is that it came.”1 With good control and an outstanding sinker that induced lots of ground balls, the right-hander recorded a 3.29 ERA in 219 […]

Willie Smith is best remembered for his game-winning pinch-homer on Opening Day for the 1969 Chicago Cubs, but he surely deserves to be recalled for a much more enduring achievement: He was the last major leaguer — and the only African-American player ever — to have pitched and played different positions in the field in […]

It would have been fun to see Gene Brabender wrestle with Frank Howard: “a polar bear versus a grizzly,” suggested his old teammate, Jim Bouton. At 6 feet, 5 1/2 inches and 225 to 240 pounds, “Bender” gave away roughly two inches and 30-40 pounds to “Hondo.” Yet the big man from Black Earth, Wisconsin, […]

Baseball has always loved an underdog. Rugged southpaw Wally Hebert gave fans across the nation during the Great Depression what they craved, at least for a short while: a story about David defeating Goliath. Hebert went from the sandlots of Louisiana in 1929 to the St. Louis Browns and the big leagues in 1931. In […]

In baseball history, few major leaguers have turned to sports writing as a full-time profession after their playing days. Sam Crane and Tim Murnane were nineteenth-century players who then wrote for, respectively, the Boston Globe and the New York Evening Journal. Charley Walters twirled in a half-dozen games for the 1969 Twins before becoming a […]

In a 1987 Sports Illustrated article on teammate Eric Davis, Cincinnati Reds outfielder Dave Parker said, “Eric is blessed with world-class speed, great leaping ability, the body to play until he was 42, tremendous bat speed and power, and a throwing arm you wouldn’t believe.”1 Parker was right on all counts but one; Davis suffered […]

Played out before the empty seats of Washington’s Griffith and D.C. Stadiums in the early 1960s, the “breath-takingly impressive”1 launch of Ken Retzer’s career was nearly “invisible to the [national sports]writers … [to the point that he was] mistakenly identified as Dick Retzer” in a Sporting News article about the rich crop class of rookie […]

When the Boston Red Sox broke camp in 1976 after winning the American League pennant the previous year, a young and relatively unknown left-hander claimed a spot on a roster that included future Hall of Famers Carlton Fisk, Fergie Jenkins, Jim Rice, and Carl Yastrzemski. The expectations weren’t high at such a young age, but […]

While only one major-league pitcher has lost 20 games in a single season during the twenty-first century, the now dubiously recognized feat did not carry the same stigma a century ago. In fact, during the 1901-1910 decade, 12 different pitchers for Boston’s National League entry produced 18 seasons of 20 or more losses. Among them […]

In the 30-year period from 1957 to 1986, the Baltimore Orioles compiled the best record in the major leagues, collecting three World Series championships, six American League pennants, and eight division titles along the way. And then suddenly, after winning the 1983 World Series, the team went into a rapid decline, winning progressively fewer games […]

An ugly incident on July 3, 1965, between budding superstar Dick Allen and veteran bench player Frank Thomas threatened to tear the Philadelphia Phillies apart. It began with some verbal sparring during batting practice and quickly escalated. Allen punched Thomas, who responded by striking Allen on the shoulder with his bat.1 It took seven or […]

The American Association was already two weeks into its 1887 schedule when the St. Louis Browns and Cleveland Blues met at St. Louis’s Sportsman’s Park on April 30. (In the National League, by contrast, the 1887 season had not begun until April 28.) The two-time defending league champion Browns (6-3) – winners of the “World […]