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Fans often remember the ends of seasons more readily than the beginnings. What is often associated with the beginnings of the 1975 season for the Cincinnati Reds is that on Saturday, May 17, 1975, the Reds stood at 19-19 and in second place 5½ games behind the rival Los Angeles Dodgers and just a half-game […]

Greg Minton did everything for the San Francisco Giants during the 1982 season, including stealing the team bus. More about that later. The right-handed relief ace achieved a milestone when he recorded his 30th save of the season in the Giants’ come-from-behind 5-4 victory over the Los Angeles Dodgers on September 25 at Dodger Stadium. […]

Early in the fall of 1887, Brooklyn Grays pitcher Will Terry married, breaking the heart of many a female admirer.1 Recently dubbed “Adonis” by the New York Tribune,2 the tall, slender 23-year-old was popular among men and women alike for his handsome looks, temperate manner and “gentlemanly … conduct on and off the field.”3 On […]

 “It’s a great day for a ball game; let’s play two!” — Ernie Banks   It’s been a century since there was a tripleheader played in major-league baseball. Research has turned up only three instances of tripleheaders. The most recent one was played at Pittsburgh’s Forbes Field on October 2, 1920, and it definitively determined […]

The Los Angeles Dodgers’ Clayton Kershaw started Game Five of the World Series throwing nothing but strikes. Boston’s Mookie Betts flied out to left-center on his second pitch. Andrew Benintendi grounded a single up the middle on the third strike he saw. And Steve Pearce swung at Kershaw’s next pitch, hitting a two-run homer to […]

In late December 1959, it was widely published that Washington Senators owner Calvin Griffith “had looked one million dollars in the eye and expressed no interest.” It was an offer not for his Washington franchise but for just two of his ballplayers, first baseman Harmon Killebrew and pitcher Camilo Pascual. One of those published reports […]

On April 16, 1972, Apollo 16, NASA’s eighth of nine manned lunar missions, took off from Cape Canaveral, Florida. On that same day, some 3,000 miles away in Anaheim, California, there was another blast-off of sorts. The Texas Rangers, behind eight strong innings by hard-throwing right-hander Pete Broberg, won their first-ever game. After 11 mainly […]

Tommy Davis. (SABR-Rucker Archive)   In late September 1963, the pennant races were winding down and it seemed likely that the Los Angeles Dodgers would meet the New York Yankees in the World Series. Only some individual honors were yet to be determined on the final day of the season – including whether Tommy Davis […]

The 1965 baseball season was one of great excitement for fans in Houston. Their National League team had moved into the newly built Astrodome and renamed itself the Houston Astros. The novelty of indoor baseball brought fans from all over the area to see major-league play in the modern air-conditioned comfort of the “Eighth Wonder […]

In what could be billed as one of the wildest games in major-league history, the Philadelphia Phillies and Chicago Cubs met on a Thursday afternoon in front of 14,952 fans at Wrigley Field. The wind was blowing out at 18 mph.1 A little more than four hours later, the Phillies emerged victorious, securing a 23-22 […]

Fresh off a dazzling postseason, Dave Dravecky was tabbed the San Francisco Giants’ Opening Day starting pitcher in 1988. The Giants had won the National League West Division championship in 1987 before losing a heartbreaking seven-game NLCS to the St. Louis Cardinals. Dravecky, acquired from the San Diego Padres in a July 5 trade,1 had […]

The year 1962 represented a solid start for Red Sox catcher Bob Tillman. He began his nine-year major-league career with a home run in his first at-bat. The following month, on June 26, Tillman caught a no-hitter thrown by Earl Wilson – a game in which Wilson himself provided the winning run with a third-inning […]

Manny Mota never seemed to age. “He’s scary,” said Steve Garvey, his teammate with the Los Angeles Dodgers. “I wish just one spring he would show up with one gray hair.”1 That was in June 1979, a couple of months before the Dominican set the career record for pinch hits. Mota wound up with 150 […]

Elmer William Valo was born in Slovakia but lived the American dream during nearly sixty years in professional baseball. He insisted he was not a “natural athlete,” saying, “Being a baseball player is not a glamorous job, it’s hard work.”1 In twenty years as a major league player, he reached base as often as Joe […]

Long before most teams had at least one reliever who could routinely hit 100 mph on the radar gun, the Cincinnati Reds had Rob Dibble. In his first four full seasons in the majors (1989–92), the 6-foot-4, 240-pound right-hander had a strikeout-to-walk ratio of nearly 4-to-1 while setting a record for the fewest innings (368) […]

John McNamara ran a big-league team six times, plus another as an interim skipper. He kept getting hired because he was well respected by everyone in the game, including general managers and players. “Any player with an ounce of decency in him will play his heart out for John,” said one of his San Diego […]

One of the most important games hurled by Clement Walter Labine took place at Ebbets Field in Brooklyn on October 9, 1956. The day before, Don Larsen had pitched a perfect game for the New York Yankees to beat the Brooklyn Dodgers, 2-0, in the fifth game of the World Series. Dodgers manager Walter Alston […]

As a ballplayer, Judy Gans is a bit of an enigma. On the one hand, his official statistics paint him as a good, but not great, player. On the other, acknowledgment of his greatness by newspaper writers and his peers can be found scattered throughout the early pantheon of Black baseball history. Hall of Fame […]

“His rise from the ‘bushes’ to the big show has been phenomenal,” gushed one report about Big Bill Steele.1 Two years removed from the sandlots, Steele jumped from a Class B league to the majors, debuting with the St. Louis Cardinals as a September call-up in 1910. That fall the spitballer won his first three […]

Three times, Nick Esasky hit 20 or more home runs in the major leagues – in 1985, 1987, and 1989. His peak season came at age 29 with the 1989 Boston Red Sox, when he played first base most of the season and hit 30 homers while driving in 107 runs, leading the ballclub in […]

Mark Langston, Mike Campbell, John Halama, Carlos Guillén, Freddy García, Brad Halsey, Dioner Navarro, Javier Vázquez, Alberto González, Steven Jackson, Ross Ohlendorf, Luis Vizcaíno. These dozen men were traded, in different transactions, for Hall of Famer Randy Johnson. While they share a bond, their major-league careers took different paths. Several would play in the World […]

Terry Leach had an unusual delivery, took an abnormally long and circuitous route to the major leagues, eventually found uncommon success, and recounted it all in a book entitled Things Happen for a Reason. There were in fact lots of reasons for the things that happened during Leach’s unique baseball career, which spanned 18 professional […]

Baseball lifers Branch Rickey and Fred Haney described Cal Hogue’s knee-buckling curveball as one of baseball’s best — if he could control it. Seven years after signing his first professional contract, Hogue finally reached the majors in 1952, tossing a four-hitter in his first start. He never harnessed the potential of his breaking ball and […]

When the Atlanta Braves began broadcasting in April of 1966, Atlanta area listeners had a long history of baseball radio. Atlanta Crackers broadcaster Ernie Harwell famously had such a reputation in the 1940s that he was traded to a major-league team for a catcher. Because of lawsuits in Milwaukee, the Braves’ move to Atlanta was […]