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In the summer of 1915, momentum carried the women’s suffrage movement in the United States. Over the preceding five years, the number of Western states granting women full voting rights leapt from four to 11, while Illinois granted them the vote in presidential elections.1 The push for a constitutional amendment needed victories east of the […]

Detroit Tigers right-hander Lynwood Thomas “Schoolboy” Rowe “gave one of the most courageous exhibitions of pitching ever seen in World Series,” wrote H.G. Salsinger of the Detroit News.”1 After the Tigers’ demoralizing 8-3 loss to Dizzy Dean and the St. Louis Cardinals in Game One of the 1934 fall classic at Navin Field in the […]

By August 1971, the American and National Leagues had combined to play a little more than 90,000 games in the twentieth century, and roughly 8,300 of those games had ended in a walk-off,1 a single play that scored the winning run for the home team in the ninth inning or later. Even with those staggering […]

On May 7, 1901, three men pulled off a brazen heist on Euclid Avenue in Cleveland, robbing a jewelry display case owned by Arnstine Bros. & Mier in broad daylight. The Cleveland Plain Dealer declared it the boldest crime in years.1 As two men engaged in conversation to block the view of the display, a […]

Like all the other major-league teams, the Boston Red Sox had lost many of their best players to military service during World War II. In 1945 five pitchers who had been regulars, Tex Hughson, Joe Dobson, Mickey Harris, Earl Johnson, and Mace Brown, were serving in the military. The Red Sox had finished in fourth […]

Southpaw Ross Grimsley waited until the last inning of the last game of the 1978 season to become the Montreal Expos’ first and only 20-game winner. With one out and two men on in the final frame of a tie game against the St. Louis Cardinals on October 1, Grimsley strolled to the plate. “He […]

After administering the worst home-team defeat ever in a World Series opener,1 the Brewers began Game Two against the St. Louis Cardinals at Busch Stadium looking for a sweep and a commanding lead to take home to Milwaukee. The Cardinals, who had won the World Series five of the last six times they won Game […]

Still led by four pillars of their 1940s dynasty, the St. Louis Cardinals surged into first place in the National League in July 1950. But three losses in three days in Pittsburgh, punctuated by Jack Phillips’ game-winning ninth-inning pinch-hit grand slam on July 8, foreshadowed their subsequent fall from contention and final fadeout of the […]

They called James Edward Dwyer “Pig Pen,”1 but the well-traveled outfielder also could have gone by “Dwyer for Hire.” With hustle, pinch-hitting talent, and a willingness to role-play as his calling cards, Dwyer divided his 18-year major-league career between seven teams. Three of them – St. Louis, Montreal and Minnesota – employed him twice. Dwyer’s […]

This game may be remembered most for the miserable weather in which it was played. In his report for the Boston Globe, Peter Gammons wrote that the setting resembled “a Cambodian rice paddy in rainy season.”1 It took 4 hours and 10 minutes of elapsed time due in large part to rain delays of 33 […]

On August 4, 1991, a sellout crowd of 41,0591 packed into Comiskey Park to see the Chicago White Sox host the Baltimore Orioles. Chicago (58-45) had won eight straight games before losing the first two games of this series against Baltimore, and that 8-out-of-10 stretch had enabled them to climb into second place, three games […]

With a little more than a month left in the 1921 regular season, the Pittsburgh Pirates “were determined to break the sustained slump which has threatened their possession of first place.”1 Before a three-game series with the Brooklyn Robins, the Pirates had lost six straight games and had seen their lead over the New York […]

More than a century ago, the Detroit Tigers staged the biggest ninth inning come-from-behind-victory engineered in baseball. It still stands.1 The inaugural 1901 American League season was scheduled to open in Detroit on Wednesday, April 24, but rain just before game time prevented play. The next day was sunny, warm for April, and “a day […]

As the sun came up on September 16, the Red Sox enjoyed a 4½-game lead over the Baltimore Orioles with 12 games to play, a lead that might ordinarily have led to optimism. But really, the race seemed much tighter than that. The Orioles had won the AL East five of the past six years, […]

“Beware of robbing a wretch or attacking a cripple. Do not laugh at a blind man, nor tease a dwarf, nor cause hardship for the lame. Don’t tease a man who is in the hand of the god (i.e. ill or insane)…” [Instruction of Amenemope, Ancient Egypt]1 Frank James Burke was born on March 19, […]

Eldon John “Rip” Repulski was a major-league ballplayer from Sauk Rapids, Minnesota, who enjoyed storytelling. This was especially true after his career with the St. Louis Cardinals, Philadelphia Phillies, Los Angeles Dodgers, and Boston Red Sox came to a close in 1961, and Rip eventually opened a cocktail lounge on St. Germain Street in St. Cloud, […]

The fifth-winningest pitcher of all time, Warren Spahn went 363-245 over parts of 21 years from 1942 to 1965. Only by remaining in the game two seasons too long did he fail to finish with an ERA under 3.00 (3.09) and a winning percentage over .600 (.597), and his totals are all the more impressive […]

Had Grover Cleveland Alexander been a writer, the French would have called him a poete maudit, a cursed poet. Alexander had within him the greatness and the frailty that make for tragedy. Except for Ty Cobb among his contemporaries, no other player had to cope with so many personal demons. With Cobb and Christy Mathewson, […]

There was never an Alex Grammas question on Family Feud. However, if Richard Dawson, the late and long-time host of the popular game show, were to have asked a hundred of his contemporaries how they remembered Grammas, the survey would invariably point to three answers: flawless fielding, excellence as a third-base coach, and his Hellenic […]

Doug Griffin’s professional baseball career comprised 13 years, beginning at Idaho Falls in 1965 and finishing with the Boston Red Sox in 1977. He spent eight seasons in the major leagues, seven of them with the Red Sox, and appeared briefly in the 1975 World Series. Douglas Lee Griffin was born on June 4, 1947 […]

“One feller I want to meet if he’s still alive and can be found is that fellow Henriksen,” remarked 72-year-old Hugh Bedient to Jamestown Post-Journal sportswriter Frank Hyde. It was March of 1962, and in four weeks’ time Hugh was expected in Boston along with the other surviving members of the 1912 World Champions for […]

In 1970, Tommy Harper became a member of what was once among the most exclusive “clubs” in baseball. That year, his first with the Milwaukee Brewers, he hit 31 homers and stole 38 bases, thereby joining the “30-30 Club.” At the time, the only other members of the club were Hank Aaron, Bobby Bonds, Willie […]

Some ballplayers are defined by one moment. Jim “Hippo” Vaughn was such a player. Mentioning his name evokes a knee-jerk reaction from a knowledgeable fan: “Oh, yes, he threw the double no-hitter with Fred Toney in 1917.” This is unfortunate because that game is but one in the career of a pitcher whose overall performance […]

This outfielder was the first member of the Lumbee people of Robeson County, North Carolina, to play in the majors. Throughout his playing days, Gene Locklear’s skill as an artist also got attention. “They are both individual things, and you have to have talent. You can’t just have desire,” Locklear said in 2005.1 One of […]