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After going 3-for-4 on May 29, 1941, in the Boston Red Sox’ 37th game of the season, Ted Williams was hitting .421. A Thursday afternoon crowd of about 3,200 – a bit less than 10 percent of Fenway Park’s capacity1 – could say they saw the Red Sox slugger win another game with a home […]

John “Beans” Reardon, left, wearing a flu mask underneath his umpire’s mask, prepares to call a pitch in a California Winter League game on January 26, 1919, in Pasadena, California. During a global influenza pandemic, all players and fans were required by city ordinance to wear facial coverings at all times while outdoors. The catcher […]

Jim Bouton led the nomadic life of a baseball maverick, with stops including New York City; Seattle; Houston; Portland, Oregon; Durango, Mexico; Atlanta; and Pittsfield, Massachusetts, to name a few. Along the way, he pitched in major, minor, independent, Mexican, and amateur leagues, wrote the groundbreaking best-seller Ball Four, starred in a short-lived TV adaptation […]

On August 22, 1886—a Sunday afternoon in Louisville, Kentucky—fans were treated to one of the most exciting games of the American Association season. What happened that day involving Abner Powell of the Cincinnati Reds and Jimmy “Chicken” Wolf of the Louisville Colonels is immortalized in baseball history on such twenty-first century sites as Baseball Almanac.1 […]

After bolstering their pennant-winning roster with high-profile free agents Reggie Jackson and Don Gullett, the New York Yankees skidded into last place in the American League East two weeks into the 1977 season. Manager Billy Martin responded with a revamped batting order, purportedly drawn from a hat, on April 20 against the Toronto Blue Jays […]

“You shall not round off the hair on your temples or mar the edges of your beard” — Leviticus 19:27 1 The House of David touring baseball team let their beards and long hair grow, because of biblical stricture and just because it made them look more like the way many have imagined Jesus and […]

“Pitching is called 70 per cent of baseball.”1 The Pittsburgh Pirates knocked 20 hits off 70 percent of the Brooklyn pitching staff, beating the Dodgers in an old-fashioned slugfest, 16-11, before 20,196 fans during a Sunday afternoon tilt at Ebbets Field. Ralph Kiner carried his team to victory, hitting for the and driving in eight […]

One evening in the summer of 1947, the National League’s best and worst teams put on a display that a future baseball commissioner labeled “a farcical exhibition which was a disgrace to baseball and a complete travesty of all the rules of sportsmanship.”1 The Philadelphia Phillies and Brooklyn Dodgers spent 12 anarchic minutes in Philadelphia […]

In 1879 Will White of the National League’s Cincinnati Reds set single-season major-league records for complete games (75) and innings pitched (680) that will almost certainly never be broken. The first major leaguer to wear glasses on the field, White had as his batterymate a future Hall of Famer whom baseball historian Peter Morris called […]

The Brooklyn Robins and New York Giants were seemingly participating in different leagues though the teams were adjacent in the standings in late June of 1929. The fifth-place, 26-34 Robins were 11½ games behind the NL-leading Pittsburgh Pirates, and a half-game ahead of the Boston Braves. The fourth-place, 34-26 Giants fared better, 3½ games from […]

Christian Vázquez’s home run into the Green Monster seats atop Fenway Park’s left-field wall on October 10, 2021, off Luis Patiño of the Tampa Bay Rays, was the sixth walk-off home run in Boston Red Sox playoff history.1 That it came in the bottom of the 13th inning made it the latest-ever Red Sox walk-off […]

Montreal Expos manager Jim Fanning returned to the dugout on September 22, 1982, after missing five games with severe migraines. But it was Expos shortstop Chris Speier who gave the visiting Philadelphia Phillies headaches that night, driving in eight runs in an 11-4 Expos win. Expectations for the Expos ran high at the beginning of […]

The 1961 Cincinnati Reds1 were a pre-season pick to finish sixth in the National League.2 Having finished 28 games of the pace in 19603, baseball pundits viewed them as only better than the Cubs and Phillies. While a club with undeniable batting prowess—think Frank Robinson, Vada Pinson, Gordy Coleman, Gene Freese, and pinch-hitter extraordinaire Jerry […]

Brothers Bob and Ken Aspromonte were both graduates of Brooklyn’s Lafayette High School and both became major-league ballplayers. Ken was the eldest of the two, by nearly seven years, but Bob made the majors first, breaking in with the Brooklyn Dodgers (for all of one at-bat) in 1956. He didn’t return to the big leagues […]

You won’t find the definition of “baseball lifer” in the American Heritage Dictionary, but if you did, Don Zimmer’s picture would be a suitable choice to accompany it. Over a period of 60 years, Zimmer claimed to have never collected a paycheck anywhere other than baseball, except once from Social Security. “I never dreamed I’d […]

Catcher Steve Lembo was a lifelong New Yorker. He was born in Brooklyn, played for the Brooklyn Dodgers, and every one of his big-league appearances took place at Ebbets Field. In between those seven games, five in 1950 and two in 1952, he also played a small yet significant role at the Polo Grounds. On […]

Rodney Craig signed as an undrafted free agent in 1977 and was the Seattle Mariners’ first homegrown player. He showed potential stardom as a switch-hitting outfielder with excellent speed and a self-proclaimed “legendary” arm. Craig clearly possessed superb natural athletic ability, which allowed him to overcome his limited experience in organized baseball, undrafted status, and […]

When 19-year-old John Cavanaugh took the field in the opener of a July 7, 1919 doubleheader at Philadelphia’s Baker Bowl, he became the first player born in the 1900s to appear in a major-league game.1 A late-inning defensive replacement for the last-place Philadelphia Phillies, Cavanaugh struck out in his only at-bat, then watched as his […]

Right fielder Hank Bauer was a mainstay of the Casey Stengel–Yogi Berra Yankee dynasty who sparkled in the World Series spotlight. In the final game of the 1951 Series his bases-loaded triple broke a tie and gave the Yankees a 4-1 lead. After the Giants narrowed the margin to 4-3 in the ninth, with the […]

It has become almost legend, though in reality there are a few different versions of the story: In March of 1966, three New York Mets farmhands, all going by the name of Jerry, set out from Atlanta on their way to minor league training camp in Homestead, Florida. Jerry Johnson sat between the driver, Jerry […]

A genuine pre-modern national star, one of the major league game’s pioneers, and one of the sport’s most enduring and intriguing figures, Louis Rogers “Pete” Browning was born in Louisville, Kentucky, on June 17, 1861, at 13th and Jefferson on the city’s west side. A lifelong resident of Louisville, Pete Browning was the youngest of […]

James Creighton was the greatest pitcher of his day. Famous principally for his exploits on behalf of the champion Excelsiors of Brooklyn in the years 1860 to 1862, he possessed an unprecedented combination of speed, spin, and command that virtually defined the position for all those who followed. Prior to Creighton, pitchers had been constrained […]

Gene Garber parlayed a unique wind-up and delivery and an effective sinker into a 19-year career as a major-league reliever. Though he never pitched in the World Series or made an All-Star team, the righty used perseverance and an agrarian work ethic to overcome various setbacks and become one of the best among the first […]

When the Chicago Cubs finally won a World Series again in 2016, after 108 years of futility, they also shed their standing as “lovable losers,” ceding that title back to the squad to whom it truly belonged: Charlie Brown and his ragtag neighborhood team of Peanuts fame. Indeed, for all the failure and ignominy the […]