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Infielder Billy DeMars broke into professional baseball at age 17, had his career interrupted by service in the Navy during World War II, then came back and played parts of three seasons in the majors (80 games with the Athletics and Browns), and extended his minor-league career by turning to managing through 1968. He assigned […]

Tommy Thevenow earned a place in the record books for the home runs he didn’t hit. He never cleared the fences in 15 big league seasons. He hit three inside-the-park homers in 17 days in 1926 — two in September and one in the World Series — then didn’t manage another for his last 3,614 […]

If you’re a fifth-place team like the 1908 Boston Red Sox, and you have a pitcher who was a 20-game winner in the minors and appears in one game for you, throwing a late-season 4-0 shutout against New York, don’t you bring him back? Jim Brady threw that shutout – but didn’t return to the […]

Midway through the 2001 major-league baseball season, the Pittsburgh Pirates traded right-hander Jason Schmidt to the San Francisco Giants. Schmidt, who compiled a 49-53 record throughout the first six years of his career, would blossom into one of the elite pitchers in the National League during the mid-2000s. Jason David Schmidt was born on January […]

If charted, the seven-season American Association career of shortstop Frank Fennelly would present an intriguing picture: a slightly above-average baseline with peaks of circuit-best and valleys of circuit-worst performance. When he broke into the major leagues in 1884, Fennelly had a live bat. His .311 batting average placed him in the AA’s top ten. The […]

An intelligent player whom both teammates and opponents respected, 29-year-old first baseman Dick Hoblitzell opened the 1918 season as the Red Sox’ captain and cleanup hitter, but an early-season slump and his June induction into the Army Dental Corps marked an inglorious end to an otherwise distinguished 11-year career in the major leagues. Though he […]

It doesn’t take long to make a lasting impression that sticks with someone throughout his professional baseball career. Some of the things Derek Bell said over the course of his career surprised many and outraged others. This did not seem to faze Bell in the slightest. “What can I say?” Bell would ask. “I just […]

The last-place Detroit Tigers went to New York to meet the reigning World Series champion Yankees in August 1952. After Detroit lost the first game of the series, Virgil Trucks started Game Two. The veteran right-hander came in with a 4-15 record, but he had pitched a no-hitter and a one-hitter for two of his […]

Preceding by two decades the “Fernandomania” craze, Von McDaniel’s splash on the major-league scene in the summer of 1957 earned him the nickname Mr. Vonderful. Weeks removed from delivering his high-school valedictorian address, McDaniel tossed a two-hit shutout against the defending champion Brooklyn Dodgers in his first professional start, while a month later a two-base […]

An infielder, outfielder, pitcher, coach, manager, scout, farm director and baseball executive, Melvin Douglas Queen, had been all of them.  He has the distinction of having entered the major leagues as an outfielder and finishing as a pitcher.  The son of a former major leaguer, Mel was born on March 26, 1942, in Johnson City, […]

The 1945 Washington Senators1 intrigued war-weary baseball fans with an improbable pennant run. The team’s success stemmed largely from a unique pitching staff, dominated by four knuckleballers. The top performer was Roger Wolff, a journeyman right-hander who led the team with a career-high 20 wins. The second of ten children born to Leo and Eleanor […]

A first-round draft pick by Pittsburgh in the 1973 amateur draft, Steve Nicosia made his major-league debut with the Pirates on July 8, 1978. Plagued by injuries throughout his eight-year career in the majors, Nicosia had a lifetime batting average of .248 and hit 11 home runs in 938 at-bats. Though he was mainly a […]

Every major leaguer dreams of making the postseason and hoisting the World Series trophy. A few will get to not only hoist the trophy, but be the hero of the World Series. Not many players can say that they hit a home run to win the deciding game of the World Series, or that they […]

If a player collects six hits in his first day in the majors and no one sees or reads about it, did it still happen? Unfortunately, rookie first baseman Guy Sturdy’s stellar doubleheader debut on September 30, 1927, for the seventh-place St. Louis Browns occurred on their last home date of the season, and one […]

It took right-hander Johnny Welch more than five years to get his first major-league win for the Chicago Cubs. After 172 big-league games, he was 35-41 with a career 4.66 earned run average, all but two of the wins being for Boston Red Sox teams in the early to middle 1930s. He was born as […]

In just three big-league seasons, right-handed pitcher Rankin Johnson pitched for five big-league teams: the Boston Red Sox, Chicago Chi-Feds, Chicago Whales, Baltimore Terrapins, and the St. Louis Cardinals. Experienced historians will recognize three of Johnson’s teams as Federal League teams, and thus can pin down the era as primarily 1914 and 1915. He came […]

Rufus “Sonnyman” Jackson was born on May 1, 1900, in Columbus, Georgia, to Rufus Jackson Sr. and Rosa Bell Dixon, both Georgia natives.1 Rosie and her son remained close enough throughout his life that in 1940, when he was already a successful businessman and often-time courthouse visitor, she was still living with her grown son. […]

Born in Bellows Falls, Vermont, on December 26, 1947, Carlton Fisk embodies traditional New England values like pride, ruggedness, and individuality. Those virtues were what the late Boston Red Sox public relations director Dick Bresciani was trying to capture in 1997 when he wrote that Fisk was a “native of Vermont” on his original plaque […]

ge kellyStatistics can tell you a lot about a baseball player. In the case of George Kelly, they don’t say nearly enough. The first baseman for the New York Giants when they dominated the National League in the early 1920s, he was a clutch hitter par excellence and an astonishing defensive player. A quick-wristed slasher […]

“Being Irish, he had an abiding sense of tragedy, which sustained him through temporary periods of joy.” This remark has been credited (dubiously) to the Irish poet William Butler Yeats, a contemporary of Boston pitcher Jim Sullivan. This saying could apply to Sullivan starting in the mid-1890s, when he experienced deep sorrow repeatedly. At least […]

Cut loose by the team that first signed him, Tom Burgmeier was waived by the Houston Colt 45’s, but his road to the major leagues went back on course when he was signed by the Los Angeles Angels. It took him four years to make the majors, where he would go on to pitch in […]

Statistics and anecdotes of early black player Charlie Grant are minimal and sketchy at best. The difficulty in seeking reliable evidence is compounded by the fact that many during his time and still today have consistently confused him with the great Frank Grant, who played in several white leagues during the nineteenth century and was […]

Anyone who has met a Braves fan in Boise, Idaho, has Ted Turner to credit. After purchasing the Atlanta Braves, Turner’s satellite television superstations offered the first nationwide sports telecast and made Braves fans out of people all over the United States, while setting a model for sports broadcasting in the twenty-first century.   Robert Edward […]

Mike Trout became the youngest player in American League history to hit for the cycle and drove in a season-high five runs as host Los Angeles handed Seattle its fifth straight loss. A crowd of 34,095 was on hand at Angel Stadium of Anaheim to see Trout add to his incredible résumé. The Angels started the season […]