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This is a man who keeps busy. In 36 years as a major-league scout, he conducted over 1,000 tryouts. As an international scout, he’s visited more than 40 countries, sometimes on multiple occasions – for instance, Australia at least 25 times – while flying something like 100 different airlines. He’s signed at least one player […]

“I like to think of the world’s greatest athlete coming up to bat against me – Tiger Woods, Wayne Gretzky, I don’t care who it is – and I’m looking at him thinking, ‘You have no chance.’ “1 There was a moment in the third game of the 1996 World Series that felt eerily familiar […]

Dick Brown signed his 1966 contract with the Baltimore Orioles in January, shortly after his 31st birthday.1 During his nine-year major-league career with Cleveland, the Chicago White Sox, Detroit, and Baltimore, the catcher typically entered spring training battling for a starting job – most often ending up as a reserve. However, with the trade of […]

George Tsamis, a 6-foot-2, 190-pound former left-handed pitcher, made his mark on the diamond managing in the independent leagues. Tsamis described himself as a “players manager” who asks “players to give 100 percent and run out every ground ball, and hustle, show up on time. If you don’t, you’ll be disciplined; but if you can’t […]

One could make a strong case for Joe McGinnity being the most durable pitcher in baseball history. In just 10 seasons in the major leagues, “Iron Man” McGinnity worked 3,441 innings and won 246 games. During the month of August in 1903, he pitched and won both ends of a doubleheader three times; he accomplished […]

When considering the life of Dick Armstrong, most contemporaries think only of his ample accomplishments in the theological world. This is for good reason. Armstrong spent six decades of his life as a noted Presbyterian minister, pastor, educator, author, and humanitarian. Yet he had more than one career, and there is so much more, from […]

Miguel González enjoyed a long and prolific career as a major-league catcher and coach, and along with Adolfo Luque is considered to be one of the two true patriarchs of baseball in Cuba, where he was a player, manager, and owner in the Cuban League from 1910 through 1960. He was a coach on the […]

Since 1931 the University of Minnesota baseball program has been blessed with three fine coaches, Frank McCormick, Dick Siebert, and John Anderson, all of whom are enshrined in the American Baseball Coaches Association Hall of Fame. The most improbable and quite possibly the least appreciated success story has been Anderson’s tenure as coach of the […]

Forever known in Toronto Blue Jays lore as the team’s first Cy Young Award winner, Pat Hentgen by his accomplishments on the mound has been anointed as one of the best pitchers in Blue Jays history. Standing at 6-feet-2 and 210 pounds, Hentgen was a high-command fastball/curveball pitcher who had a stretch of being one […]

Don Bradey’s professional baseball career spanned 15 seasons—a career that saw him travel the country, with stops in Colorado Springs, Memphis, Waterloo, Syracuse, New Orleans, Little Rock, Durham, Oklahoma City, San Antonio, Amarillo, and Charlotte. But it was during his 12th season that Don was elevated to major-league status with the Houston Colt .45s. Although he pitched […]

 In the age of 100-pitch limits and “five and fly” starters, this sounds like a video game gone haywire: Leon Cadore and Joe Oeschger each pitched 26 innings on May 1, 1920, completing the longest game in major-league history. Cadore was a Brooklyn favorite who spent his childhood in the borough and earned respect for […]

A standout on the sandlots of Detroit, Willie Horton became the first black superstar for his hometown Tigers and spent parts of 15 seasons with the team. A tremendously powerful right-handed slugger, Horton was one of the strongest men in the game and launched 325 homers in his career. Extremely popular in Detroit, Horton worked […]

A key player for the successful Baltimore Orioles of the 1970s and ’80s, Al Bumbry provided speed and clutch hitting on four division-winning clubs, including the World Series champions of 1983. Bumbry was the spark at the top of the lineup for a team more generally known for hitting three-run homers. While “The Bee” was […]

On October 10, 1924, Virgil “Zeke” Barnes stood on the mound in Griffith Stadium, poised within tantalizing reach of a rare and coveted prize, just four outs shy of a Game 7 World Series win. Palpably close, but it was not to be. His moment of reckoning came with an improbable, aberrant bounce of the […]

For nearly eighty years, Hub Kittle loved and studied pitching. He first realized that this was his calling when he was eight years old. He could outthrow all the neighborhood kids. “Something clicked there, that I had something the good Lord must have gave me. I don’t know why, I couldn’t outfight ’em and I […]

From the trade of Max “Camera Eye” Bishop before the 1934 season to the arrival of Benny McCoy in 1940, second base was in a state of flux for the Philadelphia Athletics. An infielder from Wisconsin, Stan Sperry, was once said to be a possible answer to manager Connie Mack’s “prayer for a second baseman.” […]

The young prospect was having a hard time adjusting to the backstop position in the major leagues. Offensively, he was a threat from the beginning of his career.   He was a classic bad-ball hitter who could get wood on the ball no matter where the pitch was: high, low, outside.   He hit them […]

When the name Jim Brown is mentioned, most sports fans call to mind the NFL’s Hall of Fame running back who starred for the Cleveland Browns from 1957 to 1965. There was, however, an earlier Jim Brown – a catcher, first baseman, and, later, a manager – who played for Chicago American Giants squads that […]

By some standards, Ed Swartwood toiled in relative obscurity, playing nearly his entire career in the American Association, an under-appreciated major league in the 19th century. Even the teams he played on weren’t impressive. During the league’s inaugural season, 1882, he came up with the Pittsburg Alleghenys, a poor club during his three summers there. […]

From calling baserunners safe to keeping schoolchildren safe, Luther Derr Sahm had a long and eventful life – much of it spent under a professional alias. He called himself Doll Derr,1 and it is under that distinctive name that he appears in major-league records as an umpire in the National League for 28 games in […]

After a standout season in Class B ball, outfielder Jules Kustus got the attention of various major league clubs and landed an extended tryout with the 1909 Brooklyn Superbas. Regrettably, he flunked the audition, batting an anemic .145 in 53 games. Remanded to the minors, Kustus played well in spots but found efforts to secure […]

Fittingly, pitcher Leroy Matlock was called “the Black Carl Hubbell” in press releases promoting a 1937 barnstorming tour.1 Hubbell, who entered the Hall of Fame in 1947, had completed a high-profile streak of 24 wins in a row earlier in 1937 for the pennant-winning New York Giants. Matlock, also a lefty, had 26 straight victories […]

From early July 1889 until the removal of the franchise to the West Coast following the 1957 season, the New York Giants played baseball – often exciting and sometimes championship-caliber – at the northern Manhattan ballpark known as the Polo Grounds. Inexorably over the decades, Giants players, managers, club owners, front office personnel, sportswriters, and […]

Montreal mayor Jean Drepeau with (from left) John Bateman, Jim “Mudcat” Grant, and Maury Wills on Opening Day in New York, April 8, 1969 (COURTESY OF THE McCORD MUSEUM, MONTREAL)   It somehow seemed inevitable when it all came to an end in 2004. Fate didn’t really smile on the ’Spos (Les Expos de Montreal) […]