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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, […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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. […]

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 […]

In November 1990, Texas Rangers general manager Tom Grieve released pitcher Jamie Moyer six days prior to his 28th birthday, telling him, “We don’t see you helping us.”1 St. Louis Cardinals manager Joe Torre echoed those words in 1991 when he informed Moyer, whose record was 0-5 at the time, that he was being sent to the minors and told […]

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 […]

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 […]

While a catcher for the Seton Hall University Pirates in 1987, Craig Biggio and two teammates – future MLB slugger Mo Vaughn and 1987 NCAA batting leader Marteese Robinson – were dubbed “The Hit Men.” After a brief time in the minor leagues through the first half of 1988, Biggio spent the next 20 years […]

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 […]

Todd Cruz spent parts of six seasons from 1978 to 1984 as a rifle-armed infielder for six teams. Originally a shortstop, he made two Opening Day starts at that position for the Mariners. After the Orioles converted him to third base, Cruz played every post-season game there for Baltimore’s 1983 World Series champions. Todd Ruben […]

Right-handed pitcher Steve Arlin always knew there was more than baseball. After leading the Ohio State University to two consecutive berths in the College World Series and a national title in 1966, he brokered an unusual professional baseball contract that permitted him to pursue a degree in dentistry in the spring and early summer. Dr. […]

Sportswriters treated pitcher Monte Weaver as a curiosity during his nine seasons with the Washington Senators and Boston Red Sox. He was a college professor, a mathematician, a hypochondriac and – most radically – a vegetarian, according to the sports pages. Montie Morton Weaver was born on June 15, 1906, in Helton, North Carolina, a […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

Looking back on it now, it was something akin to a 1972 moviegoer watching the final scene of The Godfather and immediately thinking, “I hope they make another one.” Sequels were not commonplace then, but it seemed everyone wanted to see more of Michael Corleone and his trigger-happy family. So it was with the September […]

“I know what everyone knows: Cuba is the worst place on the globe to be an athlete today. But I’m sure I know something even stranger. It is also the best.” — S.L. Price, Pitching Around Fidel   Cuban “defectors” have been one of the biggest MLB stories of the early twenty-first century and the […]