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Manny Mota never seemed to age. “He’s scary,” said Steve Garvey, his teammate with the Los Angeles Dodgers. “I wish just one spring he would show up with one gray hair.”1 That was in June 1979, a couple of months before the Dominican set the career record for pinch hits. Mota wound up with 150 […]

From 1960 through 1964, Cuban righty Ed Bauta pitched in one full major-league season and parts of four others with the St. Louis Cardinals and New York Mets. Bauta wasn’t a strikeout artist, averaging between five and six K’s per nine innings throughout his recorded pro baseball career. He relied on a sinker, thrown from […]

Imposing, confident, complex, charismatic, and controversial, Dave Winfield ranks as the greatest multisport athlete to emerge from the state of Minnesota. Drafted by five teams in five leagues in three major sports, Winfield chose baseball and compiled a first-ballot Hall of Fame career. At 6-feet-6 and 220 pounds, the powerfully-built right-hander wielded a menacing black […]

For the first half of the 1970 season, Cincinnati rookie pitcher Wayne Simpson had the National League by the tail. He won 13 of his first 14 decisions in the majors, making the All-Star team. “He was tough,” remembered Al Oliver, then an opponent with the Pittsburgh Pirates. “Outstanding. I’d have to rate him right […]

All right up there, drop down the ladder from your clubhouse. A new member is joining you. Henry, show him the secret handshake. Willie, educate him on the secret password. Babe, don’t hog all those s’mores. Junior, slide over a bit. Gentlemen, please welcome Jim Thome to the 600 Home Run Club. It may seem […]

With a major-league career that comprised only 39 games, Herbert Harrison Hunter still managed to play in baseball’s four biggest markets: New York, Chicago, Boston, and St. Louis. After 1920, in which he played in four games for the Boston Red Sox, Hunter became a baseball tour impresario of sorts, leading a group of major […]

“GAMER 1. A player who approaches the game with a tenacious, spirited attack and continues to play even when hurt; a competitor; a player who doesn’t make excuses. The term is a compliment, most especially when it comes from another player.”1 Bill Buckner was a gamer. He played the game of baseball as hard as […]

In 1976, Dennis Martínez became the first Nicaraguan to play in the big leagues – and he remains by far the most successful. Indeed, his 245 major-league wins stood for more than 20 years as the most by any Latino pitcher, two ahead of Juan Marichal. (Bartolo Colón finally broke that record in August 2018.) […]

Clyde Sukeforth was a backup catcher who played parts of ten seasons in the Major Leagues for the Cincinnati Reds and Brooklyn Dodgers. Over those ten seasons, Sukeforth hit .264 with only two home runs and had ninety-six runs batted in. Although his accomplishments as a player were minimal, Sukeforth’s subsequent years as a minor-league […]

Fausto Miranda was the dean of Cuban sportswriters. Miranda’s writing showed just how elegant the Spanish language can be. Yale University professor Roberto González Echevarría, author of the Cuban baseball history The Pride of Havana, said, “He was a journalist who wrote with vigor, grace and agility.”1 Baseball, as Cuba’s national sport, naturally accounted for […]

Fern Shollenberger was the third baseman on the All-Star team in six of her nine seasons in the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League. She first evidenced her talents on the family ball field in Hamburg, Pennsylvania. This small town is in a rural area of Berks County, 17 miles north of Reading. Fern’s father, Alvas R. […]

Louisianan Paul Sentell finished second to Ty Cobb in the 1905 South Atlantic League batting race. As a major-league rookie infielder, Sentell broke his hand in a fistfight with John McGraw. As a minor-league manager, he became a renowned umpire-baiter. Finally, Sentell became a skilled arbiter himself, ascending back to the major leagues in three […]

Ron Kline is one of a number of professional athletes who entered politics after their professional athletic careers came to a close. The most notable baseball player turned politician is Jim Bunning, US Senator from Kentucky (1999-2011), though others (Vinegar Bend Mizell and Fred Brown, for instance) also served in political office.1 Ron Kline became […]

Marcia Haddix was at home — on a Clark County, Ohio, farm — when her mother-in-law called to tell her to turn on the radio — her husband was pitching a pretty good game in Milwaukee. The reception of Pittsburgh’s KDKA was poor so she got in her car and drove a few miles to […]

A World Series berth was 161 games and an NL playoff away. Coming off a third-place finish in 1972 with an 83-73 record – 13½ games out of first place – the Mets began ’73 with a 3-0 shutout against the Phillies and a declaration of power from a beloved member of the blue-and-orange squad. […]

The Brooklyn Dodgers and Milwaukee Braves were battling down to the wire for the National League crown in 1956 and both teams were having trouble winning on a consistent basis at the end of September. The St. Louis Cardinals gave Brooklyn an opening to move into the pennant lead when they defeated Milwaukee, 5-4, on […]

The Brooklyn Dodgers and Pittsburgh Pirates were heading in opposite directions on Memorial Day 1955. Entering the day, the National League-leading Dodgers claimed the majors’ best record at 30-10, six games ahead of the Chicago Cubs. The cellar-dwelling Pirates were tied with the Baltimore Orioles for the majors’ worst record at 13-29. The Dodgers opened […]

Minor-league power hitting, solid play as an injury fill-in, and Dave Parker’s departure in free agency thrust Doug Frobel into right field for the Pittsburgh Pirates on Opening Day 1984. Frobel’s struggles – beginning with an ignominious encounter with Hall of Fame-bound San Diego Padres reliever Rich Gossage in the season opener – soon reduced […]

In his second at-bat of the second All-Star Game in 1960, Willie Mays made history by completing the All-Star Game cycle. In the span of just two days, Mays had collected the four necessary hits to hit for the cycle: a single, double, triple, and home run. No major leaguer has ever hit for the cycle […]

When healthy, Eric Davis possessed a rare combination of power and speed, but he could never stay completely healthy in his career. Injuries and inconsistent performance limited Davis to 113 games in his first two seasons with the Cincinnati Reds. But in the next five seasons, 1986 to 1990, Davis hammered 148 homers and swiped […]

The Chicago Cubs opened 1982 with rookie Ryne Sandberg at third base, months after acquiring him in an offseason trade with the Philadelphia Phillies. Held to one hit in his first 32 at-bats, the 22-year-old Sandberg entered the Cubs’ April 23 game with the Pittsburgh Pirates batting just .140. On a windy day at Wrigley […]

With rain falling and the clock approaching 1:00 A.M., Yankees coach Don Zimmer wasn’t even sure of the situation any more. He turned to Roger Clemens on the bench and asked, “If Giambi hits it out, do we win?”1 Such was the setting on a soggy Friday night-cum-Saturday morning in a back-and-forth game at Yankee […]

In seven seasons of futility, the New York Mets had never won more than 73 games in a season or finished higher than ninth place in the National League. With the 1969 expansion, plus divisional play, the team was guaranteed to finish no lower than sixth place. Led by manager Gil Hodges, in his second […]

Index for Bill James’s Baseball Analyst Nos. 1-40, 1982-1989 Read Rob Neyer’s introduction of the Baseball Analyst archives “Baseball Analyst,” a Bill James creation that he self-published from 1982 to 1989, was one of the first publications to feature articles devoted to sabermetrics — a phrase he coined in part to honor SABR. “Baseball Analyst” […]