Search Results

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 […]

Gabe Kapler understood that one of his first priorities in taking over as manager of the Phillies in 2018 was to improve the team’s offense. The 2016 Phillies finished last in the National League in runs scored, and progressed only to 12th-most in 2017. The Phillies started the 2018 season 1-4, but despite the team’s […]

Rod Carew debuted with the Minnesota Twins in 1967, was the American League Rookie of the Year, and had 12 productive years with the team. His best season was 1977, when he did it all, finishing with a batting average of .377 and earning the league’s Most Valuable Player Award. All was not well in […]

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 […]

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, […]

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 […]

In the 1960s, the home for the Rutgers University baseball team was University Heights Field on the Busch Campus, just across the Raritan River from the main campus in New Brunswick, New Jersey. Memory serves to recall the expansiveness of the field often whipped by strong winds. Imagine looking down the left-field line and spotting […]

Baseball fans love to say when they go to the ballpark that there is always a chance that something may happen that they have never seen before. Those among the announced crowd of 9,614 who stayed to the end of the matchup between the University of Arkansas and the University of Central Arkansas on April […]

When the two worst teams in the American League met at Shibe Park for a September 20, 1942, doubleheader, Philadelphia’s legendary owner-manager Connie Mack readily admitted that the results were not foremost on his mind. His A’s had clinched the basement for a third season in a row, but the team avoided 100 losses by […]

The American League home-run leader with 47 in 1926, Babe Ruth had hit only four in his first 25 World Series games. Then he gave “the greatest exhibition of batting a World’s Series ever saw”1 and become the first player to hit a trio of homers in a postseason game as the Yankees evened the 1926 World Series […]

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 […]

Sheriff Blake, was not really a sheriff, but rather a hard-throwing right-handed pitcher whose best days came during a six-year period for the Chicago Cubs, from 1925 to 1930, when he averaged 12 wins and 216 innings per season as a dependable starter and occasional reliever. After winning a career-high 17 games and tying for […]

Russ Nixon spent more than half a century in baseball. A catcher who played 12 years for the Red Sox, Indians, and Twins, he went on to coach and manage at levels from rookie ball to the major leagues, with five seasons as a big-league manager.     The son of farmers Thomas and Edith Nixon […]

When the Detroit Tigers took the field at Yankee Stadium on October 3, 1990, for the final game of the regular season, it didn’t feel like a momentous event. Only 13,380 fans were present on a Wednesday night to watch the home team finish the season in last place. The Tigers, who also had a […]

Chicken Hawks was a double threat for those who construct imaginary teams of players named after birds.1 Despite batting .316, the lefty swinger had just 393 at-bats spread across two major league seasons. His time at the top level was limited because he was streaky at bat and suspect on defense in the outfield and […]

One of the top two-sport athletes to come out of the Twin Cities, Bill Davis starred at the University of Minnesota in both baseball and basketball in the early 1960s. After graduation Davis began his professional baseball career by signing with the Cleveland Indians. Davis played parts of three seasons in the majors but could […]

During the 1890s southpaw Bert Inks pitched for six different major league clubs – but posted a winning record for only one of them. More than a century later, that performance prompted a 19 th century baseball scholar to declare, “Bert Inks exemplified the lengths to which teams often go to give a left-handed pitcher […]

Philadelphia A’s star left-hander and future Hall of Famer Eddie Plank had scattered five hits and had not allowed a run as the Boston Braves batted in the top of the ninth in Game Two of the 1914 World Series. Unfortunately for Plank and his mates, Braves starter Bill James was pitching just as well. […]

In January 1983, NBC television debuted a new action series titled The A-Team. The show followed the exploits of a fictional group of former U.S. Army members with such colorful names as Face, Hannibal, and the brawling, straight-talking, ludicrously bejeweled B.A. Baracus, the fictional embodiment of the character’s actor, Mr. T. Within months of the […]