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The Cincinnati Reds, trailing the Chicago Cubs 9-0 after eight innings in the first game of a September 26, 1912, doubleheader at Chicago’s West Side Park, scored 10 runs in the top of ninth. It would have been the greatest ninth-inning come-from-behind victory in major-league history – except that the Cubs scored two runs of […]

On the night of August 16, 1966, at White Sox Park, 24-year-old Bert Campaneris of the Kansas City Athletics had a phenomenal game as both a hitter and a baserunner. Campaneris collected three singles, a triple, and two stolen bases as the Athletics beat the Chicago White Sox, 4-2. The 160-pound, Cuban-born shortstop scored all […]

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 […]

With the 2013 season winding down and the first-place Boston Red Sox enjoying a 7½-game lead over the Tampa Bay Rays in the American League East Division, the Red Sox took a 4-0 lead over the visiting New York Yankees in the first inning, let the lead get away from them, scored another four runs, […]

Only two months had passed since outfielder Lee Walls was traded from Pittsburgh to Chicago,1 and he had not yet become a household name in the Windy City as July 1957 began. On July 2 Walls moved up some in Cubs fans’ eyes as he tried to singlehandedly lead his Chicago teammates to a victory […]

After they swept the Cincinnati Reds in a two-game, mid-July series in Los Angeles, the first-place and eventual 1965 world champion Dodgers’ season turned to the Dog Days of August in hot and humid Cincinnati versus the third-place Reds. The Ohio Rhinelanders were reeling, having begun the month losing five of seven home games including […]

It goes by many names: the whiff, the punchout, or simply a K. If you don’t offer at it, you are frozen, caught looking, or in times gone by, window shopping. If you don’t catch up to it, you are fanned or blown away. According to Crash Davis, they’re boring, and besides that, they’re fascist.1 […]

The New York Giants fell to third place in 1955; even so, Willie Mays slammed 51 home runs. (National Baseball Hall of Fame Library.)   After shocking the baseball world in 1954 by defeating the 111-win Cleveland Indians in the World Series, the Giants entered 1955 expecting to contend for another championship. But despite the […]

When Cardinals right-hander and future Hall of Famer Jesse Haines retired in 1937 after 18 seasons with the club, he held the franchise record for wins (210), innings pitched (3,203⅔), starts (387), and complete games (209), and had helped guide the Redbirds to five NL pennants and three titles. Haines’s pitching records have all since […]

Dave “Beauty” Bancroft made his name primarily on defense during his Hall of Fame career as a shortstop. One of his biggest days as a hitter came on June 28, 1920, when he went 6-for-6 in the New York Giants’ 18-3 win over the Philadelphia Phillies at the Baker Bowl in Philadelphia. Bancroft’s six-hit game […]

The high-powered Cincinnati Reds “collided head-on with [an] immovable object,” declared sportswriter Bill Ford in the Cincinnati Enquirer. That object was St. Louis Cardinals ace Bob Gibson, who “reduced the most vaunted offense in baseball to a fistful of beebees,” tossing a four-hit, 10-inning shutout.1 “His fastballs to me never were the same,” complained a […]

It was a battle for fourth place in the NL East – not the most coveted prize. The Cardinals held a half-game lead over the Phillies. St. Louis’s record was 36-33, Philadelphia’s 38-36. To arrive at a similar, middling place, though, the teams took different paths. The Phillies started well. They had winning streaks of […]

Stan Williams, a veteran right-hander, stood atop the mound at Metropolitan Stadium in the top of the ninth inning of a 1-0 game with runners at first and second and two out. At the plate stood pinch-hitter Vada Pinson, a dangerous batter and a new arrival in his first month with the Cleveland Indians after […]

To date, there has only been one woman who played baseball with a team of major leaguers in a big-league ballpark. Her name was Mary Elizabeth Murphy and on August 14, 1922, she played for a team of “all-stars” in an exhibition game against the Boston Red Sox at Fenway Park. Lizzie Murphy’s team beat […]

Bronson Arroyo played 16 years of major-league baseball and helped the Boston Red Sox end the Curse of the Bambino with the 2004 World Series championship. His controversial tag of Álex Rodríguez in Game Six of the ALCS, when the umpires reversed their original call, spurred the Red Sox on to a victory. Boston closed […]

Steve Curry, a 6-foot-6, 217-pound right-handed pitcher, played professional baseball for 12 years. He appeared just briefly in the majors, making three starts for the Boston Red Sox in mid-July 1988. He threw 11 innings, allowing 10 earned runs, and had just one decision in the big leagues, a loss in his debut game.  Stephen […]

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, […]

In 1909 Joe Bernard was a bookkeeper for Springfield Marine Bank in Illinois, playing baseball two or three games a week for local amateur teams and a semipro club in Gillespie, Illinois. The 27-year-old, 6-foot-1, 175-pound righthander had never played a game in the minor leagues. His chances of ever pitching in the major leagues […]

A long-time left-handed pitching ace for one of baseball history’s best staffs, Dave McNally was also a legend and hero in his native Billings, Montana, where he lived his entire life outside of baseball. Though a World Series pitching (and hitting) star, he might be best known in some circles for the role he played […]

Commissioner Ford C. Frick presided over 14 of the most turbulent years in the game’s history: the first franchise moves in half a century, expansion of the major leagues, the near-death of the minors, growing unrest among players, the rise of television, and the exploding popularity of football. With change swirling around him, Frick often […]

Today we would call Sherry Magee a five-tool player: he could hit, run, field, throw, and hit with power. For more than a decade he was the Philadelphia Phillies’ clean-up hitter and greatest offensive star, setting the all-time team record in stolen bases (387) and ranking among the top ten in almost every other category. […]

When considering the life of Dick Armstrong, most contemporaries think only of his ample accomplishments in the theological world. This is for good reason. Armstrong spent six decades of his life as a noted Presbyterian minister, pastor, educator, author, and humanitarian. Yet he had more than one career, and there is so much more, from […]

  The history of Maple City Park in Hornell, New York, spans everyone from Babe Ruth and Maury Wills to minor-leaguers with a single season’s statistical line. There’s a hefty portion of Brooklyn Dodgers nostalgia mixed into the story, as well as memories of the long-ago days when everyday people could pool their cash donations […]

The Bluefield Orioles played their final minor-league game on August 31, 2010 at Bowen Field in Bluefield, Virginia. (Photo courtesy of Davebanner12 / Creative Commons 1.0)   In the early 1900s in the town of Bluefield, West Virginia, the colors blue and gray still stirred bitter memories of the Civil War. Along the ridges that […]