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In 1912 Jim Thorpe set the sports world atwitter with his performance at the Olympics. The next year he started his major-league baseball career. A decade before Thorpe, sprinter Edmund Minahan competed in the 1900 Olympics. Minahan left track and field in 1903 for the baseball diamond. There he showed enough promise to be invited […]

The scene has been played out in every backyard, schoolyard, and makeshift ball diamond across the country. If not on a ball field, then the scene certainly unfolded in a child’s dreams. Hit a game-winning home run in the World Series. Better yet, make it Game Seven, bases loaded, full count, a packed stadium. Then […]

Rare are the occasions when a manager will upset the cohesion of his battery by using more than one catcher in a no-hitter – it has happened less than a handful of times. Rarer still is the singular instance when a catcher’s last major-league appearance was in a no-hitter. Both of these instances occurred to […]

This is the resume: He was the first National League rookie to hit .300 with 30 homers, 100 RBIs, and 100 runs scored. He was the youngest player with back-to-back 50-double seasons. He was the third major-leaguer to drive in 500 runs in his first four seasons.1 He was the major-league leader in runs scored […]

Jim King started in left field for the San Francisco Giants in the first major-league game played in California. His best seasons, however, came after he was selected by the expansion Washington Senators, with whom he remained for 6½ years, longer than any of the other 27 players the team drafted in December 1960. King […]

Catchers, like musicians, use both hands for their craft: the gloved one captures the ball while the other acts as a conductor’s baton to guide the action. Johnny Bench, arguably the best player to don the tools of ignorance, stated, “The catcher is in the middle of everything. He sees it best.”1 The statement is […]

An era closed for both the Cuban and North American versions of a shared national pastime on April 23, 2014, when the oldest surviving former big-leaguer, Conrado Marrero, passed away quietly in his beloved native homeland.11 The news of the Cuban legend’s passing came less than 48 hours before a planned national celebration of the […]

Second-generation big-leaguer David Segui1 debuted in 1990 and batted .291 over all or parts of 15 seasons. A switch-hitter with moderate power, he started and ended his career with the Baltimore Orioles around stints with six other teams. Segui was briefly the majors’ all-time fielding percentage leader among first basemen with at least 1,000 appearances […]

Aloysius “Wish” Egan was one of the top scouts in the Detroit Tigers system. Among the players he signed in his 40 years of scouting were Jim Bunning, Hal Newhouser, and Dizzy Trout. Egan even scouted the Lakeland, Florida, site the Tigers have used for spring training since 1934. All scouts have regrets; one of […]

Jay Bell stepped into the batter’s box in Minneapolis wearing his Cleveland uniform for the first time. The date was September 29, 1986, the place the Hubert H. Humphrey Metrodome, and not only was this Bell’s first major-league game as a player, it was also the first major-league game he ever attended. The Cleveland Indians […]

Among numerous icons from Cuba’s somewhat murky pre-revolution past, swarthy-skinned pitching ace José de la Caridad Méndez Báez stands at the very apex of the heap. Among the young nation’s first true national sporting heroes, the rawboned fastball hurler maintains an indelible image as one of the earliest icons of island baseball history. But it […]

“My only regret is that I can’t sit in the stands and watch myself pitch.”1 No one ever accused southpaw Bo Belinsky of being modest. And probably no pitcher in baseball history ever got more mileage out of 28 wins (against 51 defeats) in parts of eight big-seasons as Belinsky. Belinsky took baseball by storm […]

Dusty Cooke’s father fought in the Confederate Army at Chancellorsville, which may partially explain why Cooke himself joined with the Phillies’ Ben Chapman in some of the most vicious racist taunting of Jackie Robinson in April 1947. Cooke was first-base coach for the Phillies at the time. He had also been a good ballplayer, though […]

William Angelo Consolo was born in Cleveland, Ohio, on August 18, 1934, the same day as Roberto Clemente. His family moved to Los Angeles when he was a child, and at the age of 8, he began playing baseball alongside his brother Horace, who preferred third base. While on the local playgrounds he met George […]

In September 1970, amid a woeful stretch for Cleveland baseball, a David and Goliath battle played out in front of 7,857 fans in Baltimore’s Memorial Stadium. The 97-win Orioles, who had already clinched the American League East, started Dave McNally in pursuit of his 24th victory. Cleveland gave local flamethrower Jim Rittwage his first big-league […]

Rising from the Chicago sandlots, Johnny Mostil joined the White Sox during the club’s darkest hour. It was no easy feat replacing the highly regarded Happy Felsch in center field, but Mostil was up to the task—establishing a reputation as one of the premier fly chasers in the majors. There is no telling what he […]

Until 2021 — the franchise’s 53rd season — no San Diego Padres pitcher had thrown a no-hitter. The Padres were the last major-league team to hold that dubious distinction. Yet they might have gotten one as early as their second year in the National League. On July 21, 1970, righty Clay Kirby held the New York […]

The Houston Astros were in the midst of their first-ever winning season in 1972 when a relative newcomer to the team, Jerry Reuss, on the eve of his 23rd birthday, spun a one-hitter against the Philadelphia Phillies on June 18. The game was among the first that brought national attention to Reuss, who wound up […]

Dave McCarty entered the 2004 season at age 34, having played in the majors since 1993. Baseball America’s collegiate player of the year at Stanford University in 1991, then selected by the Minnesota Twins third overall in the amateur draft that June, McCarty was with his seventh big-league team, the Boston Red Sox, and he […]

“Gibson and Seaver are magnificent,” exclaimed New York sportswriter Dick Young about the future Hall of Fame hurlers’ grueling extra-inning pitching duel in their first head-to-head matchup of their illustrious careers.1 “My arm doesn’t hurt half as much as it will tomorrow,” said St. Louis Cardinals ace and winning pitcher Bob Gibson, whose 11 innings […]

As July 1997’s trade deadline approached, it was a foregone conclusion that Ben McDonald and the Milwaukee Brewers would part ways. Coming out of the All-Star break with a record of 39-44, leaving them eight games out of the wild-card race and mired in third place in the American League Central Division, the Brewers were […]

Seated at a table in a lower box seat among 33,535 fans at Ebbets Field,1 Red Barber was ready to make history. Television was one of the exhibits at the 1939 World’s Fair in New York City, so NBC wanted the opportunity to broadcast a baseball game. A reader might wonder why the Brooklyn Dodgers? […]

This article appears in SABR’s “The Stars Shone on Philadelphia: The 1934 Negro National League Champions” (2023), edited by Frederick C. Bush and Bill Nowlin.   In 1934 Ed Bolden’s Philadelphia Stars baseball team capped off the best season of its existence when the squad defeated the Chicago American Giants and won the Negro National […]

Editor’s note: This article was originally published in SABR’s The National Pastime, Vol. 18, in 1998. For additional commentary about this story, read “The Veracity of Veeck,” by Robert D. Warrington and Norman Macht in the Fall 2013 Baseball Research Journal and Warren Corbett’s SABR biography of Bill Veeck.   Baseball is a game in […]