Search Results

Columbia University went through six baseball coaches in eight years from 1906 through 1913. But in 1914, former big league pitcher Andy Coakley joined the program, handling pitchers and catchers. He became the Lions’ head coach in 1915 and remained in that job for 37 years, stepping down after the 1951 season. Coakley shaped the […]

It was the “best pitching in my career,” exclaimed an elated Johnny Kucks after the struggling pitcher’s improbable three-hit shutout in Game Seven of the 1956 World Series.1 After losing the first two games of the Series, the New York Yankees’ 9-0 thrashing of the reigning title-holding Dodgers in Brooklyn was a “loud and emphatic […]

When the St. Louis Browns relocated to Baltimore in 1954, the new Baltimore Orioles played their home games in Memorial Stadium, a multipurpose facility located north of downtown. Thirty-eight years later the Orioles moved to Oriole Park at Camden Yards, a trail-blazing ballpark situated by the waterfront in the heart of downtown. From its opening, […]

Playoff baseball in the wild-card era is unpredictable. Teams that dominate during the summer routinely get ousted early in October by teams with less impressive regular-season records. Perhaps no franchise has benefited from expanded playoffs more than the Miami Marlins. Since they entered the National League as an expansion team in 1993, when they were […]

Lester B. Pearson was Canada’s 14th prime minister (1963-68) and a Nobel Peace Prize winner.1 He was also a talented amateur ballplayer in his youth, a lifelong baseball fan, and an honorary president of the Montreal Expos from 1968 until his death in 1972.2 When the Toronto Blue Jays joined the American League in 1977 […]

The 1997 American League Championship Series between the Baltimore Orioles and the Cleveland Indians was tied at one game apiece. The first two games, at Camden Yards, were tightly contested. Scott Erickson pitched the Orioles to a 3-0 victory in Game One. The right-handed hurler went eight innings, scattered four hits, and struck out three. […]

Exciting, well-played baseball action was in limited supply for fans of the expansion Montreal Expos and San Diego Padres in 1969. The two newcomers to the National League posted identical 52-110 records in their first seasons, finishing a combined 89 games out of first place. Late in the season, though, teams of Expos and Padres […]

In the early morning hours of July 27, 1971, the Philadelphia Phillies slumped away from Veterans Stadium after losing a 15-inning battle to the Houston Astros that took 4 hours 12 minutes to finish. The loss was bad enough to think about on its own, but manager Frank Lucchesi sent one of his players home […]

The Baltimore Orioles entered the 1983 World Series on an absolute roll. They took the AL East by six games and dispatched the Chicago White Sox four games to one in the ALCS. The White Sox were a very good team — they had won the AL West by a margin of 20 games — […]

On September 4, 1949, the fourth-place Philadelphia Phillies and the third-place Boston Braves faced off in a Sunday doubleheader at Shibe Park in Philadelphia. The Braves were one year removed from winning the 1948 National League pennant and the Phillies were one year away from capturing the 1950 pennant. On this day, however, the teams […]

Pitcher Troy Herriage’s big-league career was notable for both its duration and its difficulty. The Kansas City Athletics, who selected Herriage in the Rule 5 minor-league draft in November 1955, were required to either keep him on their roster for the entire 1956 season or return him to his old club.1 They not only kept […]

Photo entitled “Famous Gate City Baseball Club of 1867” appeared in Atlanta Constitution, October 21, 1906, page 26. Left to right: Tom Johnson, Hugh Angier, Jim Gregg, Billy Sparks, Bob Dohme, Willis Biggers, George Cassin, Rube Tidwell and John Collier.   In the spring of 1866, a year after the end of the Civil War, […]

Manager Casey Stengel was back at the helm for the fourth consecutive season as the American League took on the National League in the 1953 All-Star Game at Cincinnati’s Crosley Field. Stengel’s Yankees had won their fourth consecutive World Series the prior October, and his star young center fielder, Mickey Mantle, was elected by the […]

After he signed with the Brooklyn Dodgers, Jackie Robinson’s debut with the Montreal Royals in the 1946 season opener against the Jersey City Giants left a lasting impression in so many ways. Robinson’s four hits, four runs batted in, and two stolen bases led the Royals’ 14-1 rout. Joseph Sheehan, covering the game for the […]

Lou Piniella was coming home. The Tampa native signed a four-year contract to manage the Tampa Bay Devil Rays on October 29, 2002.1 At the press conference announcing his signing, he said, “For 40 years now, I’ve been packing for spring training. I don’t need to pack anymore.”2 Piniella had successfully managed other teams over […]

One of the most energetic players of his era, Jimmy Austin was a sparkplug for the New York Highlanders and St. Louis Browns over an 18-year career spent entirely in the American League. A speedy switch-hitting third baseman, Austin stole at least twenty bases in each of his first six major league seasons, and he […]

Jug Thesenga was sick through the entire flight from Kansas to New York City. This boy from South Dakota was on his way to Yankee Stadium to start for the Washington Senators the next day. That was September 1, 1944, and the Senators were desperate for pitching during those World War II years. Scouts plucked […]

James “Farmer” “Slab” Burns, “the Ashtabula Midget,” had two more nicknames than innings pitched in Major League Baseball. Standing 5-foot-7 and weighing 168 pounds, it’s easy to assume how he earned one of those, but the origin of the other two monikers is not the only mystery presented by James Burns.1 As of 2017, no […]

“Whoosh … budap … snap … whoosh … budap … snap.” Vern Duncan’s earliest memory of baseball was of throwing a ball against the brick wall of a neighboring store in his back yard.1 His childhood efforts led him on a long baseball career highlighted by three seasons at the highest professional level, one in […]

Dave Robinson was the first player signed by the San Diego Padres in 1968. The National League expansion team’s press conference on July 31 featured Hall of Famer Duke Snider, a fellow Southern Californian who had inadvertently discovered Robinson at San Diego State College.1 “He told me he went out to see [outfielder] Jim Nettles […]

Erskine Mayer had a most interesting background, one that was very different from that of most players of the early 20th century. Mayer’s paternal grandparents were Jews who came from Germany. His great-grandfather (his grandmother’s father) had been a buyer for Otto von Bismarck, the Prussian statesman who unified Germany. He disappeared one day, and […]

The cover photo on the Sunday magazine insert of the June 29, 1958, edition of the Columbus (Ohio) Citizen was of a young boy wearing a Little League baseball uniform gazing admiringly at an older, bespectacled gentleman who was squatting, a baseball bat in hand. As the accompanying article explained, the man in the photo […]

Todd Frohwirth was a high school senior with no future in professional baseball until he saw Kent Tekulve on television and tried pitching like the unorthodox right-hander. Eight years later, he was Tekulve’s teammate in the major leagues. Exclusively a reliever, Frohwirth spent parts of nine seasons (1987-1994, 1996) with the Phillies, Orioles, Red Sox, […]

Jim Brewer called himself a screwball, and he threw one. It saved his career. After three years of trying, the left-hander mastered the delivery with help from a Hall of Famer. Beginning when he was 30 years old, he fashioned a six-year run as the Los Angeles Dodgers’ late-inning fireman. Brewer became most famous for […]