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On June 15, 2003, Steve Trachsel pitched the 24th one-hitter in New York Mets franchise history, an 8-0 win over the defending World Series champion Anaheim Angels. The Mets’ road trip crossed the country the next day, heading east to face the Florida Marlins in Miami. After a fifth-place National League East Division finish in […]

Considering the transportation methods available in 1903, a trip from Cleveland, Ohio, to Chattanooga, Tennessee, would have been neither quick nor easy. Cleveland Naps manager Bill Armour didn’t seem to care – that’s how badly he wanted to secure two-way minor-league star Hugh Hill’s services for the 1903 season. After battling contract baiting from the […]

The 1952 baseball season had turned the page to May, and the season’s stories were just starting to bloom like ivy on the brick walls of Wrigley Field. The Chicago Cubs led the National League with nine wins (against four losses), yet were percentage points behind the first-place Brooklyn Dodgers, who had a record of […]

In April 1977 a brand-new baseball team called the Blue Jays took the field for the first time, kindling joy in the hearts of fans and bringing the pro game back to a baseball-starved city. And then, two months later, it happened all over again. The expansion Toronto Blue Jays played their first season in […]

“Always stand on principle … even if you stand alone.” — John Adams1   During the 1970s, four American League games ended in forfeit. Three were the result of fans throwing caution to the wind – near the end of the Senators’ farewell to Washington in September 1971, during the Cleveland Indians’ 10-cent beer night […]

Baseball fans in the small-town New York-Penn League discovered an extra reason to go to games in the summer of 1975. On certain nights, there was a chance that beloved Hall of Famer Yogi Berra might join them in the stands at one of the short-season Class A loop’s modest ballparks. Yogi and his wife, […]

If the baseball fans of Seattle had understood the significance of April 12, 1969, they might have arranged a parade, or perhaps a municipal celebration at Seattle Center with plenty of free-flowing Rainier beer.1 And certainly, more than 8,319 of them might have come out to Sick’s Stadium for the evening’s Seattle Pilots-Chicago White Sox […]

In 1946, for the first time in history, a major-league pennant race ended in a tie when the Brooklyn Dodgers and St. Louis Cardinals ended the 154-game season with identical 96-58 records. National League rules specified a best-of-three playoff; the winner of a coin toss could choose to either open the series at home, which […]

In the early going of the 1873 season, the White Stockings of Philadelphia enjoyed the kind of success the Boston Red Stockings had enjoyed the previous year. The Quaker City’s “second” team lost but three of its first 30 games, putting together two separate streaks of 10 consecutive victories, and spent much the better part […]

The 2016 season was something of a breakout for Mookie Betts. It was his second full season in the major leagues, playing outfield for the Boston Red Sox. He’d hit for the same .291 batting average in both 2014 and 2015, but in 2016 the 23-year-old Betts improved to .318 and drove in a career-high […]

After the American League adopted the designated hitter rule for the 1973 season, there was much speculation in the press about its impact. Oscar Kahan, writing for The Sporting News in January 1973, was among the first to point out one particular benefit of the new rule. He wrote, “Now there will be room on […]

Just a year after winning the World Series in 2013, the Red Sox were struggling. With only two days left in June, they were in fourth place in the American League East, seven games behind first-place Toronto and five games behind the third-place Yankees. They had finished in last place in 2012, before bounding to […]

At the conclusion of the Boston Red Sox’ disappointing 1993 season, general manager Lou Gorman, manager Butch Hobson, and assistant general manager Mike Port met with a couple of the team’s controlling partners, Haywood Sullivan and John Harrington, to talk about the status of the team and coaching staff.  The quintet resolved to make a […]

Nolan Ryan has more strikeouts and no-hitters than any other pitcher in history. Despite never winning a Cy Young Award, he started more games than anyone except Cy Young. Though he played mostly for mediocre teams, his 324 wins are as many as contemporary Don Sutton, who pitched for four pennant winners and just missed […]

Craig Cacek (pronounced Cass-ek) played in seven games for the Houston Astros in 1977. From June 18 to July 10 he was in the major leagues for the only time.1 He had one hit, one RBI, and one walk in 21 plate appearances, a .050 batting average. The Astros’ trade of Cliff Johnson to the […]

Right-handed pitcher Lev Shreve was a nineteenth-century baseball rarity: an affluent young man descended from a distinguished and prosperous family whose American roots dated from the late 1630s.1 Early generations included settlement founders, Revolutionary War heroes, judges, lawyers (including a reputed law partner of Thomas Jefferson), civic leaders, and the founders of Shreveport, Louisiana. Lev’s […]

Originally signed by the White Sox as a shortstop, Tom Hurd finally made the majors as a Red Sox right-handed relief specialist some nine years later. He played for Boston for three years in the mid-1950s, appearing in 99 games, all in relief. His lifetime record was 13-10 with 11 saves. In 1955, he led […]

In 1949 left-handed hurler Alexander Raymond Kellner joined his namesake, Hall of Famer Grover Cleveland Alexander, among others with a 20-win campaign in his freshman season. The next year Kellner joined a smaller community, losing 20 games in his sophomore year. Through 2015, only 15 pitchers (11 from the 19th century) have won 20 games […]

How do you throw a spitball? “The idea is to get part of your grip wet, and the other dry. When the ball leaves your hand, it slips off your wet fingers and clings, just tiny-like, to the dry part on your thumb. The ball jumps on account of it. If it’s a good ’un, […]

Right-handed reliever Ken Tatum was off to a brilliant start in his baseball career, a candidate for American League Rookie of the Year honors with the California Angels in 1969. The award had never gone to a relief pitcher, but Tatum’s stats (7-2, with a 1.36 earned run average) helped give him a Wins Above […]

Except for a brief September call-up in 1953, Eddie Phillips spent his entire 11-year pro baseball career in the minor leagues. Yet, during those 2½ weeks with the St. Louis Cardinals, he established a record for most runs scored in the major leagues (four) without a plate appearance or taking a defensive position. His pinch-running […]

At one end of the Red Sox dressing room stood a pitching master, a winner of 306 games and a future Hall of Famer with “flecks of gray in his hair,” wrote Bill Parrillo of the Providence Journal.1 His reputation preceded him. At the age of 41, Tom Seaver was in a Red Sox uniform […]

One could pull up Dickey Pearce’s statistics at the reference sites and be completely unimpressed. His numbers in the National Association and the National League are unremarkable. This is only part of the story; he was 35 years old when the National Association started and 40 when the National League began. Pearce’s reputation and contributions […]

On the evening of September 21, 1964, the Philadelphia Phillies’ Art Mahaffey was pitching a gem of a baseball game. In the top of the sixth inning it was a scoreless duel in between Mahaffey and the Cincinnati Reds’ John Tsitouris at Connie Mack Stadium in Philadelphia. With two outs, 25-year-old Reds rookie Chico Ruiz […]