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It was just the third game of the 1947 season. The American League champions of 1946, the Boston Red Sox, had won their first two games at home, then left on a brief road trip, the first stop being Shibe Park in Philadelphia. The Athletics had opened their season at Yankee Stadium, winning their first […]

It was a “boiling” hot Saturday afternoon in Yankee Stadium, according to Yankees radio play-by-play announcer John Sterling,1 with a game-time temperature of 95 degrees. Little did the 41,682 fans know that two young prospects, Tyler Austin and Aaron Judge, would make their Yankees debut in spectacular fashion that day. New York entered the game at a disappointing 59-56 […]

White Sox fan Dennis Zweifel decided to leave Comiskey Park early on the night of August 28, 1968, looking to pop into one of the taverns lining Halsted Street on Chicago’s Near South Side.  The ballgame crowd, cheering on the performance of rookie pitcher Gerald “Jerry” Nyman, ultimately faded from Zweifel’s ears with every step […]

All through the winter of 1913-1914, the passionate baseball “cranks” of Binghamton and Utica, New York, longed for their favorite sport to return. When it finally did, they got a game for the ages. On Opening Day of the 1914 New York State League season, Binghamton’s Festus Higgins and Utica’s Frank Oberlin staged an epic […]

Gary White, a catcher recently battling cancer, collected the decisive RBI single for his only hit of the 1999 Intercontinental Cup tournament, as Australia won its first gold medal in international baseball competition in an 11-inning, 4-3 thriller against Cuba.1 It was November 14, 1999, at Homebush Stadium, the site of the 2000 Sydney Olympic […]

“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 […]

In 1943 Joe McCarthy had kept all his Yankees players on the bench. But for this game, McCarthy, managing the American League for the seventh time, started two of the three Yanks on the team, including the battery of right-hander Hank Borowy and veteran catcher Rollie Hemsley. Borowy, the ninth Yankee pitcher to start in […]

The 1933 Washington Senators won 99 games and captured the American League pennant. The 1934 season was a different story. Injuries up and down the roster contributed to the team’s decline. The list of maladies ranged from sore arms, pulled muscles, and beanballs to more unusual cases such as facial paralysis, pleurisy, and an injured […]

Jackie Robinson‘s debut with the Brooklyn Dodgers was more than just the first step in righting a historical wrong. It was a crucial event in the history of the American civil rights movement, the importance of which went far beyond the insular world of baseball. The Dodgers signed Robinson to a major-league contract just five […]

The story surrounding Joe Borden’s first no-hitter in professional baseball history is a microcosm of the state of baseball in 1875. Midway through the season, the Boston Red Stockings were steaming toward a 71-8-3 record and a fourth straight National Association pennant. Yet, the topic that dominated the sporting world was news of their looming […]

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 […]

Leading the Texas Rangers to an 8-4 victory over the Cleveland Indians on July 23, 1985, Oddibe McDowell had a “host of rookie dreams”1 come true. Before a home crowd of 8,985 at Arlington Stadium, the 22-year-old center fielder delivered a 5-for-5 performance and became the first Ranger to hit for the cycle. He tied […]

Over the final six weeks of the 1982 season, right-hander Brian Denman started nine games for the Boston Red Sox. The last of the nine was a six-hit shutout of the New York Yankees. They were the only nine times he appeared in the majors. He’d worked four-plus seasons in the minor leagues before getting […]

Baseball was already a fixture on the Cuban scene by the early 1870s and it had arrived burdened with its own home-grown Cuban apostles and its own full-blown and home-spun creation myths. It is well documented that a pair of Havana-bred brothers named Guilló (often misspelled as Guillot) had returned from Mobile, Alabama’s Springhill College […]

Cy Block was never shy about speaking up for himself. When he thought he had been wronged, which was often, he went straight to the top. At different times he confronted Commissioner Kenesaw Mountain Landis, National League President Ford Frick, and Dodgers President Larry MacPhail over his disputes with baseball management. His voice carried as […]

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, […]

Cy Falkenberg was perhaps the most unlikely pitching star of the Deadball Era. Nothing special for most of his career, he developed a deadly emery ball at age 32 in 1913, and rocketed to the forefront of major league pitchers. “Falkenberg has upset all possible existing dope, has broken preconceived notions into a million scattered […]

“Some people say he was the greatest African American player ever. That may be so — I don’t know — but what seems clear is that he was the best black player of his time.” — Monte Irvin   The story of John Henry “Pop” Lloyd has many facets. It is a story of communities […]

“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.” […]

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 […]

A fill-in catcher in a rookie-loaded lineup for Connie Mack and the World Series-bound Philadelphia Athletics on September 30, 1913, Navy man and “one-hit wonder” Joe Giebel’s only major league appearance would fortuitously occur right in his hometown of Washington, DC. Joseph Henry Giebel was born in Washington, District of Columbia, on November 30, 1891, […]

The Southern Tier Expressway does not lend itself to reflection or nostalgia. The six-lane divided highway breaks off from Interstate 81 in Binghamton, New York, and heads west, offering drivers — when construction allows — the fastest possible route to Elmira, Corning, the Finger Lakes, and other destinations in the Empire State’s southern and western […]

The San Diego Padres celebrated their 50th season in Major League Baseball in 2019. (SAN DIEGO PADRES)   San Diego’s quest for major-league baseball began earnestly in the mid- to late 1950s, around the time California’s largest cities, Los Angeles and San Francisco, ascended to “the bigs.” Home of the Pacific Coast League Padres since […]