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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 […]

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 […]

“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 […]

“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 […]

It may surprise you to learn that by 1960 just two players born in the Dominican Republic had played in the majors: Ozzie Virgil and Felipe Alou debuted in 1956 and 1958, respectively. In 1960 they were joined by Julian Javier in the season’s second month. On July 3, 1960, Rudy Hernández became the first […]

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 […]

No one chooses to become a professional widow, and Eleanor Gehrig derived little satisfaction in being called one. Yet few ballplayers’ wives maintained a level of such prominence so long after their husband’s death as they had when he was alive. Mrs. Lou Gehrig was married less than eight years; she was a widow for […]

Harry Butts was a left-handed pitcher who played professional baseball from 1946 through 1953. His résumé included stints in the Negro American League, the ManDak League, the Piedmont League, winter-league play in Puerto Rico and Venezuela, and at least two starts in a Newark Eagles uniform in 1946. In the early 1950s he was one […]

It’s unlikely that Pop Corkhill is discussed as an outfielder on par with Mays, Mantle, and Musial. Perhaps he should be. During his major-league career — from 1883 to 1892 — Corkhill placed in the top 10 for fielding percentage eight times; range factor seven times; assists five times; and putouts four times.1 For his […]

For a brief period in the early 1890s, Al Johnson was an influential, if not overly trustworthy, actor on the major league baseball scene. A wealthy young industrialist, he was the first and the most important of the money men attracted to the Players League cause. In the league’s formative days, Johnson recruited other capitalists […]

He accomplished what no other pitcher had done — came straight off the prep diamonds and hurled a major-league shutout. Fresh out of Chester (Pennsylvania) High, 18-year-old Lew Krausse strode to the mound on June 16, 1961, before the largest single-game crowd of the season up to that point in Kansas City’s Municipal Stadium to […]

Roger Craig and “split-finger fastball” will forever be linked in baseball history. It was Craig’s work teaching first Jack Morris and then Mike Scott how to throw the pitch that gave the former right-handed pitcher lasting fame. “People think I invented that,” Craig said. “I did not. Bruce Sutter did. I just found a way […]

While common wisdom dictates that baseball games are won with bats, balls, and gloves, Charlie Dressen believed until his dying breath that any game could be won with brains. Well, any game could be won with his brains. And it’s not hard to see why. Few field leaders had the percentages figured better than Dressen, […]

Harry David Brecheen (pronounced Bruh-KEEN) was born on October 14, 1914, in Broken Bow, Oklahoma. He was the first of three children born to Texans Tom and Lucy (Tyree) Brecheen, who had settled in the small town near the Texas border when Oklahoma was still a territory. By the time Harry was 10, his family […]

Dwight Bernard took an unusual path to the major leagues. He played one year of high-school baseball, in which he pitched just a few games and won only one, then went to a tiny Baptist college that did not offer intercollegiate sports. He transferred to another small college that had a baseball team but to […]

Benny McCoy was the talk of every town in 1940 when the obscure rookie became baseball’s first big-money free agent. He failed to live up to the hype — who could? — and crumpled under the weight of great expectations. “Benny’s problem was too much attention,” Philadelphia Inquirer columnist Cy Peterman wrote.1 We’ll never know […]

“They had a Tony Taylor Day in 1963 in Connie Mack Stadium, another in 1970 in Connie, and another Tony Taylor Day last year in Veterans Stadium,” said Antonio Nemesio Taylor Sánchez during spring training in 1976. “I must be doing something right. Right? There is this big love affair between the fans and Tony […]

Chroniclers of the game have rarely been kind to Andrew Freedman, principal owner of the New York Giants from January 1895 to September 1902. According to one team historian, Freedman was “naturally arrogant (with) a bad temper at the end of a very short fuse.”1   In much the same vein, Bill James memorably described him […]

Eddie Plank fidgeted. On every pitch, Plank went through a seemingly endless ritual: Get the sign from his catcher, fix his cap just so, readjust his shirt and sleeve, hitch up his pants, ask for a new ball, rub it up, stare at a base runner if there was one, look back at his catcher, […]

Hoyt Wilhelm pitched in 1,070 games in his 21-season major-league career, a record at the time. Of those games, 1,069 were played in the United States. The knuckleballer’s only appearance in Canada occurred on June 17, 1970, a little more than a month before his 48th birthday, when his Atlanta Braves matched up against the […]

Big-league success didn’t last for Jim Hughes, but when he was hot, no one was hotter. The Minnesota Twins’ rookie pitcher won the American League Player of the Month award for May 1975, posting a 6-0 record and an 0.87 ERA in six games.1 He worked seven innings of shutout relief on May 4 to […]

Hall of Famer Nap Lajoie is often referred to as the American’s League’s first superstar, excelling both offensively and defensively. Cy Young, who knew Lajoie first as an opponent and later as a teammate, said of the career .338 hitter, “Lajoie was one of the most rugged hitters I ever faced. He’d take your leg […]

The All-American Girls Professional Baseball League’s barnstorming tour of 1950 was not for the faint of heart. The Springfield Sallies and Chicago Colleens were scheduled to play 95 games in just 94 days, traveling by bus throughout the Eastern United States, with a brief foray into Québec.1 The road-weary players had kicked off their trek […]

High and InsideThe Newsletter of the BioProject CommitteeSociety for American Baseball Research (SABR)May 2020 Past newsletters Editor: Andrea Long The BioProject on Social Media From the Directors Update on BioProject Submissions From the Editor Project Poobahs   Let’s be Sociable! ©Nabisco We’re not baked and savory, but we are every bit as appealing as a […]