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Don Gross had a 13-year career in professional baseball as a left-handed pitcher, including a brief spell with the Pittsburgh Pirates at the beginning of the 1960 season. He pitched in 1950-1952 and 1954-1963, with time out in most of 1952 and all of 1953 while in military service). For much of his time he […]

Infielder Bill Narleski may have lost some playing time due to serving more than three years in the infantry during the First World War, but he found that the Second World War gave him a couple of years he probably wouldn’t have otherwise had. His son Ray pitched for six seasons in the majors, winning […]

His name was Nicholas Dominic Dallessandro, but his nickname is in our databases as “Dim Dom.” Was he mentally challenged? Kind of dim? Not at all. He was vertically challenged, standing 5-feet-5, and so many newspapers referred to him as “diminutive Dom Dallessandro” that he attracted the nickname “Dim Dom Dal.”1 He was one of […]

Rare is the professional athlete who is privileged to play his entire career in his hometown. Barry Larkin is one of those rare athletes. Born on April 28, 1964 in Cincinnati, Ohio, Barry Louis Larkin played his entire 19-year major league baseball career with his hometown Reds. Robert and Shirley Larkin raised their daughter Robin […]

Tall left-hander Frank Scanlan was a top-flight prospect who reached the 1909 Philadelphia Phillies while still a teenager. Prior to that, he had been an underage pitching standout at the University of Notre Dame. In addition to a talented arm, the Phillies phenom also had impressive ballplayer bloodlines, having three brothers in the professional ranks. […]

George Case was a four-time major-league All-Star who devoted almost 50 years of his life to the game he loved. His playing career, cut short by injuries, spanned 11 years (1937-47), ten years with the Washington Senators and one with the Cleveland Indians. After his playing days ended he remained in the game in various […]

Outfielder Greg Harts got into his only three big-league games with the New York Mets during the 1973 pennant race. The lefty was called up from Double-A and got a hit in two pinch-hit at-bats. His only other appearance came as a pinch-runner; he never played in the field in the majors. Harts ran well […]

“If the talents of Christy Mathewson, John McGraw, Ban Johnson and Judge Kenesaw Mountain Landis were combined in a single body, and that body was enveloped in a black skin, the result would have to be named Andrew ‘Rube’ Foster. As an outstanding pitcher, a colorful and shrewd field manager, and the founder and stern […]

Early in his career on the baseball diamond he was a man without a position. Luckily for him, the power emanating from his bat allowed him to hang around the major leagues long enough to settle into the only position he could play reasonably well. He came from Native American – or, in the common […]

In the 1970s Gary Holle was a dual-sport phenom (baseball and basketball) from upstate New York who had a six-year minor-league baseball career and a two-week stay with the Texas Rangers in 1979. Born in Watervliet, New York, on August 11, 1954, to Charles and Jean Holle, Gary carved out a successful business career after […]

Frank Warfield may be one of the least understood and appreciated stars of the Negro Leagues, and possibly one of the most unjustly maligned. He stood just 5-feet-7-inches tall and was slight in stature, but he was feisty, fast, and, some would say, furious. Yet few player-managers in the Negro Leagues achieved as much as […]

Shawon Donnell Dunston was one of the most recognized shortstops in the game for a period in the mid-1980s. Known for his remarkable throwing arm, he played alongside Ryne Sandberg as a double-play combination on some of the best Cubs teams at that time. Injuries limited his playing time and Dunston eventually became a journeyman […]

“If somebody came up and hit .450, stole 100 bases, and performed a miracle in the field every day, I’d still look you right in the eye and tell you that Willie was better. He could do the five things you have to do to be a superstar: hit, hit with power, run, throw and […]

For the most part, pitcher-utilityman King Brockett owed his membership on major and high minor league baseball clubs to a single man: Deadball Era manager George Stallings. First as a third baseman-outfielder, thereafter as pitching staff ace, Brockett was a key component of Buffalo Bisons clubs led by Stallings, including the Eastern League champions of […]

After eight years as a Boston regular, longtime third baseman Larry Gardner was sent by the Red Sox to Philadelphia in early 1918 as part of the Stuffy McInnis trade. Including McInnis, nine men were used at third base by Boston during 1918. Playing the most games at third (41) was 25-year old Fred Thomas. Thomas […]

In September 1959, after the Buffalo Bisons, the Philadelphia Phillies Triple-A affiliate, captured the International League pennant, The Sporting News noticed Jimmie Coker, the club’s All Star catcher. He “has the assets to become … the top catcher produced in the International League since Roy Campanella graduated from the Montreal Royals,” Cy Kritzer predicted in […]

J. Leslie Wilkinson (1878-1964) was one of the most respected and influential figures in the history of Black baseball. His trailblazing role in helping to found the Negro National League in 1920, in addition to his establishing and operating the renowned Kansas City Monarchs for many years, earned him a plaque in the National Baseball […]

Although he spent just two full seasons in the major leagues, Dave Pope played in one of the most memorable games in baseball history. It was the game that featured “the catch,” Willie Mays’s spectacular play on a ball hit by the Cleveland Indians’ Vic Wertz in the eighth inning of Game One of the […]

Joseph J. Lannin owned the Boston Red Sox for less than four full years, but in that short span, the team won two world championships in the back-to-back years 1915 and 1916. A native of the Province of Quebec, he came to the United States at a very young age – the story says he […]

Some said that baseball owners found Judge Kenesaw Mountain Landis on the federal bench, but Leo Durocher got it right when he said, “They got him right out of Dickens.”1 Ruth put the fans back in the parks, but Landis made sure what they witnessed was honest. The Sultan and the Czar worked different sides […]

The cover photo on the Sunday magazine insert of the June 29, 1958, edition of the Columbus (Ohio) Citizen was of a young boy wearing a Little League baseball uniform gazing admiringly at an older, bespectacled gentleman who was squatting, a baseball bat in hand. As the accompanying article explained, the man in the photo […]

The Houston Astrodome was the first fully enclosed, air-conditioned major-league ballpark. It was formally unveiled in an exhibition game that pitted the Houston Astros against the American League champion New York Yankees on April 9, 1965. Unlike previous sports venues, the Astrodome was built to be a massive all-purpose, climate-controlled facility that would serve as […]

  High and Inside The Newsletter of the BioProject Committee Society for American Baseball Research (SABR) August 2016 (Special Post-Convention Issue), Volume 1, Number 5 Past newsletters Editor: Stew Thornley From the Director From the Editor Interview with Bob LeMoine Project Profile: Gregory H. Wolf Project Poobahs   From the Director I have just returned […]

This article appears in SABR’s “Pride of Smoketown: The 1935 Pittsburgh Crawfords” (2020), edited by Frederick C. Bush and Bill Nowlin.   The Pittsburgh Crawfords franchise, one of the most famous in the history of black baseball, was started in 1926 by a group of youths connected to one of Pittsburgh’s neighborhood recreation clubs. For […]