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Vin Scully was hired at the age of 22 by Dodgers broadcaster Red Barber, and broadcast his first game at Shibe Park in Philadelphia on April 18, 1950. Scully became the team’s primary announcer when Barber joined the New York Yankees in 1954.1 Scully was on the call when the team won its first championship […]

The third-place Brooklyn Superbas arrived in Philadelphia in late June 1913 for five games with the National League-leading Phillies. For the Superbas, it was the final stop on a 28-game road trip; Brooklyn had not played in its newly opened ballpark, Ebbets Field, since May 26. Both Brooklyn and Philadelphia were exceeding expectations. If Brooklyn […]

With due respect to Ted Williams, for Montreal fans there was only one Kid. And if any player ever bled the colors of a franchise, it was The Kid, Gary Carter, who became the face of the Expos and led it through sometimes faltering steps from being an expansion novelty to a contender in the […]

Ken Boyer collected his first career five-hit game in propelling the St. Louis Cardinals to victory over the Chicago Cubs in the second game of a doubleheader at Busch Stadium before a crowd of 5,835. Four of those five hits enabled him to hit for the cycle. He had two hits in the opener as […]

The New York Yankees had long been out of contention by Friday night, September 17, 1982. Their 14-0 loss at the hands of the Milwaukee Brewers that night signaled their statistical elimination from the race. Harvey’s Wallbangers moved to a two-game lead over the Baltimore Orioles in the American League East Division, while the Yankees […]

Baseball looked different in 1969 from previous years. The pitching mound was lower, the number of teams was greater, and the Chicago Cubs looked like a contender. The Cubs stormed to an early lead in the new NL East Division, a creation necessitated by the expansion that brought the Montreal Expos and San Diego Padres […]

Relocated, renamed, and piloted by two generations of Black baseball royalty, the Columbus Buckeyes opened the 1921 Negro National League season to fanfare, hosting the Chicago Giants on April 30. But Chicago’s John Taylor struck out 12 Buckeye batters and the Giants capitalized on shaky Columbus defense for a 5-3 win at Neil Park. The […]

When the Atlanta Braves began broadcasting in April of 1966, Atlanta area listeners had a long history of baseball radio. Atlanta Crackers broadcaster Ernie Harwell famously had such a reputation in the 1940s that he was traded to a major-league team for a catcher. Because of lawsuits in Milwaukee, the Braves’ move to Atlanta was […]

Lew Simmons was a popular performer as a minstrel entertainer both before and after his time in baseball management. One of many persons who linked the theater with nineteenth-century baseball, Simmons was a noted banjoist, a professional comedian of great repute, and an end man with the tambourine in the minstrel show.1 There is considerable […]

Major league ballplayers have not been immune to sudden, life-ending mishaps. To the contrary, the game’s necrology has no shortage of the drownings, hunting accidents, house fires, and auto accidents that have brought the lives of countless ordinary citizens to an abrupt close. Some ballplayer deaths – Ed Delahanty’s plunge over Niagara Falls; the fatal […]

Jackie Robinson was the trailblazer who integrated major-league baseball in the 20th century. However, many other pioneering players were the first to integrate particular states or teams, and their proper acknowledgement took much longer. Bill Greason, a right-hander who began his baseball career with the Nashville Black Vols in 1947, is a case in point. […]

Early in his 16-year major-league career, Johnny Callison was labeled “the next Mickey Mantle.” His manager with the Phillies, Gene Mauch, said Callison could “run, throw, field, and hit with power. There’s nothing he can’t do well on the ball field.”1 These encomiums proved burdens that the always sensitive Callison found difficult to live up […]

This righty pitcher’s big-league career consisted of just one game with the 1968 Chicago Cubs. His baseball days ended after the following season because of a rotator cuff injury – but the Grambling alumnus then turned to an exciting new life as one of Hollywood’s top stuntmen. Jophery Clifford Brown was born on January 22, […]

With his poor eyesight, and notoriously poor control, flame-throwing pitcher Ryne Duren’s fastball put the fear of God into opposing hitters in the late 1950s and early 1960s. “Duren was the standard by how we ranked hard throwers,” All-Star pitcher and pitching coach Jim Kaat said. “We’d say [so-and-so] can throw almost as hard as […]

Disco music peaked in the United States with the top six songs on the Billboard Hot 100 chart during the week ending July 21, 1979. At the time, “Disco Dan” Ford was starring for the California Angels club that was headed for that franchise’s first postseason appearance.1 Although the musical genre quickly fell out of […]

The most powerful figure of the Deadball Era, Ban Johnson’s rise to prominence in the national pastime was as improbable as it was meteoric. Relying neither on athletic renown (his amateur catching career was abruptly cut short by a thumb injury) nor inherited wealth (he dropped out of law school to become a journalist), the […]

A brilliant defensive outfielder who briefly starred with the Cincinnati Reds, Armando Marsáns was the first Cuban player to make an impact in the major leagues. Dubbed “an aristocrat by birth, but a big-league outfielder by choice,”1 he was among baseball’s top stars before his career was derailed by an ill-fated attempt to challenge the […]

What Tommy Davis accomplished as a major leaguer on one good leg, most players would be proud to do on two. Not that this sums up his athletic career, but it is an important backdrop to his improbable baseball odyssey. Davis seemed ready to have his ticket punched for Cooperstown as he entered his ball-playing […]

The first owner of the St. Louis Browns, Robert Hedges was a visionary leader, years ahead of his time. He was also a shrewd businessman who maximized the value of his baseball franchise, in spite of its mostly losing ways. Hedges’ innovations and financial success in baseball contrasted vividly with his teams’ lack of success […]

Perhaps no other player in major-league history has been blessed with as much talent and at the same time burdened by such erratic impulses as José Canseco.1 Amassing borderline Hall of Fame numbers with 462 home runs and 1,407 runs batted in during a 17-year major-league career, the former American League Rookie of the Year […]

Ronald Michael Diorio was born in St. Mary’s hospital in Waterbury, Connecticut, on July 15, 1946. His parents, Charles and Gilda (Follachio) Diorio, were first generation Americans, with roots in the Calabria and Abruzzi regions of Italy. Charles, a Waterbury native born in 1906, worked as a plumber. Gilda worked in the shop as well. […]

Chuck LaMar once commented, “I’m a baseball guy and my heart lies with the people out in the field. … I was one of those and I started out in professional baseball as an area scout and I drove 50,000 miles a year away from the wife and those kiddos as much as anybody so […]

Stan Benjamin used to say, “If they let you steal first base, I would have batted a thousand.”1 He was easygoing with a great sense of humor, often self-deprecating. His personality must have been forged early in life because a cartoon of the top regional high-school football players in 1932 labeled him “happy-go-lucky” and showed […]