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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 […]

Clarence “Ace” Parker made his major-league debut on April 24, 1937, as a pinch-runner with the Philadelphia Athletics. His first at-bat came on April 30 in Boston against Wes Ferrell. Parker entered the game in the ninth inning to pinch-hit for pitcher Lynn Nelson with the A’s down 15-3. Bill Cissell had opened the frame with a single and […]

“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 […]

As of 2013, Hank Wyse held the distinction of being the last Chicago Cubs player to throw a pitch in the World Series. The Cubs and Wyse enjoyed a magical season in 1945 despite losing their seventh consecutive World Series since 1910. Then in his fourth season with the North Siders, the 27-year-old Wyse recorded […]

Eduardo Green (1920-1980) never played in the majors. In fact, he played only 11 games in Organized Baseball at the Class B level. Yet under different circumstances, he almost certainly could have been a big-leaguer. La Gacela Negra — The Black Gazelle — still stands as one of the greatest players in the history of […]

“Funny thing, nobody asked me about my pitching,”1 said the hurler best remembered as the only pitcher to hit two grand slams in one game. Yet Tony Cloninger was much more than a great hitting pitcher. In the waning days of Warren Spahn’s great career, the Milwaukee Braves looked to Cloninger to step into the […]

From 1996 to 2003, the New York Yankees featured the Core Four (Derek Jeter, Jorge Posada, Mariano Rivera, and Andy Pettitte) and Bernie Williams as they collectively propelled the Yankees to six World Series in eight years, including four championships. The Yankees also had Luis Sojo, who wasn’t of the same caliber talent-wise as those […]

Clara Díaz Chacón was a little girl who lived on a street in the fishing village of Puerto Caimito in Panama. A few houses up the road was an elementary school classmate. That boy’s studies ended in the ninth grade, but their paths crossed again when they were teenagers. They became boyfriend and girlfriend, and […]

George Washington Bradley1 of the St. Louis Brown Stockings shut out (or, in the baseball parlance of the time, “Chicagoed”) the Hartford Dark Blues by a score of 2-0 on July 15, 1876. Aside from their being Chicagoed, the Blues also failed to get any hits in the process (although Bradley did walk two) establishing […]

Consumer alert: Some of the stories repeated here probably are not true. The difficulty is, we don’t know which ones. Dizzy Trout was a magnet for tall tales. Many of the stories Trout told, and those told about him, can’t be verified, but they’re too much fun to pass up. There’s the Ted Williams story: […]

Few people get to fulfill the childhood dream of playing for their hometown team, but John Fulgham did just that. Fulgham was born in St. Louis and grew up there as a diehard Cardinals fan, idolizing players such as Bob Gibson and Lou Brock. He went on to pitch for the Cards in 1979-80. Although […]

Alex Konikowski’s pitching career in major-league baseball was comparatively brief, but the three seasons – or portions thereof – he spent with the New York Giants are etched in diamond lore: 1948, 1951, 1954. As a 20-year-old rookie of promise, Konikowski was promoted from Jersey City of the International League to New York in June […]

The New York Mets were strong contenders in 1999 and 2000, and one of their core members in those years was Venezuelan infielder Edgardo Alfonzo. “Fonzie” had his two best seasons with the bat and was steady in the field. At his peak, the New York Times described him as “a versatile and dependable player […]

On October 14, 1976, the Kansas City Royals and the New York Yankees were locked in the winner-take-all fifth game of the American League Championship Series at Yankee Stadium, going into the bottom of the ninth inning. The Royals had won Game Four the night before to force the deciding game. This evening, Royals third […]

Robert “Buck” Fausett was a 36-year-old major-league rookie who finished his brief time in the big leagues as the answer to a trivia question: “Who was the only major-league pitcher ever to be relieved by a 15-year-old?” But don’t define Fausett as a baseball player by his .097 average in 13 major-league games (most of […]

José Cardenal, one of the last Cuban baseball players to leave that island before the Castro regime clamped down, played for 18 seasons in the US major leagues for nine teams. But that information only scratches the surface of a talented, yet complicated man who was once compared to Willie Mays as a young player. […]

Scott Cooper was born the day after the St. Louis Cardinals beat the Boston Red Sox in Game Seven of the 1967 World Series. In 1986 he was drafted by the Red Sox and was a two-time All-Star for them. Prior to the 1995 season he was traded to the Cardinals where he played for […]

As fast as he was on the bases and in the outfield, at times it seemed Ken Henderson couldn’t outrun an expectation first pinned on him at age 17. While it came with a big name, Henderson said the expectation was never one he sought. Instead, he often considered it unfair and unrealistic. But it […]

Set amid concrete parking lots and crisscrossing interstate highway overpasses, Louisville Slugger Field seems a bit out of place. The red brick facade and arched windows overlooking Main Street and Preston Street in downtown Louisville, Kentucky, hark back to a time when railroads, not long-haul trucking, fueled the local economy. In the context of baseball […]

In 1939 both the Baltimore Elite Giants and the Newark Eagles were “resolved to improve on the results”1 of the previous season. The 1938 season had been the maiden campaign for Baltimore in the Negro National League II (NNL2), as the franchise had moved up the road from Washington.2 Under player-manager George Scales, the Elite […]

“The greatest invention since the cotton gin”?1 Television or maybe the transistor radio? No, it was a batting helmet that the Brooklyn Dodgers team physician, Dr. Eugene Zorn, was referring to, one that prevented serious injury to Milwaukee Braves infielder Joe Adcock when he was beaned on August 1, 1954, at Ebbets Field. As several […]

1882 Buffalo Bisons team portrait. Players are: outside, clockwise from top: Hardy Richardson, second baseman, Davy Force, shortstop, Pud Galvin, pitcher, Deacon White, third baseman, Purcell, left fielder, Tom Dolan, catcher, Jack Rowe, catcher, Foley, right fielder. Inside, clockwise from top: O’Rourke, manager, Dan Brouthers, first baseman, One Arm Daily, pitcher. (Courtesy of the Boston […]

This article is part 1 of a planned multi-part series on the history of the Chicago Cubs franchise. This chapter covers the journey from the White Stockings to the Cubs from 1876 to 1919.   The 1885 National League champion Chicago White Stockings. 1-George Gore, 2-Silver Flint, 3-Cap Anson, 4-Sy Sutcliffe, 5-Mike Kelly, 6-Fred Pfeffer, […]