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The Yankees grabbed all the headlines in 1961. Roger Maris set the new single-season home run record with 61. Mickey Mantle hit 54 home runs himself and was neck and neck with Maris for much of the year. Maris and Mantle finished first and second in the American League MVP voting, respectively, and the team […]

Billy Geer had a somewhat nomadic baseball career, playing parts of six major league seasons with seven different teams. That nomadic life would continue in his post-baseball career as he took up another profession that would keep him on the run for the rest of his life. William H. Geer was born about 1852 in […]

Bob Ferguson, one of the most respected and influential baseball players of the 19th century, was the game’s first switch-hitter. He may not have done it regularly and, surprisingly, he didn’t do it for the reasons hitters do today; he didn’t switch-hit depending on whether the pitcher was right-handed or left-handed. (At the time, there […]

When 20-year-old right-hander Lee Meadows took the mound on April 19, 1915, for the St. Louis Cardinals, he became the first big-league ballplayer to wear spectacles since pitcher Will White of the Cincinnati Red Stockings in the American Association retired in 1886. The thought of a professional baseball player with “cheaters” was preposterous to most […]

College baseball coach Bobby Sprowl’s teams have won more than 1,000 games in the course of a career that’s run 30 years and counting. He’s also run a successful baseball camp for the past 25 years. The left-handed pitcher was a second-round draft pick of the Boston Red Sox in 1977 and made it to […]

As a pitcher, Lary Sorensen handled plenty of challenges over the course of his successful 11-year major-league career with seven teams. But not even the best-hitting opposing lineup—like the one he faced in the 1978 All-Star Game—compared to the opponent he battled after his playing days: alcoholism. His story resembles an amusement park ride, with […]

Down two games to none to the Minnesota Twins in the 1965 World Series, the Los Angeles Dodgers found themselves in a precarious situation after Don Drysdale lost Game One, 8-2, and Sandy Koufax, who refused to pitch the opening game because it fell on Yom Kippur, lost Game Two, 5-1. Left-hander Claude Osteen, scheduled […]

Johnny Murphy was an ace relief pitcher for the 1930s New York Yankees who spent 18 years playing professional baseball. Murphy spent even longer in the front office, first with New England’s obsession—the Boston Red Sox—serving as a scout and then ran the team’s minor league operations. Moving onto New York’s National League expansion franchise, […]

Ted Williams ended his 1941 season, the one in which he was the last American or National League batter (as of 2020) ever to hit over .400, with a career total of 91 home runs. As May 1942 approached its end, he already had a dozen more. The Red Sox, though, were in fourth place […]

The 2004 regular season ended with the St. Louis Cardinals winning 105 games, while the Houston Astros squeaked past the San Francisco Giants by one game and into the wild-card spot on the last day of the season. Though the Cardinals had won the National League Central Division by 13 games over Houston, many experts […]

In a 21-year career that was honored by his 2024 election to the National Baseball Hall of Fame in his first year of eligibility, Adrian Beltré spent one season – 2010 – with the Boston Red Sox. At age 31, it was one of Beltré’s best years, and it reignited the Dominican-born third baseman’s path […]

A season was drawing to a close. In Baltimore, an era was also drawing to a close as the Orioles prepared to play their final game at Memorial Stadium. It was the only home the Orioles had known since they moved to Baltimore in 1954. For many fans, it was bittersweet to see the ballpark, […]

Dissatisfied with the return on his $2.4 billion investment after a year as owner of the New York Mets – a sub-.500 record and no playoffs – Steve Cohen doubled down after the 2021 season.1 He committed a chunk of his sizable fortune for a stable of accomplished free agents, pushing the club’s 2022 payroll […]

The 1986 Mets led the NL in scoring, but pitching was the club’s backbone. The staff was anchored by four legitimate All-Stars, right-handers Dwight Gooden and Ron Darling, and southpaws Sid Fernandez and Bob Ojeda, each of whom won at least 15 games, logged in excess of 200 innings pitched, and had a winning percentage […]

As the first week of September drew to a close, neither the Red Sox nor the Phillies were doing much more than playing out the string.  The Red Sox had again failed to regain the magic that had fueled their surprising 2013 World Series championship, a victory followed by a return to the cellar in […]

Things weren’t looking that good for the Red Sox heading into the bottom of the ninth. It was the home opener of the 1952 season at Boston’s Fenway Park. Jimmy Dykes and his Philadelphia Athletics held a 4-1 lead. Right-hander Bob Hooper was dealing. He’d allowed seven scattered hits and walked three, but the Red […]

It was cold, windy, dreary, and damp in the nation’s capital when the cellar-dwelling Detroit Tigers (5-16) and fifth-place Washington Senators (10-11) arrived at Griffith Stadium to see if they could salvage the final contest of an originally-scheduled four-game series. Rain had canceled the previous two games and probably should have wiped out this game, […]

Denny McLain began the morning the same as he always did. His wife woke him up around 10:30. Breakfast was two eggs and sausage, and a Pepsi, his favorite drink. A half-hour later, a representative from the Hammond Organ Company showed up at Denny’s home, and they discussed business. Denny was a fine player, and […]

The bleachers at Ebbets Field were filled two hours before the first pitch. The game was a sellout by noon, and many of the estimated 10,000 fans who were turned away continued to line the streets around the park. Young boys tumbled over a gate near the corner of McKeever Place and Montgomery; most were […]

Of all the games played at Shibe Park, few were more unusual or less predictable than the meeting on August 15, 1946, between the Boston Red Sox and the Philadelphia Athletics. It was a game in which a woeful team beat the best in the league in an upset of mammoth proportions. The game pitted […]

A Thursday afternoon Philadelphia crowd of 3,500 fans got their money’s worth by watching the longest game of the 1918 season, a 19-inning affair between the Phillies and the St. Louis Cardinals that ended in a tie. The 18-25 Phillies were in sixth place in the National League. The Cardinals were a half-game behind them […]

Perennial contenders during the New York Giants’ four-year National League reign of the early 1920s, the Pittsburgh Pirates began 1925 by getting outclassed by the Chicago Cubs and Cincinnati Reds on the road. Championship qualities finally surfaced in the Pirates’ home opener on April 22, when a crowd of 31,000 saw Johnny Morrison limit the […]

This article was originally published in “The First Negro League Champion: The 1920 Chicago American Giants” (SABR, 2022).   Rube Foster’s Chicago American Giants played home games at Schorling Park in Chicago (NoirTech Research, Inc.)   The arc of the history of the Chicago American Giants follows closely with the arc of Black and Negro […]

From its beginnings in the 1880s, the franchise now known as the Los Angeles Dodgers has provided a parade of well-known players and managers, 23 pennant winners, and six World Series victories. Off the field, it has been associated with some of the most recognized front-office talent in the game’s history. Names such as Charles […]