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Over the last century of major league baseball, many marvelously talented ballplayers have represented their hometown of Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Hall of Famer Al Simmons, 1917 World Series hero Happy Felsch, and Yankee all-star Tony Kubek were gifted Cream City natives remembered by even casual fans. Ken Keltner should be recollected in the same class. Not […]

Hooty Phillips, father of Lefty Phillips. (Courtesy of the Nashville Metro Archives)   The John William “Lefty” Phillips story begins with another ballplayer, his father, John “Hooty” Phillips.1 Father and son played for their hometown Nashville Elite Giants, among other teams. Neither Hooty nor Lefty Phillips is especially well-known, although Hooty Phillips had a longer […]

Phil Gagliano grew up in a baseball-oriented family. Though his grandparents on his father’s side of the family hailed from southern Italy (Sicily and Calabria), and on his mother’s side from the Tuscany region, the second-generation Americans took to baseball whole-heartedly. Phil’s father, Ralph, who was a director of purchasing at a wholesale food business […]

Despite having a lifetime .236 batting average, Randy Hundley is one of the most beloved Chicago Cubs of all time. The Virginia native played 10 seasons with the Cubs in the 1960s and 1970s and was considered a leader on the field for the team that endured a historic collapse in 1969. Hundley also introduced […]

Jay Bell stepped into the batter’s box in Minneapolis wearing his Cleveland uniform for the first time. The date was September 29, 1986, the place the Hubert H. Humphrey Metrodome, and not only was this Bell’s first major-league game as a player, it was also the first major-league game he ever attended. The Cleveland Indians […]

“He’s a superhero without a cape. That’s the way we see him.” — Alex Cora1 Several of the biggest base hits in Boston baseball history came off the bat of “Big Papi,” David Ortiz. He sports three world championship rings and then wrapped up his career with one of the best final seasons any player […]

Bert Blyleven’s career statistics speak for themselves: 287 victories, 4,970 innings pitched, 3,701 strikeouts, and 60 shutouts accumulated over the course of 22 seasons in the big leagues (1970-1990, 1992). However, some sportswriters questioned whether the Dutch-born right-hander, whose curveball was regarded as the era’s finest, was Hall of Fame material when he retired. In […]

“He’s one of the icons of the industry, no question.” – Dan Moushon, President of the Appalachian League (2020)1   In the early 1970s, Miles Wolff raised a concern about having a career befitting a graduate of Johns Hopkins University. That concern was unfounded. Over the course of half a century as a commissioner, executive, […]

Like many New York Yankees from their late 1960s and early 1970s nadir, Jerry Kenney suffered from the curse of expectations that media and fans had for the once dominant franchise. Winning 29 pennants and 20 World Series in 44 years, from 1921 to 1964 inclusive, was proof to many fans that winning was an […]

Carlos Beltrán jump-started his terrific career in 1999 by winning the AL Rookie of the Year Award. He rose to national stardom in 2004, when he turned in one of the greatest postseason performances ever, batting .435 with eight home runs in 12 games. Possessing a rare combination of power and speed, Beltrán is one […]

Frank Strong Lary, a talented, hard-throwing right hander for the Detroit Tigers, proved to be one of the American League’s best pitchers from 1955 through 1961. An All-Star hurler in 1960 and 1961, he was best known as the “Yankee Killer.” While fashioning a major league lifetime record of 128-116 with an ERA of 3.49, […]

Long before launch angles, exit velocities, infield shifts, and OPS calculations, Clarence Jones taught the basics of hitting to some of the greatest players in Atlanta Braves history. Jones played 19 seasons of professional baseball as an outfielder-first baseman. Though his major-league career totaled 58 games with the Chicago Cubs, Jones won two US minor-league […]

Right-hander Ray Scarborough pitched for the Senators, White Sox, Red Sox, Yankees, and Tigers during his 10 years in the major leagues. His longest stretch was with the Washington Senators, pitching in seven of those seasons, from 1942 into 1950. He was 80-85 for his career, with a lifetime 4.13 earned run average. Scarborough’s best […]

Born in Cincinnati on October 5, 1858, John Good Reilly would spend most of his life and nearly all of his baseball career in his native city. He passed his earliest years at his family’s home in the city’s East End, within walking distance of the Ohio River. The family’s circumstances were probably fairly comfortable, […]

After a highly successful playing career as both a slick-fielding infielder and a slugger, Davey Johnson went on to an even more decorated career as a manager. His winning percentage of .562 is 10th all-time among managers with 1,000 victories, and is surpassed by only Earl Weaver among pilots who began their career after 1960. […]

Talk of Don Mattingly’s worthiness for enshrinement in the Hall of Fame most often focuses on his offensive statistics. Perhaps not enough is said about his defense. Mattingly has one of the best career fielding percentages of any player – ever – at any position. His .9959 percentage means that every 1,000 times the ball […]

The etymology of the term “ace” meaning the best pitcher on a team derives from the nickname of Asa Brainard, one of the top pitchers of baseball’s early years. Upon settling with the Excelsiors of Brooklyn in 1860, he was initially a second baseman and outfielder because the great James Creighton was positioned in the […]

Becoming the third woman to own a major-league baseball club, Joan Whitney Payson marked history by heavily investing in the expansion New York Mets of 1962. The club’s first majority stockholder, she was also the first of her gender to purchase such an enterprise with her own funds. Born into considerable wealth, she used much […]

On the morning of August 27, 1947, Baltimore Orioles manager Tommy Thomas phoned Mel Ott to tell him that they had “bought the best pitcher in the International League” — Ray Poat. Thomas went on to warn the New York Giants skipper, “Only one thing, Mel, don’t use Poat in relief. He’s a starter and […]

Eddie Gottlieb was primarily known as the organizer of the SPHAS basketball team, an acronym for the South Philadelphia Hebrew Association, where the team got its start. The SPHAS were among the premier semiprofessional basketball teams in the country in the 1920s to 1940s – competing with the top teams such as the Harlem Rens […]

“Flint and Corcoran had funny signals for changes of curves,” recalled Tommy Burns, a teammate of catcher Frank “Silver” Flint and pitcher Larry Corcoran of the Chicago White Stockings of the 1880s. “(Corcoran) invariably carried a mammoth chew of tobacco in his mouth, and when he chewed he shifted it about with a movement that […]

Arguably, the toughest job in baseball belongs to the “utility” or part-time player/pinch-hitter who must come off the bench into a game, often at a critical point in the contest. In the years of the 25-man roster, having players on a club who could deliver as pinch-hitters, or who could provide improved late-inning defense provided […]

Shortly before Christmas of 1889, about 20 men gathered at New York City’s luxurious Fifth Avenue Hotel. Although all were well dressed, there were two distinct groups. One group was youthful and in prime physical condition; the other was more mature and perhaps not so physically robust. Both were, however, there for the same purpose, […]

From early July 1889 until the removal of the franchise to the West Coast following the 1957 season, the New York Giants played baseball – often exciting and sometimes championship-caliber – at the northern Manhattan ballpark known as the Polo Grounds. Inexorably over the decades, Giants players, managers, club owners, front office personnel, sportswriters, and […]