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“The law of averages had to catch up with you.” – Rusty Staub, May 25, 1973, after driving in the decisive run in a very long game.1   Marathon games dot the histories of the New York Mets and the Los Angeles Dodgers. The Brooklyn Dodgers played 26 innings against the Boston Braves on May […]

It was the “longest home run in the history of baseball,” gushed sportswriter Joe Trimble of the New York Daily News, about Mickey Mantle’s titanic blast over the left-field bleachers and out of Griffith Stadium.1 Not ready to dismiss the icon who began the sport’s love affair with the long ball two generations earlier, New […]

No matter how bright or bleak the prospects for the coming season, on Opening Day every baseball team has its share of hopeful anticipation. Since they were the defending National League champions, this was especially true for the Brooklyn Dodgers on April 13, 1921, when they opened the season in Boston. For once the New […]

To say that the Montreal Expos faced some adversity on the road to their first-ever playoff appearance would be an understatement. In their first decade of existence (1969-1978), the Expos never finished higher than in fourth place in the National League East standings and their record was below .500 in each of those years. Although […]

“Outside a miracle, you’ll never pitch again.” Dave Dravecky, one of the aces of the San Francisco Giants’ pitching staff, had suffered an injury-ridden 1988, in which he pitched in only seven games. But nothing prepared him for the shocking diagnosis he received in September of that year. He had felt a lump on his […]

Season-ending games rarely hold much fascination for many fans or players, and such was the case when the Texas Rangers hosted the California Angels in the finale of 1984. For Mike Witt, the circumstances of the visiting pitcher in his last start also served as the conclusion of a salary drive, and the lanky right-hander […]

To the extent that twenty-first-century baseball fans remember Willard Hershberger, they remember him for the unfortunate circumstances of his death. Hershberger, a 30-year-old backup catcher in his third season with the Cincinnati Reds, took his own life in a Boston hotel in August 1940 after a long struggle with depression. He was the first active […]

After foundering with fastballs and curveballs for the Boston Red Sox and Pittsburgh Pirates in the first half of the 1960s, Wilbur Wood transformed himself into a quality knuckleballing reliever for the Chicago White Sox from 1967 to 1970. He then improbably metamorphosed into one of the top pitchers in baseball as an innings-eating workhorse […]

October had arrived. The New York Mets and the Cincinnati Reds were ready to determine who would be the National League champion. The Mets made the playoffs with an 82-79 record. On July 31, they were in last place in the East Division. After the Mets chairman, M. Donald Grant, gave the players a bland […]

In the 1950s, a kid’s trip to a Dodgers game at Ebbets Field was a very special occasion and one of unimaginable joy. The atmosphere, the color, the noise, and the food challenged all the senses. The game was an opportunity to see Jackie, Pee Wee, Duke, Campy, and all the others. If you managed […]

Two teams that were flying high ran into each other, and one got run over. As always, the complete randomness of the blowout was unpredictable. The Texas Rangers had swept a doubleheader from the New York Yankees on Sunday for the first time ever. The two wins pushed them into a tie for first place […]

On the evening of June 20, 1931, in Jamestown, North Dakota, an estimated crowd of 1,800 came out to the ballpark to see something old and something new. The “old” was Grover Cleveland “Old Pete” Alexander, the winner of 373 major-league games, who would be inducted into the National Baseball Hall of Fame in 1938. […]

The 1952 World Series was the fourth straight for the New York Yankees and the third in six seasons for the Brooklyn Dodgers. The teams had met in the last Game Seven, in 1947, with the Yankees winning—a familiar outcome. In 1952, New York was looking for its 15th world championship, the Dodgers, seemingly as […]

After finishing second in the National League East in 1984 and 1985, the New York Mets were looking to take the next step and win the division in 1986. The Mets were a formidable club with an offense anchored by Darryl Strawberry, Keith Hernandez, and Gary Carter, an excellent all-around defense, and the pitching of […]

In 2011 the Cincinnati Enquirer published a list of the 100 greatest players in the 130-year history of the Cincinnati Reds.1 Hall of Fame second baseman Joe Morgan topped the rankings, which were brimming with the names of renowned ballplayers. But coming in at number 62 was Curt Walker, a long-forgotten right fielder who spent […]

Among numerous icons from Cuba’s somewhat murky pre-revolution past, swarthy-skinned pitching ace José de la Caridad Méndez Báez stands at the very apex of the heap. Among the young nation’s first true national sporting heroes, the rawboned fastball hurler maintains an indelible image as one of the earliest icons of island baseball history. But it […]

Soon after the 1967 World Series ended, Fleetwood Recording Co. released a long-playing phonograph record, The Impossible Dream, a reprise of the Boston Red Sox magical same-year pennant. Narrating, Sox announcer Ken Coleman hailed “an affair twixt a town and a team,” telling how the Boston American League Baseball Company used wonderwork to wave 1967’s […]

David Green was one of baseball’s big “what if” stories. The imposing Nicaraguan was often called “the next Roberto Clemente.” His talent has also been compared to that of Vladimir Guerrero, André Dawson, and Darryl Strawberry — even Willie Mays. Alas, personal troubles and nagging injuries stopped him from realizing this vast potential. Looking back […]

Cardinals have been a big part of Walt Jocketty’s life. He grew up playing for the Marshall High School Cardinals, where his dad was a teacher and coach, in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Jocketty later became the general manager of the St. Louis Cardinals and built the team that won the 2006 World Series while twice being named Major […]

The 1945 Boston Red Sox had two Steiners on the roster – catcher Red Steiner and second baseman Ben Steiner. Though it might seem unusual for a team to have two unrelated players with the same surname, in the 1940s alone the Red Sox had Skeeter Newsome/Dick Newsome, Jimmie Foxx/Pete Fox, Bob Johnson/Vic Johnson, and […]

Left-hander Drake Britton had one win and one loss in his time in the big leagues, but he has a World Championship ring to treasure forever as a member of the 2013 Boston Red Sox. It was a year in which he almost lost the opportunity to pitch. John Drake Britton was born in Waco, […]

“Catchers are in demand,” declared the Fort Worth Record in 1907; they “are scarcer than snowflakes in July.”1 Catchers’ equipment was primitive, and injuries were common. Who wanted to endure abuse from fastballs and foul tips? Tommy Hess was willing. From 1890 to 1911, he caught for minor-league teams in at least 10 U.S. states […]

Woody Rich, all too briefly, was a pitching phenom. He entered his first major-league training camp, in 1939, barely noticed amid all the attention given to fellow rookie Ted Williams. By the end of March he was being compared to the great Pete Alexander, and reliable witnesses were predicting he would win 20 games. He roomed with Ted […]

While Fred Cone didn’t have much of a career at the plate with a mere 20 hits in his only season, he banged out one-quarter of those hits in one memorable game for the 1871 Boston Red Stockings. In the team’s July 12 game against the Fort Wayne Kekiongas, Cone collected five hits in a […]