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Before the age of television, umpires worked in anonymity, only a handful of dominant personalities gaining widespread recognition. Among the virtually unknown arbiters is Ernest Cosmos Quigley, an outstanding and influential umpire who also was the greatest sports official in history. Indicative of how overlooked he has been is the fact that even a fairly […]

Who is the real Sammy Sosa? Is he the charismatic slugger whose home-run race with Mark McGwire brought baseball’s fandom back from the ruins of the 1994 strike? Is he the Dominican shoeshine boy from a poverty-stricken family who became a hero in his country and the United States? Is he a steroid cheater who […]

Billy Barnie touched all aspects of baseball before his untimely death in 1900 at age 49. This includes player trades, player contracts, home and away uniforms, three strikes and out, modern schedule making, five-pointed home plates, all-star teams, coaching boxes, overhand pitching, ballpark construction, championship rings, and daily game promotion. Barnie held every conceivable baseball […]

Frankie Frisch, the 35-year-old manager and second baseman of the 1934 St. Louis Cardinals, was an infielder for 19 years, spent 16 years managing NL teams, and put in some time as a broadcaster, all in the National League. His playing and managing exploits won him election to the Hall of Fame. Frank Francis Frisch […]

Life isn’t always a fastball down the middle. Sometimes it is unpredictable, with all the ups and downs and erratic sharp curves of a Wiffle Ball thrown into a still breeze. An original Seattle Mariner, Danny Meyer experienced the full gamut of life’s changes both on and off the field. Through it all, Meyer adjusted, […]

Roy Cullenbine’s greatest skill was unappreciated in his time. Cullenbine walked in 17.8 percent of his plate appearances, the seventh-highest rate in history.1 He set a record by drawing walks in 22 consecutive games. But his extraordinary ability to get on base didn’t impress the people who signed his paychecks. One general manager said he […]

Jesse Levan was the last baseball player to be banned for trying to fix games. A two-time minor-league batting champion, he was held back by injuries and was no longer a prospect when he was banished from professional baseball for life in 1959. He always denied conspiring to throw games, but the damning evidence against […]

 Most famous today for being the second of three baseball-playing brothers, Mateo Alou was part of the first wave of Dominicans who helped change the very culture of American baseball in the 1960s. After years of sporadic playing time, often competing with his brothers, he finally left them and became a batting champion, and one […]

The son of a Chicago policeman, Golden Gloves boxer, and “bonus baby,” Jim O’Toole would become a confident, competitive and highly consistent member of the Reds starting rotation throughout the early 1960s. The lefty made significant contributions to his team’s success in two of the most dramatic seasons in Cincinnati’s long major-league history: 1961 – the […]

Certain types of ballplayers have always populated baseball history. Slow footed sluggers, crafty lefthanders, flame throwing relievers and flashy infielders all make up important baseball clichés. Hall of Famer Max Carey demonstrates all of the qualities of one such type—a hard working, fundamentally sound outfielder with great speed, sure hands, and good contact with a […]

Juan Bell’s big league career began under daunting circumstances. The younger brother of an MVP, he was traded for one future Hall of Famer and expected to dislodge another from his position. Bell battled those expectations — and more than one teammate — over seven seasons (1989-1995) with five teams in the majors, but the […]

There are many Moonlight Grahams. One is a quasi-relative of mine who signed a contract with the Cleveland Indians and made their roster but never got into a major-league game. Carter Hamilton was from a small town in Iowa. He was a pitching star at the University of Iowa and was signed to an Indians […]

Hank O’Day is one of the few men to have played, umpired, and managed at the major-league level. He was a World Series pitching hero. He had one of the greatest starts of any rookie manager in history. He was the home-plate umpire for 23 World Series games, as well as for four no-hitters in […]

Major leaguers have been blessed (or cursed) with colorful nicknames, such as “Pudge,” “Prince Hal,” “Pops,” “Pie,” “Pee Wee,” “Putt Putt,” and those are just some of the ones starting with the letter “P.” To that list, add Tomás “Planchardón” Quiñones, a Puerto Rican right-handed pitcher whose four games in 1947 with the Cincinnati-Indianapolis Clowns […]

A vital rookie starter for one of the best Pittsburgh Pirates rotations of all time, a PGA-caliber professional, and a recognized expert angler, the “Avondale Blossom” — Charley “Whitey” Glazner — was a talented and multifaceted sportsman in the truest sense of the word. Add in a veteran of the Great War, one who pitched […]

Generations ago it would have been difficult to determine which was the more unlikely — a fringe major-league ballplayer ascending to the governorship of his home state and later becoming one of its United States senators, or a Democrat being elected to such lofty posts in then rock-solid Republican New Hampshire. Whichever the case, Fred […]

Eddie Kasko was a major-league infielder with four different teams from 1957 through 1966, an All-Star for the Cincinnati Reds in 1961, and he hit .318 in that year’s World Series. He managed the Boston Red Sox for four full years, 1970 through 1973, with a winning record each season and two third-place and two […]

Rare is the player in major-league history who, after being part of a World Series winner, joins an equally great team in another profession in his post-baseball life. Pitcher Byron Houck provides such an example. He was part of the Philadelphia Athletics’ championship staff in 1913, but his major-league career soon faded away. A decade […]

“It’s too bad,” John Roseboro said, “because a ballplayer would like to be remembered for something better than a bloody brawl, but that’s what everyone always remembers.”1 What everyone remembers is August 22, 1965: the day Juan Marichal bashed Roseboro in the head with a bat. He was so quiet, he was nicknamed “Gabby.” Roseboro […]

Frank Warfield may be one of the least understood and appreciated stars of the Negro Leagues, and possibly one of the most unjustly maligned. He stood just 5-feet-7-inches tall and was slight in stature, but he was feisty, fast, and, some would say, furious. Yet few player-managers in the Negro Leagues achieved as much as […]

A collegiate star at the University of New Orleans, outfielder Ted Wood also stood out for Team USA in international competition in the late 1980s. The first-round draft pick never got an extended trial in the majors, as he appeared in just 47 games from 1991 to 1993. He continued to chase the dream longer […]

In the American criminal justice system, and under the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights, a person accused of a crime is considered innocent until proved guilty. But often the mere fact that he is accused can deprive him of his chosen profession and forever alter his life. So it was with Jesse Levis. A […]

The Minnesota Twins have called Target Field home since 2010. (COURTESY OF STEW THORNLEY)   The Twin Cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul have long been a baseball mecca. The Minneapolis Millers and St. Paul Saints were Triple-A mainstays, and each had a long and distinguished history, being the two teams with the most wins […]

Ken Griffey Jr. slides in with the winning run for the Seattle Mariners on Edgar Martinez’s 11th-inning double to beat the New York Yankees 6-5 in Game Five of the American League Division Series on October 8, 1995. The excitement of the Mariners’ first playoff appearance helped fuel a political effort to build a new […]