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Pitcher Paul Zahniser played for three teams but never had a winning year in the majors. He played for 13 teams in Organized Baseball and was once traded for Bubbles. In 14 minor-league seasons, he did win more than he lost (147-140) with a career 3.78 earned run average over 2,627 innings. During his five […]

When Phil Rizzuto went to his first Major League tryout, a New York Giants coach told him he was too small to play in the big leagues and suggested he should make a living by shining shoes.1 But in a later tryout with the Yankees, Rizzuto impressed scout Paul Krichell, who recommended they sign the […]

Few players in the history of major-league baseball have displayed each of the prized “five tools,” meaning the ability to hit for average and for power, to run, to field, and to throw. On that  short list belongs the name of Ellis Burks, who began his major-league career as a 22-year-old rookie for the Boston […]

The Brooklyn Dodgers franchise had no more loyal foot soldier than Joseph Julius “Babe” Hamberger. The lifelong Brooklynite began working for the Dodgers in 1921 as a 14-year-old batboy. He held numerous other jobs with the club, ending up as superintendent of Ebbets Field in 1958 after the Dodgers left for Los Angeles. Hamberger’s heart […]

If, like beauty, the assessment of baseball talent lies in the eye of the beholder, the wide divergence of opinion on the abilities of Deadball Era outfielder Bert Daniels can be rationalized. Opinions, naturally, may differ. With our subject, whether it was his batting, defense, or base running, Daniels was both praised and derided — […]

Mike Cuellar was a four-time 20-game winner for the Baltimore Orioles, and the winner of 185 major-league games. He could also lay claim to being the one of the most superstitious players in baseball. “He had a routine and please don’t interfere with it,” remembered a teammate, Paul Blair. “He would walk to the mound […]

“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 […]

It was a dreary, overcast day in Brooklyn on April 15, 1954. The visiting Pirates were at Ebbets Field to face the Dodgers. The home team had jumped out to a 7-1 lead courtesy of home runs by Roy Campanella, Jim Gilliam and Jackie Robinson. Tex Ricard, the Dodger PA announcer announced a pitching change […]

“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 […]

Like Babe Ruth, he was a savior for the major leagues when the game was at risk of losing fans. Like Jackie Robinson, he was a courageous pioneer who blazed a trail and opened new doors of opportunity for others to follow. Like Fernando Valenzuela, he was the pride of a specific ethnic community, yet […]

When Joe Nathan graduated from high school, he seemed destined for great things. Just not necessarily on the baseball diamond. “He was one smart dude,” recalled Tom Walraven, his baseball coach at Pine Bush (New York) High School, describing Nathan as a “thin little kid who batted .230” while playing shortstop his senior year.1 “I […]

It is the rare man whose co-ownership of the New York Yankees would go unmentioned in his obituary. Yet such was the case for Bill Devery.1 Largely a silent partner in the club from its founding in 1903 until its sale a dozen years later, Devery had a negligible effect on franchise history, having left […]

Overcoming the physical obstacle of often being his team’s smallest ballplayer, Paul Radford played in 1,361 games for nine different teams during a 12-year major-league career that spanned 1883 to 1894. A biography written at the end of his career summarized how that the 5-foot-6, 150-pound Radford was able to survive so long in the […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

Bobby Richardson played second base for the New York Yankees from 1955 to 1966, a key contributor during one of the Yankees’ most successful stretches in their legendary history. Richardson was by all accounts a slick, rangy glove man and a steady stick man. He won the Gold Glove Award five times, he batted over […]

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 […]

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 […]

The End of the Beginning When the Boston Braves left the field at the South End Grounds on Tuesday, August 11, 1914, the glorious opening chapter of professional baseball in Boston passed into history without notice. After a frustrating 13-inning, 0-0 tie with the Cincinnati Reds, all that mattered that day was that the Braves […]

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 […]