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How many big-leaguers since World War II have been born in England? How many have appeared on Topps “Rookie Stars” cards in three separate years? The answers (as of 2020): seven in each category.[1] Keith Lampard, who played 62 games for the Houston Astros in 1969-70, claimed both odd distinctions. Christopher Keith Lampard was born […]

Catcher Fred Walters worked in 40 games for the Boston Red Sox in 1945. The former Mississippi State football star went on to manage five seasons in the minor leagues and ultimately become a scout for the Red Sox, while officiating both football and basketball for many years. Fred was his first name, not a […]

On September 16, 1975, the Pittsburgh Pirates were wrapping up a three-game series with the Chicago Cubs at Wrigley Field. They held a six-game lead over Philadelphia in the National League East Division and the season was growing old. With only 12 games remaining on the Pirates’ schedule, time was indeed running out on the […]

Buzzie Bavasi had a ball running a ball club. In 18 years directing the baseball operations of the Dodgers in Brooklyn and Los Angeles, he assembled four World Series champions and eight pennant winners (and two more clubs that tied for first), more than any team except the Yankees. He had the benefit of owner […]

Former Cleveland Indians and St. Louis Browns owner Bill Veeck once said, “A good groundskeeper was the 10th man on the field and was worth five to seven victories a season.”1 George Toma is often ranked among the greatest groundskeepers of all time, creating and maintaining professional baseball, football, soccer, and Olympic playing fields all […]

A “short, stocky, active, aggressive” second baseman, Otto Knabe teamed with shortstop Mickey Doolan to provide the Phillies with one of the most notorious double-play tandems of the Deadball Era.1 After seven years in Philadelphia, Knabe jumped to the Federal League in 1914 to lead the Baltimore Terrapins. But in Baltimore and two later minor […]

Aloysius “Wish” Egan was one of the top scouts in the Detroit Tigers system. Among the players he signed in his 40 years of scouting were Jim Bunning, Hal Newhouser, and Dizzy Trout. Egan even scouted the Lakeland, Florida, site the Tigers have used for spring training since 1934. All scouts have regrets; one of […]

Infielder Billy DeMars broke into professional baseball at age 17, had his career interrupted by service in the Navy during World War II, then came back and played parts of three seasons in the majors (80 games with the Athletics and Browns), and extended his minor-league career by turning to managing through 1968. He assigned […]

Baseball is a game full of statistics; however, they rarely tell the whole story. Such is the case with Roger Holt, an infielder who grew up in a small town in rural Florida and made it to the major leagues with the New York Yankees late in the 1980 season. Holt – a contact hitter […]

Today Jack Graney is best remembered as the man of the firsts. Graney was the first hitter Babe Ruth faced as a pitcher in the major leagues for the Boston Red Sox, one of the first major leaguers to take the field with a number on his uniform, and in 1908 was part of the […]

If his only claim to fame had been giving a young pitching prospect named James Bell his nickname, “Cool Papa,” he would have perhaps been the answer to a baseball history trivia question. Had his sole contribution to the story of the game been that of teaching a young Satchel Paige how to throw what […]

Jackie Robinson’s debut at Braves Field was originally scheduled for April 22, 1947. But the Dodgers’ three-game series in Boston was a total washout because of rain. Robinson’s first game was in the opener of a Memorial Day doubleheader on May 30. Before both scheduled series, Robinson wasn’t the biggest story in the local news. […]

If Sir Edward Bulwer-Lytton were a sportswriter covering the game in which the Montreal Expos’ David Palmer pitched five perfect innings for a 4-0 rain-shortened win, he could have started his story off with the line that he wrote and which Snoopy has made famous: “It was a dark and stormy night.”1 Those immortal words […]

Following their “Miracle” National League pennant and World Series championship in 1914,1 the Boston Braves had slipped to seventh place by 1920. Skipper George Stallings was still at the helm, but that changed in 1921. When Stallings resigned in November 1920 to purchase a part-interest in the Rochester Colts of the International League,2 the Braves […]

On a cold September 7, 1911, a gathering of 5,523 Boston National League fans witnessed a pitching duel between two future Hall of Famers.1 Phillies rookie Grover Cleveland (“Pete”) Alexander allowed just one hit and beat 44-year old Cy Young, 1-0. A Boston Post headline caught the moment perfectly: “Old Cy Twirls Great Game, but […]

It was the “first opening game since our energies have been actively hurled against the heartless Hun on the blood-stained and shell-bitten fields of France,” wrote the Cincinnati Enquirer somberly as the Pittsburgh Pirates took on the Reds at Redland Field to inaugurate the 1918 major-league baseball season.1 Given the news of the unimaginable destruction […]

It is common knowledge that Cleveland Indians Hall of Famer Bob Feller tossed the only Opening Day no-hitter in major-league history against the Chicago White Sox at Comiskey Park on April 16, 1940. On the 75th anniversary of the event, Major League Baseball’s official website touted it as “the first — and to this day […]

The Atlanta Braves had their back to the wall. After losing the first two games of the best-of-five National League Championship Series to the New York Mets at home, they had to win the final three games at Shea Stadium in order to advance to the World Series. The Mets started Gary Gentry, one of […]

The New York Mets were trying to stay in the playoff race. They won their previous series against the Miami Marlins but remained 10½ games behind the Washington Nationals in the National League East. On their return to New York, Mets general manager Sandy Alderson told the press, “I think we feel differently about ourselves […]

The Expos and Phillies, sporting identical 89-70 records, went head-to-head in a three-game series at Olympic Stadium on the final weekend of the 1980 season to determine the champions of the NL East. After defeating Montreal 2-1 on Friday night on a pair of RBIs from Mike Schmidt, Philadelphia clinched the division on Schmidt’s dramatic […]

Two teams with losing records and subpar pitching staffs slugged it out in a back-and-forth contest that featured 13 runs, 9 pitchers, 4 errors, and half a dozen ties and lead changes before the first-year Royals finally prevailed 8-5 over the White Sox. Royals rookie Don O’Riley won his only major-league victory in front of […]

Ever since the convention of running the bases counterclockwise was established, sometime between 1834, when informal rules originating from the English game of rounders specified clockwise, and 1857, when the opposite direction was formally codified,1 infield positions beyond first base have been the domain of the right-handed. Able to throw leftward without pirouetting, righties have […]

The New York Mets won the franchise’s fifth pennant in 2015 but lost that year’s fall classic to the Kansas City Royals. A season later, they fell in the National League wild-card game to the San Francisco Giants. After this came consecutive losing seasons. By 2019, the Mets had almost completely overhauled their depth chart. […]

Winning six pennants from 1901 to 1914, the Philadelphia Athletics were the first sustained American League dynasty. At the heart of Connie Mack’s teams in this era were set pitcher-catcher batteries. This study examines their statistical accounting and insights into their makeup, and considers their place within the evolution of the sport. “It is especially […]