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A spate of premature deaths between 1970 and 1979 brought baseball fans face-to-face with the fragility of human life. In those 10 years, no fewer than 14 active or recently active professional baseball players lost their lives to accidents, disease, murder, and suicide. Most prominent among the deceased players were Hall of Famer Roberto Clemente […]

Ralph Kiner’s 301 home runs, the product of an unparalleled slugging spree in the late 1940s and early 1950s, ranked first in Pittsburgh Pirates franchise history when Willie Stargell made his big-league debut in 1962. Blossoming into a prodigious, consistent power threat over the next decade, Stargell overtook Kiner in 1973 with his 302nd career […]

Bob Moose’s strong pitching at two levels of the Pittsburgh Pirates’ minor-league system in 1967, punctuated by a pair of outstanding starts in the International League’s championship series, led to a September call-up that made him the Pirates’ first-ever amateur draft selection to reach the majors. On September 29, 10 days before his 20th birthday, […]

Rookie right-hander Fred Cambria was the starting pitcher for the Pittsburgh Pirates as they took on the Philadelphia Phillies at Three Rivers Stadium on Saturday, September 5, 1970. A late August call-up from the Columbus Jets of the Triple-A International League, where he had been 12-7 with a 4.17 ERA, Cambria was 0-1 in two […]

The New York Mets were playing out the 1971 season. They had stayed in contention through the first half but fell out of the National League East race after going 21-37 in July and August.1 When the Pittsburgh Pirates showed up at Shea Stadium in late September for the next-to-last series of the season, the […]

The Pittsburgh Pirates traveled to Milwaukee in 1960 for their July 4 doubleheader with the Braves with both good and bad news on their minds. With 43 wins and 27 losses, they were in first place in the National League by 3½ games over the 39-30 Braves. It was the first time the Pirates had […]

The Pirates’ 1976 season and Danny Murtaugh’s managerial career concluded with a doubleheader against the St. Louis Cardinals on October 3, 1976. Both teams disappointed that year, the Cardinals dropping from 82-80 in 1975 to 72-88 beginning the season’s final Sunday. For Pittsburgh, although it had won only two fewer games than in its Eastern […]

“Desperate times call for desperate measures.” The quote, attributed to the ancient Greek physician Hippocrates, also describes the circumstances behind the lone pitching win of Johnny O’Brien’s career in an afternoon game on July 3, 1956. Johnny and his identical twin brother, Eddie, were signed off the Seattle University campus by Pittsburgh to bonus contracts […]

After starting their 1967 season with a loss, just as they had for the previous six years, the New York Mets sent their newest young star, Tom Seaver, to the mound for the second game of their season-opening series against the Pittsburgh Pirates.1 An audience of 5,005 “polar bears,” among them movie director Alfred Hitchcock, […]

At a press conference on Monday, July 8 — the day before the 2002 All-Star Game in Milwaukee — National League manager Bob Brenly was asked about his decision to replace the injured Tom Glavine with another starting pitcher, Vicente Padilla. “This is my first go-round with these All-Star Games,” Brenly said, “but I have […]

On September 15, 2022 – celebrated as Roberto Clemente Day across all of baseball’s major leagues – the Tampa Bay Rays, playing the Toronto Blue Jays at the Rogers Centre in Toronto, deployed a batting order of players native to Colombia, Cuba, the Dominican Republic, Mexico, and Venezuela. The Rays won the game, 11-0, and […]

“He has that old stroke back and he’s swinging a fast bat again.” — Pittsburgh Pirates batting coach George Sisler on Bob Skinner during spring training in 1960.1   A new decade of Pittsburgh Pirates baseball dawned in 1960. One couldn’t blame the team for bidding a fond farewell to the 1950s. From 1950 to […]

Although he had an excellent 20-season major-league career, Rafael Palmeiro may be best remembered for something he did off the field. Called to a congressional hearing before the 2005 season to discuss the use of steroids in baseball, he wagged his finger while emphatically denying using banned substances. Just five months later, about two weeks […]

Major-league baseball came to Jersey City, New Jersey, for the 1956 and 1957 seasons. The ongoing saga of the mid-1950s determining the future of baseball in Brooklyn now included New Jersey. Over these two seasons, the Dodgers played 15 home games at Roosevelt Stadium, one against each National League team each season, and two against […]

A nimble catcher before becoming one of the finest defensive third basemen of his era, Lave Cross spent most of his long career with four Philadelphia franchises.1 First came stints with the American Association’s Athletics and Players’ League’s Quakers, before a half-dozen seasons with the talented but underachieving mid-1890s National League Phillies. His fortunes then […]

Called the “King of the Caribbean” by baseball people and “Big Daddy” by players he was scouting, Howie Haak gained acclaim as the scout who threw open all of Latin America to major-league baseball. Living up to yet another nickname, “El Tiburón” — The Shark — Haak built upon the work Joe Cambria had done […]

Part of the “New Breed,” second baseman Ken Boswell played a key role during the Amazin’ Mets’ run to the National League championship. And though platooning limited him to just one start in the 1969 World Series, he batted .333, the same robust average as he enjoyed in the NLCS, and celebrated with gusto as […]

In major-league baseball when a team dominates its opponents for several years, it’s usually because it has a solid nucleus of players. For instance, in the early 1970s in the American League the Oakland Athletics captured three successive World Series. In the National League the Cincinnati Reds were a powerhouse. Both clubs had a strong […]

Of the many talented players involved in the successes of the early 1990s pennants won by the Pittsburgh Pirates, one player who flew under the radar was amateur free-agent signing Orlando Merced. Orlando Luis Villanueva Merced was born on November 2, 1966, to José R. and Sylvia Villanueva. Merced’s parents were both originally from Puerto […]

From 1953 through 1956, Jim Woods was Mel Allen’s and Red Barber’s partner on New York Yankees radio/TV. One day, eying Woods’ slight overbite and gray buzz cut, Enos Slaughter jibed, “I’ve seen better heads on a possum.” In 1958 Jim moved to Pittsburgh, where announcer Bob Prince’s wife called Woods’ spouse “Mrs. Possum.” In […]

Curt Schilling’s father, Cliff, served in the United States Army for 22 years, a master sergeant with the 101st Airborne Division who was stationed at Elmendorf Air Force Base adjacent to Anchorage, Alaska, when his son Curtis Montague Schilling was born on November 14, 1966. Curt was the middle child of Cliff and Mary Schilling. […]

Alvin O’Neal McBean – for decades, the only big-league pitcher from the Virgin Islands – was a good one. His hard sinker and limber, resilient arm made him valuable as a starter and even more as a reliever. Throwing from various arm angles as the spirit moved him, McBean was somewhat reminiscent of Orlando “El […]

“Baseball is in the heart of all Latin people. They feel in baseball. They think in baseball.” — Pancho Coimbre Baseball in Puerto Rico has a long and storied history; many fans of the game on the island are willing to regale one another at the drop of a hat about the careers and exploits […]

When people think of Nicaragua and baseball, the first name that comes to mind will always be El Presidente, Dennis Martínez. The second Nicaraguan in the majors was Tony Chévez, who signed together with Martínez with the Baltimore Orioles in 1973. Chévez was the bigger star at home, and expectations were higher for him.[fn]Hernández, Gerald. […]