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The story of baseball pitcher Orlando “El Duque” Hernández might read like a movie script still waiting to be written, yet it could be considered quite a common story for Cuban ballplayers who grew up under the Communist regime of Fidel Castro. Orlando Hernández went from beloved Cuban baseball star to banishment from baseball to […]

“I like to think of the world’s greatest athlete coming up to bat against me – Tiger Woods, Wayne Gretzky, I don’t care who it is – and I’m looking at him thinking, ‘You have no chance.’ “1 There was a moment in the third game of the 1996 World Series that felt eerily familiar […]

Although he pitched in only 58 major-league games in his tragically brief career, Mark Fidrych made an enduring impression on the history and culture of professional baseball. Fidrych had one stellar season, in 1976.That season, he first made an impression on baseball fans with his pitching prowess when he came out of nowhere to become […]

Boxing and college football were regular fixtures on network television by 1953, but baseball was confined to local TV, with only the All-Star Game and World Series seen nationwide. While every team except Pittsburgh televised some games, the minor leagues were screaming that those telecasts were killing their attendance, and Congress was threatening legislation to […]

Most commonly remembered as the pitching coach-guru who helped develop the dominating staffs for the Oakland A’s championship teams of 1972-1974, Bill Posedel had a career in Organized Baseball spanning six decades, from the late 1920s to the 1970s. He debuted in the big leagues with the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1938 as a hard-throwing 31-year-old […]

When Sammy Stewart was asked by the National Baseball Hall of Fame what he considered to be his most outstanding achievement in baseball, he quite justly answered that it was the rookie record he set in 1978 when he threw seven consecutive strikeouts in his major-league debut. No rookie has matched Stewart’s totals. It was […]

George Weiss presided over the greatest sustained run of excellence in baseball history. Under Weiss’s leadership, from 1948 through 1960, the New York Yankees won ten pennants and seven World Series. After a slip to third place in 1959 Weiss retooled his squad and returned to the top the following season. For this accomplishment The […]

“What is one to say about June — the time of perfect young summer, the fulfillment of the promise of the earlier months, and with as yet no sign to remind one that its fresh young beauty will ever fade?” — Gertrude Jekyll1   On the afternoon of June 23, 1984, at Wrigley Field, the hometown Chicago […]

Bob Dillinger brought deadball skills to the longball game that took hold after World War II. A .306 hitter in his six seasons in the majors, he led the American League in stolen bases three straight years, but hit only 10 career home runs. With his lack of power and poor defense, Dillinger never produced […]

Max Macon was the top pitching prospect in the St. Louis Cardinals’ farm system before he blew out his arm in his first spring training appearance. The left-hander, so skinny he could “close one eye and look like a needle,” was the rare pitcher who hit well enough to make a comeback as a position […]

In Jim Bouton’s revelatory 1970 book Ball Four, he describes a late September 1969 scene at San Francisco’s Candlestick Park. “A group of terrorized pitchers stood around the batting cage watching Willie McCovey belt some tremendous line drives over the right-field fence. Every time a ball bounced into the seats we’d make little whimpering animal […]

Hard-throwing right-hander Dave Boswell debuted with the Minnesota Twins in 1964 at the age of 19, and was a valuable contributor to the Twins’ pennant-winning team the following season. Despite chronic blisters on his pitching hand, and arm, shoulder, and back miseries, Boswell averaged 14 wins and 210 innings over a four-year stretch with the […]

In a major-league playing career that lasted only seven seasons, Bill Lange made an indelible impression on those who saw him in action. A star outfielder on the also-ran Chicago Colts of the 1890s, Lange could do it all: run, throw, field, hit for average, and hit for power by the standards of his time. […]

Benigno Ayala lives up to his given name, which means “kind” or “friendly.” Following a productive career as a role player, he has bestowed greater gifts on the baseball world, through his work with the Baseball Assistance Team (BAT). Quite a few of his fellow Puerto Rican pros have fallen on hard times since they […]

For someone who participated in only 855 major-league games spread over nine seasons, Ed Abbaticchio has had more questions raised about his life than most baseball fans might expect. Was he the first Italian American big leaguer? Was he the first professional dual-sport athlete? Was he the creator of the spiral punt? Why did he […]

Smart, tenacious and personable, Nelson (Nellie) Briles attributed much of his baseball success to his strong family ties. He once called his family the “foundation” of his life.1 “With five children in the family,” he once recalled, “my parents managed to somehow keep me playing the game. I’ll never be able to repay them. Words […]

As a rookie with the 1947 Chicago American Giants, Johnny Ritchey won the Negro American League batting title. The following year he broke the Pacific Coast League color barrier playing for his hometown San Diego Padres. In 1951, he became the first Black professional baseball player in Vancouver, British Columbia, and won the Western International […]

“Being Irish, he had an abiding sense of tragedy, which sustained him through temporary periods of joy.” This remark has been credited (dubiously) to the Irish poet William Butler Yeats, a contemporary of Boston pitcher Jim Sullivan. This saying could apply to Sullivan starting in the mid-1890s, when he experienced deep sorrow repeatedly. At least […]

“I always hope he hits the ball to left so I can watch him run, because I’ve never seen anything like him turning second.” — Dwight Evans of the Red Sox, talking about Willie Wilson in 19801 “Having Willie Wilson in center field is like having four outfielders.” — Billy Scripture (Wilson’s first minor-league manager) […]

The “Pebble” game. After 85 years it remains one of the most memorable games in the history of the World Series. On October 10, 1924, at Washington’s Griffith Stadium, in the seventh game of the World Series between the New York Giants and Washington Senators, the Senators’ Earl McNeely came to bat in the bottom […]

Luis Clemente Tiant y Vega, a charismatic right-handed pitcher whom Reggie Jackson called “the Fred Astaire of baseball,” won 229 games over parts of 19 seasons in the major leagues.1 His midcareer comeback, dramatic family reunion, and World Series heroics inspired a region, likely leaving him one of the most beloved men ever to play […]

Before the 1901 season the ballpark called Huntington Avenue Baseball Grounds was built for the AL Boston franchise (the team, later called the Red Sox, was known for the first seven seasons as the Boston Americans). The ballpark site was located at Huntington and Rogers Avenues, in the Roxbury section of Boston, and was just […]

Here are the SABR Defensive Index™ rankings through games of June 16, 2019. For the seventh consecutive season, the SDI will be used to help select the winners of the Rawlings Gold Glove Award and Rawlings Platinum Glove Award™, presented by SABR. The SABR Defensive Index accounts for approximately 25 percent of the Rawlings Gold […]