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Granted, it was only the first week of the 1951 season, but the Washington Senators, perennial denizens of the American League second division, were perched atop the standings as they hosted the defending world champion New York Yankees on Saturday, April 21. The Senators were 4-0 with a pair of road wins at Philadelphia to […]

At the start of Game Three, Brooklyn fans draped a large banner from the railing of the center-field bleachers that read, “We waited 21 years, don’t fail us now.” The sheet proclaimed its message proudly throughout Games Three and Four. But by late in Game Five, the banner was sagging and unreadable, an apt metaphor […]

Three teams had been battling all year for the 1977 American League East crown and as of Sunday afternoon, September 18, the Yankees held a 2½ game lead over the Orioles, who themselves were two games ahead of the third-place Red Sox with only 13 games remaining. While the Yankees were playing the Tigers in […]

The Chicago White Sox are “the luckiest bunch of ballplayers I have ever run across in baseball,” said St. Louis Browns manager Jimmy McAleer in July 1906. “If the team wants a base on balls to win, it gets it; if an error is needed, someone is sure to boot the ball. I never saw […]

In 1886 the pitcher’s box was made a foot deeper and the rule requiring the pitcher to keep both feet on the ground when delivering a pitch was lifted, prompting an increase in strikeouts in both the American Association and the National League. Nowhere did this change have more impact than in Baltimore, where Matt […]

“I’ve played in pain before, but this hurt me just to blink.”1 That was how Philadelphia Phillies backup catcher Mike Ryan characterized the experience of playing through 15 innings with a severe back spasm he sustained while pulling on his sanitary socks before the July 26, 1971, game against the Houston Astros. But as Philadelphia’s […]

Fidel Castro records the ceremonial first hit of Cuba’s baseball season on January 14, 1962 against Azucareros starter Jorge Santín at Gran Stadium in Havana. (Courtesy of Peter C. Bjarkman)   As the International League’s Rochester Red Wings prepared to play a doubleheader with the Montreal Royals on July 4, 1959, some of them might […]

Brian Giles emerged as one of the National League’s top hitters after a 1998 trade to the Pittsburgh Pirates freed him from the Cleveland Indians’ talent-heavy roster. An early-season game in 1999 demonstrated his immediate impact. Upstaging San Francisco Giants slugger Jeff Kent’s five-hit cycle and teammate Jason Kendall’s five hits and two runners caught […]

On April 27, 2000, the Baltimore Orioles and Chicago White Sox were completing a four-game series in front of “a sun-splashed crowd of 13,225”1 at Chicago’s Comiskey Park. Both teams had experienced success in the early part of the season. Baltimore (12-8) had already put together winning streaks of five and six games, while Chicago […]

As baseball has shifted to the “three true outcomes” in the twenty-first century,1 triples have become an endangered species.2 A game with five triples3 stood out as an exception in 2019. Yes, the game was at Coors Field, and yes, the score shows that the game was a slugfest, but the Reds hadn’t hit five […]

The record books will tell you that Thurman Munson played his first game at Yankee Stadium—and his first in the major leagues—on August 8, 1969, in the second game of a doubleheader between the New York Yankees and Oakland Athletics. But that wasn’t the sparkplug catcher’s first appearance at the “House that Ruth Built.” On […]

Carl Furillo, Jackie Robinson, Roy Campanella, Pee Wee Reese, Duke Snider, Preacher Rowe, and Gil Hodges were all members of the 1952 NL All-Star team. (Photo: SABR-Rucker Archive)   On September 23, 1952, with autumn in the air, fans filed into Ebbets Field to watch a Dodgers doubleheader against the Phillies. Home-team patrons came to […]

“I think I just hit for the cycle.”1 That’s what Dwight Evans said to teammate Bill Buckner after hitting a walk-off three-run home run in the bottom of the 11th inning on June 28, 1984, versus the Seattle Mariners.  Ed Nunez gave up the homer to Evans in what must have felt like a déjà […]

Catcher Rick Cerone had an 18-year career in the major leagues (1975-92), but he used his athletic talent and fame well beyond the baseball field. An excellent multiple-sport athlete in his youth, his real love was baseball. Prior to his major-league career, he was a college baseball star, and after his time in the majors, […]

Picture this: You are standing in a dugout in St Louis. It is the seventh game of the World Series. The team you have managed for most of the year is nursing a 3-2 lead over the home Cardinals as you enter the bottom half of the sixth inning. Your ace pitcher, the eventual Cy […]

Joe Cambria was one of the most prolific scouts in major-league history, signing hundreds of men to professional contracts as a scout for Clark Griffith and the Washington Senators. He also inked countless others as a promoter of semipro and Negro Leagues baseball in Baltimore and minor-league teams throughout the country. He was one of […]

Adonis Terry debuted in the first major- league game played by the franchise that became the Dodgers and saw the start of his last game delayed by an electrical fire in a doomed grandstand. During the 13 years in between, the tall, mustachioed right-hander threw two no-hitters, earned two pennant-clinching victories, won three World Series […]

Burleigh Arland Grimes, who pitched in four games for the St. Louis Cardinals at the beginning of the 1934 season, was born on August 18, 1893, on his parents’ dairy farm about halfway between the towns of Emerald and Clear Lake in northwestern Wisconsin. (Wisconsin records indicate he was born in Emerald, but he always […]

From the moment he was born in the back seat of a car in the parking lot of the East Orange (New Jersey) General Hospital, during a snowstorm on December 21, 1948,1 Elliott Maddox showed a knack for doing things on his terms. He was a premier defensive outfielder who had just begun to show […]

Martin Flaherty was a major-league owner, player, and umpire during the 1880s – sort of. Mostly, he was a fan. For six innings in 1881, he played outfield as an emergency substitute for the Worcesters, a National League team he partly owned. The following season he umpired a single game: the Worcesters’ final nine innings […]

Henry Chadwick, baseball’s first historian, tried to capture a game in a chart for his newspaper readers. It was called a box score, and as it evolved over the years, it offered the raw material for the statistically minded to analyze, understand, and appreciate the game. There were dozens who followed, from Ernie Lanigan, longtime […]

Illinois native Del Howard wasn’t as well-known as Hall of Famers Joe Tinker, Johnny Evers, and Frank Chance, but he was a valuable backup first baseman, outfielder, and pinch-hitter on the Chicago Cubs’ world championship teams of 1907 and 1908. “Del [Howard] has been carried two years with the Cubs and is as full of […]

A Tennessee native who played baseball and basketball at Georgia Tech,1 Bob Tillman caught the eye of Red Sox scout George Digby, who signed him out of Middle Tennessee State on January 18, 1958. Tillman, a 6-foot-4 right-hander, earned a place in baseball history with his first official major-league at-bat, which left the yard in […]

“He was what could be classified as a crazy ball player. You could never defense him well or pitch him certain kinds of pitches because he was so unpredictable. If you were nine runs down, Holloway might try to steal home if he thought it might help to motivate the team in their comeback effort.” […]