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“Just call me Hank,” said Henry “Prince” Oana. He didn’t really come from Hawaiian royalty, but there was still a certain mystique about this outfielder-turned-pitcher. In a time when mainstream baseball lacked diversity, Oana was something exotic. When this story was originally published in 2009, there weren’t many men alive who knew Hank Oana during […]

On October 28, 2011, the St. Louis Cardinals prepared to play Game Seven of the World Series against the Texas Rangers at Busch Stadium. The organization asked Whitey Herzog, the manager of the last Cardinals team to play a World Series Game Seven at home, to throw the ceremonial first pitch. He had fallen ill, […]

Bronson Arroyo played 16 years of major-league baseball and helped the Boston Red Sox end the Curse of the Bambino with the 2004 World Series championship. His controversial tag of Álex Rodríguez in Game Six of the ALCS, when the umpires reversed their original call, spurred the Red Sox on to a victory. Boston closed […]

Tim Teufel, who played mostly at second base but filled in at all three other infield positions, had good line-drive power, with 86 home runs in the majors. After breaking in with the Minnesota Twins in September 1983, he went on to play 10 full seasons. He spent a little over half that time with […]

The most electrifying defensive shortstop of his generation, Mark Belanger set the standard by anchoring a great Baltimore Orioles infield for most of 14 seasons. During this stretch, Baltimore won 90 or more games 11 times with six postseason appearances capped by the 1970 world championship. Belanger and Ozzie Smith are the only shortstops to […]

Southpaw Ernie Koob attracted national attention in mid-1915 by jumping from college to the big leagues with the St. Louis Browns. Less than two years later, the highly-touted curveballer tossed the first no-hitter by a Brownie in Sportsman’s Park, in 1917. But he never achieved the stardom many expected, compiling a 23-31 slate in parts […]

It was the sixth inning of a 1913 exhibition game between the Brooklyn Superbas and Ty Cobb’s All Stars, and “there suddenly boomed from the first base coaching lines a chatter, the likes of which has not been heard from our side since the day of the Big Wind.”1 Benny Meyer was giving both teams […]

During the Great Depression of the 1930s, a time when black baseball was wide open and strapped for cash, Curtis Harris was in his element. Arriving in Kansas City as a 29-year-old rookie out of Texas in 1931, the good-looking Harris hacked his way from one end of the circuit to the other, leaving opponents, […]

If you take a close look at some of the iconic Boston baseball photographs created at the turn of the 20th century by Elmer Chickering, you might see him. He’s the mustached chap in the bowler cap holding his Brownie camera with Hi-Hi Dixwell at the groundbreaking for the Huntington Avenue Grounds; he’s the guy […]

Who was the fastest man ever to step on a major league diamond?  This question would surely provoke a heated debate among diehard baseball fans, with many names surfacing.  It is a safe assumption that Billy Stage’s name would not come up, yet he is almost certainly the only man to hold world records in […]

Fritz Ostermueller was 41 years old when he took the mound on September 30, 1948, to make the final start of his 15-year major-league career. The Pittsburgh left-hander had played with four big-league teams; his lifetime ledger was even at 114 wins and 114 losses. In early September the Braves, Cardinals, Dodgers, and the surprising Pirates had […]

The earliest known connection between dentistry and the Boston Red Sox is Fred Anderson, a pitcher. You’ll find him in the record books, as playing for the Red Sox in 1909 and then again in 1913. It is said that he passed up an opportunity to join the Red Sox until he finished his dentistry […]

When Jess Barnes was at the top of his game, the right-handed pitcher from Circleville, Kansas, held his own with the elite of his day. Named to Baseball Magazine’s All-American team following the 1919 season, Barnes shared the honor with such luminaries as Walter Johnson, Rogers Hornsby, Ty Cobb, Babe Ruth, George Sisler, and Joe […]

Marty Krug appeared in only 20 games in 1912, his rookie season, mostly as a pinch-hitter, or a late-inning replacement. He watched the World Series from the superior but disappointing vantage of the winning team’s bench. He never once stepped onto the field against the New York Giants in those eight dramatic games. The knock […]

“Caldwell could be as great as Matty or Walter Johnson, but instead of choosing their careers, he is evidently going to be another Rube Waddell.” — Grantland Rice, 1914 “Caldwell might have been the Mathewson of the Yankees, but he turned out to be the Bugs Raymond of the local Americans. …His irregular habits destroyed […]

Which New York Yankees player had the highest batting average in 1964? Mickey Mantle hit .303 and Elston Howard .313 – but nobody topped Elvio Jiménez’s .333 mark. “Look it up,” he said.1 Despite batting .309 over 13 seasons in the minors, however, Jiménez appeared in just one major-league game, going 2-for-6. Following a 17-year […]

It is often the fate of those who are the second to complete a remarkable feat to be relegated to the dust bin of history. Any school child can tell you that Ferdinand Magellan was the first explorer to circumnavigate the world. But can you name the second? Most Americans know that Alan Shepard was […]

In the 21 years since Major League Baseball granted an expansion bid to Arizona Baseball, Inc., the Arizona Diamondbacks franchise has been characterized by the stability of its leadership. The franchise has had two managing general partners, the term it uses for its chief executive officer: Jerry Colangelo (1995-2004) and Ken Kendrick (2004-). The actual […]

For the two major-league baseball teams that called the Bronx home, the 1925 regular season was dreadful. The American League’s New York Yankees suffered their worst season in over a decade, finishing in seventh place, 16 games under .500. The Lincoln Giants won only 7 of their 50 games in the Eastern Colored League and […]

Early on Sunday morning, May 2, 1954, a group of 37 people from Chillicothe, Missouri, boarded a chartered bus for the first leg of a round trip to Busch Stadium1 in St. Louis to see a doubleheader between the Cardinals and New York Giants. The Midwestern town’s depot agent, J.E. Brotherton, had arranged the excursion, […]

This article was originally published in “The First Negro League Champion: The 1920 Chicago American Giants” (SABR, 2022).   As witnessed during commemorations in 2020 celebrating a century of Negro League baseball, the foundation of the Negro National League in 1920 provides a generally accepted starting point for Black baseball’s league era. Black baseball, through […]

This article appears in SABR’s “When the Monarchs Reigned: Kansas City’s 1942 Negro League Champions” (2021), edited by Frederick C. Bush and Bill Nowlin.   The year 1941 marked the beginning of an unforgettable period in American history. While some US soldiers basked in the comfortable confines of a Hawaiian breeze, half a world away […]

LaGrave Field is the name of two baseball parks in Fort Worth, Texas. The first LaGrave Field was the home of the minor-league Fort Worth Panthers from 1926 to 1958 in the Texas League, 1959 in the American Association, a shared home of the Dallas-Fort Worth Rangers from 1960 to 1963 in the American Association […]