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“He has no weakness as a hitter. Pitch him inside, outside, high, low, fast stuff, breaking balls-anything you throw he can handle. He swings with the pitch; that is why he’s so great, He has no holes.”1 New York Yankee pitcher Catfish Hunter’s assessment of what it was like to pitch to Rod Carew may […]

Tommy Barrett hit for some very good averages and stole a lot of bases in the minor leagues. Originally a New York Yankees farmhand, he broke into major league baseball with the Philadelphia Phillies in 1988, making 36 of his 54 big league appearances. He got into 14 more games for the Phillies in 1989 […]

“Carmen Fanzone always led a double life.” That’s how Jerry Crowe led a story about the former ballplayer and trumpeter that ran in the Los Angeles Times.1 Primarily a third baseman on the diamond, Fanzone played in parts of five seasons (1970-1974) for two major-league teams that suffered nearly century-long droughts between World Series wins: […]

Bob Cooney pitched 110⅓ innings during a major-league career that included appearances in 28 games. He won one game. The game he won was scheduled to be played the day after he was given credit for the win. Robert Daniel Cooney was born in Glens Falls, New York, on July 12, 1907. He was the […]

According to conventional wisdom, a left-hander should not play second base, shortstop, or third base, because throwing to first base is awkward. This view was expressed as far back as 1867, when Henry Chadwick wrote, “A left hand player is the man for a first baseman; on any other base such a player is out […]

The Black Sox Scandal shocked the sporting public and led to fundamental changes in the governance of professional baseball. Central to this astonishing fix were eight Chicago White Sox ballplayers, including star center-fielder Oscar “Happy” Felsch. An unpretentious Milwaukee native, the “Pride of Teutonia Avenue” only left his hometown to play ball. Felsch, one of […]

William Barney McCosky, a Pennsylvania native who grew up in Detroit, was a talented and speedy all-around center fielder who broke into the major leagues with a bang in 1939, hitting .311 for the Detroit Tigers. Barney, who stood 6-feet-1 and weighed 185 pounds in his prime, threw right and batted left, and he did […]

Omar Linares is widely considered the best third baseman found anywhere in the world outside of the U.S. major leagues during much of the 1980s and 1990s. What Josh Gibson, Buck Leonard or Satchel Paige may have been to the first half of the 20th Century (potential national sporting icons barred from the big-league stage […]

It took a special type of athlete to play for Chicago American Giants manger Rube Foster. He liked to engage in small ball and built his teams around speed and bunting. He wanted only smart competitors on his team. Foster was known to say, “If you haven’t got intelligence enough to fit into this play, […]

Randy Gumpert was feeling flush with confidence in the spring of 1947. After being out of the Major Leagues between the ages of twenty and twenty-eight, the six-feet-three, 185-pound right-hander had returned in 1946 with an excellent season. He had an 11-3 record for the third-place Yankees, with a 2.31 earned run average and a […]

Tacks Latimer was a journeyman catcher during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Although his major league career was brief, 27 games and 86 at-bats spread over five different seasons (the writer Bill James has suggested that this might be some sort of record), he played professional baseball for over a decade and a […]

Gene Woodburn, sometimes known as “Woody” or “Woodie,” spent two lackluster seasons (1911 and 1912) pitching for the St. Louis Cardinals under manager Roger Bresnahan. He had a curveball that consistently drew praise, but his wildness — which had plagued him in the minor leagues — kept him from having a long major-league career. In […]

With a graceful and deceptive side-arm delivery, Tex Carleton was a tough, no-nonsense right-handed pitcher who enjoyed an eight-year major-league career between 1932 and 1940. Notching exactly 100 career victories, Carleton was a member of the St. Louis Cardinals’ Gas House Gang championship team in 1934, helped lead the Chicago Cubs to the World Series […]

“Prince Hal” Newhouser had the unique distinction of being baseball’s best pitcher during the 1940s — as well as its most unpopular player. An uncompromising perfectionist who was as hard on himself as his teammates, he was famous for his hot left arm and mercurial temperament. Whether Newhouser was mowing down enemy hitters or smashing […]

The Los Angeles Dodgers had a pair of antique dueling pistols in the late ’70s. Yet despite their age, Vic Davalillo and Manny Mota were in great condition – and the fire of these small arms was often deadly. Davalillo’s big-league career had seemingly ended in 1974, but after more than three years in the […]

“No matter how great you were once upon a time – the years go by, and men forget,” wrote W. A. Phelon in Baseball Magazine in 1915. “Ross Barnes, forty years ago, was as great as [Ty] Cobb or [Honus] Wagner ever dared to be. Had scores been kept then as now, he would have […]

In his long and accomplished baseball career, San Francisco Bay Area native Emil “Lefty” Mailho managed over 2,500 hits, yet all but one — a pinch single in a 1936 contest — came in the minor leagues. One writer described Mailho as “arguably the best .056 lifetime hitter the majors (have) ever seen.”1 Mailho, who […]

On a warm September evening in 1995 at Baltimore’s Camden Yards, Oriole shortstop Cal Ripken Jr. helped restore America’s faith in baseball. The contentious nature of the previous year’s strike had left many of the sport’s dedicated fans wondering what the future held for their beloved national pastime. Following the 1919 Black Sox Scandal, the […]

For many African American males growing up in poverty-stricken households throughout Los Angeles, sports offered a chance to break away from the cultural and economic restraints imposed on them by their surroundings. This was no different for a young Darryl Eugene Strawberry (born March 12, 1962, in Los Angeles). Darryl was the third boy born […]

This article appears in SABR’s “Pride of Smoketown: The 1935 Pittsburgh Crawfords” (2020), edited by Frederick C. Bush and Bill Nowlin.   As the 1935 baseball season approached, Pittsburgh Crawfords owner Gus Greenlee had every reason to be optimistic about his team’s chances to win the Negro National League championship. Although the 1934 squad had […]

On April 12, 1955, the former Philadelphia Athletics, having moved that winter to Kansas City, opened their first season at Municipal Stadium: A’s 6, Tigers 2, before a standing-room crowd of 32,147. Flanked by franchise progenitor Connie Mack, former President Harry Truman tossed the team’s first ball in Missouri’s first American League (AL) opener since […]

At the close of the 1883 season, the Metropolitan Exhibition Company confronted a logistics problem: the operation of its two major league baseball clubs — the New York Gothams (later Giants) of the National League and the New York Metropolitans of the American Association — from a single, overtaxed north Manhattan ballpark: the original Polo […]

Ebbets Field has been gone for more than half a century, but the place still has a remarkable grip on our consciousness. At least three books have been devoted to the lovable old ballpark in Crown Heights.1 Yet even these in-depth works don’t shine much light on what happened after the Dodgers left Brooklyn. They […]