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The Detroit Tigers played in Bennett Field in 1911. Immediately after the last game of the 1911 season, the small wooden structure was demolished and replaced with a $300,000 steel and concrete ballpark named Navin Field after the club’s owner, Frank Navin. Navin Field officially opened its doors to Tigers fans on April 20, 1912.1 […]

This dog day afternoon at Fenway Park was “a strange and sticky day for the 20,522 who chose to watch” in person.1 Boston Globe writer Peter Gammons put it aptly: “As often happens to very mediocre pitchers on hot Sunday afternoons in Friendly Fenway, they got combed all over the place.”2 Gammons referred specifically to […]

Walter Johnson was on a roll of historic proportions as he prepared for his final start of the season. Beginning with his three-hit shutout against the New York Yankees in the second game of a doubleheader on September 5 for his 30th victory of the season, the Washington Senators hurler had yielded only two earned […]

The Pittsburgh Pirates seemed poised to win their first National League pennant since 1909. They had taken took a big step forward in 1921. The emergence of rookie hurlers Whitey Glazner and Johnny Morrison gave Pittsburgh the best pitching staff in the National League by a wide margin.1 Perhaps more importantly, the offseason acquisition of […]

At the opening of the 1963 major-league season, the Cincinnati Reds projected pitcher Jim Maloney as the team’s number-four starter, behind Bob Purkey, Joey Jay, and Jim O’Toole.1 Purkey and Jay were 20-plus-game winners the previous year, while O’Toole won 16.2 For his part, the 22-year-old Maloney, a 6-foot-2, 190-pound right-hander, had gone 9-7 after […]

A data scientist for Google by day, Chris Thoms lives in California’s Bay Area while overseeing official scorers in the Cape Cod League in Massachusetts. From the other end of the continent, he monitors games on choppy video and internet radio (even scoring a game off YouTube while on his honeymoon in Tokyo), and goes […]

Roger Craig was settling into retirement when he agreed to become manager of the San Francisco Giants on September 18, 1985. Owner Bob Lurie and new President/General Manager Al Rosen persuaded Craig to return to baseball and help restore a winning culture in the wallowing franchise. The Giants were well on the way to the […]

“Naturally we’re going to miss him,” said Philadelphia Phillies manager Eddie Sawyer about left-hander Curt Simmons. “No team can lose a pitcher of Curt’s caliber without feeling it.”1 In his breakout campaign, the 21-year-old southpaw made his last start on September 9 of the Phillies’ most exciting season in history since their last pennant, in […]

The career of the greatest pitcher in St. Louis Cardinals history was winding down in the summer of 1975. Bob Gibson had twice won the National League Cy Young Award and once was Most Valuable Player. Three times he pitched complete games in the Game Seven of the World Series, winning two of them.1 Gibson […]

It’s not every part-time player with a brief major-league career who takes part in a historic baseball event. However, when Emil “Hap” Huhn of the Cincinnati Reds crouched behind the plate in the bottom of the first inning at Chicago’s Weeghman Park preparing for Fred Toney’s first delivery, that is exactly what was about to […]

A person arriving at Elmwood High School near Bloomdale, Ohio, and looking at the pictures of students who had attained all-state status in various sports might see Chris Hoiles’s picture as a third team all-state football player in 1983 and assume he went on to play college and NFL football, but that person would be […]

This burly Kentuckian signed as a pitcher but made it to the majors with his bat. Jeoff (which rhymes with “off”) Long could hit balls a long way. That got him into 56 games in 1963 and 1964 as a first baseman/outfielder, first with the St. Louis Cardinals and then with the Chicago White Sox. […]

In the early 1970s, lefty pitcher Bob O’Brien made an unlikely and mercurial rise from unheralded draft selection to big-leaguer. His stay in professional baseball was brief, but along the way he became the subject of one of Tommy Lasorda’s greatest motivational stories. Robert Allen O’Brien was born on April 23, 1949, in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, […]

“He was the greatest manager I ever played for, perhaps the greatest manager who ever lived, and that includes managers in the big leagues. I’ve never played for a guy who could get more out of every ballplayer than he could. He knew how to communicate with everybody and to treat every player as an […]

Those Americans who grew up in the Great Depression, went to fight in World War II, returned home, and went to work bringing the country back to life are now called, thanks to Tom Brokaw, the “Greatest Generation.” Such a man was James Bartholomew Prendergast — who also happened to play professional baseball. He worked […]

Alvin O’Neal McBean – for decades, the only big-league pitcher from the Virgin Islands – was a good one. His hard sinker and limber, resilient arm made him valuable as a starter and even more as a reliever. Throwing from various arm angles as the spirit moved him, McBean was somewhat reminiscent of Orlando “El […]

Fred Beene proved that big things can come in small packages. Affectionately known as Beeney throughout much of his professional baseball career, the 5-foot-9, 160-pound Beene defied skeptics who thought he was too small to succeed on a major-league mound. At times the criticism of his physical attributes proved frustrating for the slick-fielding right-hander who […]

As World War II began to encroach on major-league baseball teams as well as their minor-league affiliates, doors opened to players who otherwise would have been considered to lack major-league talent.  Some who were rejected for military service and classified 4-F became increasingly prime candidates to play in the majors – selected because it was […]

In the 21st century, it’s become rare for whole teams to post 10 complete games in a single season – let alone a single pitcher. Only two men since the year 2000 have done so: C.C. Sabathia (2008) and James Shields (2011). Seasons with double-digit shutouts are an even more compelling feat. Over the half […]

After graduating from Duke University in 1974, John Poff made it to the majors for 31 games in 1979 and 1980. He hit .218 in 91 plate appearances. The first baseman-outfielder retired after the winter of 1981-82. “My career in baseball was frustrating,” he later said. “I wanted and felt I deserved a lot more […]

This book is to be neither an accusation nor a confession, and least of all an adventure to those who stared face to face with it. It will simply tell of a generation of men who even though they may have avoided the shells were destroyed by the war. –Erich Maria Remarque, All Quiet on […]

Baseball has no player like Joe Pate today. He was a minor-league superstar, “the idol of Fort Worth baseball fans for a generation.”1 The burly left-handed pitcher won 257 games in 20 seasons from the bottom to the top of the minors. “Joe Pate was the greatest pitcher and put more money into the till […]

Dan O’Dowd was a baseball man from the beginning. Born in Morristown, New Jersey, on September 6, 1959, Dan grew up working on his parents’ (Marty and Anna Mae) dairy farm and in O’Dowd’s Milk Bar on Route 46 in Pine Brook. As it is for most, his love of baseball was cultivated from playing […]

Sixteen members and guests of the Bob Broeg St. Louis Chapter gathered at The Original Crusoe’s Restaurant in South St. Louis on Tuesday, March 24, 2015. Chapter president Brian Flaspohler called the meeting to order. The original date, for the Jim Rygelski Research Conference, of Saturday, July 11 has become tentative and may be changed due to […]