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Donald Ray Mincher was a two-time member of the Oakland Athletics. In 1970 he was the team leader in home runs with 27. Before being traded for the second time to the Athletics on July 20, 1972, Mincher homered off Joe Coleman at Detroit on July 10. It was a personal career milestone, his 200th […]

The Pan-American Highway cuts through the northern Andes state of Tachira in western Venezuela, facing Colombia.1 The capital city of San Cristobal hovers 2,694 feet above the Torbes River, developing its own unique identity, more Colombian than Venezuelan. It was here on October 15, 1967, that Carlos Jesus García Guerrero was born.2 During his childhood, […]

The 6-foot tall, 210-pound catcher for the Jersey City Jerseys looked like a giant to the boy. It was Camera Day at Jersey City’s Roosevelt Stadium in 1960. The Jerseys were the Cincinnati Reds’ Triple-A club. The catcher was Dutch Dotterer, a charming and intellectual athlete. Years later, Santa Ana High School’s Athletic Director, Frank Alvarado, would […]

“The mentality of a basestealer is, when you get to first base, you see, you look around and say, ‘Now they’re in my ballpark.’ Know why? Cause I can get a lead and take two steps. Pitcher ducks. Catcher’s coming out. Shortstop’s coming across. Second baseman’s coming across. Center fielder’s coming up. Cause I took […]

Casey Stengel is best remembered for his managerial accomplishments with the juggernaut New York Yankees of the 1950s and the bumbling, beloved New York Mets of the early ’60s, but decades earlier he was a hard-hitting outfielder who compiled a .284 batting average over 14 seasons in the National League. Planting his right foot closer […]

It was one week into the 1977 season. Jim Kaplan of Sports Illustrated alluded to 34-year-old Bill Robinson’s frustrations in his 10th major-league season: “No matter where he is playing — be it Cincinnati or New York or Los Angeles — he is sure to hear it. ‘Weaser,’ someone will call to him from the […]

From the trade of Max “Camera Eye” Bishop before the 1934 season to the arrival of Benny McCoy in 1940, second base was in a state of flux for the Philadelphia Athletics. An infielder from Wisconsin, Stan Sperry, was once said to be a possible answer to manager Connie Mack’s “prayer for a second baseman.” […]

Bill Phillips’s professional baseball career spanned a quarter century from 1890 to 1915. A right-handed pitcher, he was a five-time 20-game winner in the minors and pitched for the Cincinnati Reds for six seasons. A smart and respected baseball man, Phillips managed several teams, most notably the Indianapolis Hoosiers, champions of the Federal League in […]

Soft-spoken Richard Atley Donald once threw 95-mile-per-hour fastballs for the 1939 New York Yankees, the first major league team to win four straight World Series.  He won 12 straight games for them, to set an American League mark for rookies. Atley was a star pitcher for the 1937 Newark Bears, considered by many to be […]

Few players have been as coveted by professional clubs as Paul Pettit was in the spring of 1949. During that high school season, the hard-throwing left-handed pitcher drew crowds to the small southern California town of Lomita. They echoed the influx to the region after oil was discovered there in the early 1920s. Pettit’s powerful […]

Long ago, baseball crossed the Pacific Ocean from the U.S. to Japan. Soon the reserve clause followed. It would reach back from Japan to the U.S. and bite its own tail, like a snake forming a ring that burst into fire–the “Working Agreement.” The first man it trapped was Masanori “Mashi” Murakami, the first Japanese […]

Ellie Rodriguez loved to catch. The catching position put him in the center of the action of a baseball game, from his sandlot days in the Bronx Federation League and a Spanish league in New York City to a nine-year major-league career with five teams. In 1969, Rodriguez was the Kansas City Royals’ only selection […]

Although there are many hard-luck cases in the annals of baseball history, Fred Cambria’s story is one of the most memorable. A highly touted college and minor-league pitcher, Cambria made his major-league debut with the Pittsburgh Pirates late in the 1970 season. Only 22 years old, he pitched effectively, going 1-2 with a 3.51 ERA. […]

Just five short years after the Pittsburgh Pirates won the 1979 World Series championship, the team had fallen to last in the National League East. They were on their way there again in 1985 – but a rebuild was under way, as the trade for Bob Kipper that August showed. The deal in which the […]

In January 1956, a few months after Ellis Kinder had been sold by the Boston Red Sox to the St. Louis Cardinals after eight years in the Hub, his friends threw him an Appreciation Night at Boston’s Sheraton Plaza Hotel. In attendance were the governor, the mayor, several former teammates, and 600 assorted guests. Birdie […]

Terry Collins never made it to the majors as a player – but he eventually found success as a manager. Starting in 1971, Collins spent many years bouncing around the minors as a light-hitting infielder turned coach and field leader. He managed two big-league clubs in the 1990s plus one in Japan a decade later […]

When walking through the exhibits at the National Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, New York, it is difficult not to absorb slices of the game’s history and lore, and to learn about the role the sport has played in both American and world history. It also quickly becomes clear that the stories of the […]

Game Six of the 1986 World Series between the Boston Red Sox and the New York Mets will forever be a part of baseball lore. Many fans will say that no matter how many games you may attend, there is always something bound to happen that you may have never seen before. This was certainly […]

During the fourth game of the 1927 World Series, Pittsburgh hurler Johnny Miljus threw a wild pitch in the ninth inning that scored Earle Combs from third base, completing a sweep by the New York Yankees. Perhaps the happiest player that day was New York shortstop Mark Koenig. His .500 batting average in the Series […]

Three months removed from high school, hard-throwing right-hander Joe Coleman burst on the national scene by tossing a four-hit complete-game victory in his debut with the Washington Senators in 1965. Among the most durable pitchers of his day, Coleman averaged 15 wins and 252 innings over an eight-year span (1968-1975) for the Senators and Detroit […]

In 1957 the Milwaukee Braves seized that city’s sole major-league baseball title, beating the New York Yankees in a memorable seven-game fall classic. It capped an odyssey begun when the National League franchise moved from Boston shortly before the 1953 season — the first big-league club to change sites since 1903.1 The Braves’ stunning success […]

Joseph John Brovia, who starred on California sandlots and in high school as a righthanded pitcher and a lefthanded-hitting outfielder, signed his first professional contract before he turned eighteen in 1940. When he joined the San Francisco Seals for the 1941 season, he was already a rising star. By the time his playing days were […]

Following the Pittsburgh Pirates’ loss to the Chicago Cubs on October 1, 2000, 60-year-old Willie Stargell emerged to throw a ceremonial final pitch at the soon-to-be-demolished Three Rivers Stadium. Even though most people who followed the Pirates knew “Pops” was in poor health his frail, spectral appearance that afternoon was shocking. He was almost unrecognizable, […]

As dawn turned to noon on this Labor Day, Boston fans reveled in the success of both major-league entries. The Red Sox led the Yankees by half a game, with the Cleveland Indians lurking 3½ games back.The Braves clung to a 2½-game lead over St. Louis and Brooklyn, but only a single game in the […]