Search Results

AL MARTIN CARVED out an 11-year career in the majors. It took him seven minor-league seasons before he was called up to the major leagues, but he proved to be a strong hitter with good power and excellent speed. His career was not without turbulence, as he encountered several off-field issues, including legal disputes and […]

The “Iron Man” of the Texas League1 “A spitter jumping like a West Texas jackrabbit”2   Baseball history is quite familiar with Burleigh Grimes, the last legal spitball pitcher in the major leagues; and maybe Urban “Red” Faber, the final American Leaguer. But what about minor-league pitchers who were grandfathered in? Enter Paul Wachtel (WAH-tell), […]

Though Thomas Austin Brewer Jr. was a lifelong resident of Cheraw, South Carolina, he was born in North Carolina on September 3, 1931.1 Cheraw lies in the northern part of South Carolina and was a town of a few thousand inhabitants in 1931 so it happens that the nearest hospital was in Wadesboro, North Carolina, […]

Ken Bolek spent two seasons as a coach in the major leagues: 1992 and 1993, with the Cleveland Indians. As a player, the outfielder was in the minors from 1976 through 1978, including a three-game stint at Triple-A. Yet for decades, this man contributed to baseball as a minor-league coach and manager, along with teaching […]

During his five full seasons with the Boston Red Sox, Babe Ruth established himself as one of the premier left-handed pitchers in the game, began his historic transformation from moundsman to slugging outfielder, and was part of three World Series championship teams. After he was sold to the New York Yankees in December 1919, his […]

Harry Butts was a left-handed pitcher who played professional baseball from 1946 through 1953. His résumé included stints in the Negro American League, the ManDak League, the Piedmont League, winter-league play in Puerto Rico and Venezuela, and at least two starts in a Newark Eagles uniform in 1946. In the early 1950s he was one […]

Midre Cummings is the ninth of 14 major leaguers (as of 2016) from the U.S. Virgin Islands. He may be as close to a complete player as the territory has ever produced. Thus he was saddled with high expectations as a prospect in the early ’90s. But the young Midre displayed only tantalizing glimpses of […]

Eldon John “Rip” Repulski was a major-league ballplayer from Sauk Rapids, Minnesota, who enjoyed storytelling. This was especially true after his career with the St. Louis Cardinals, Philadelphia Phillies, Los Angeles Dodgers, and Boston Red Sox came to a close in 1961, and Rip eventually opened a cocktail lounge on St. Germain Street in St. Cloud, […]

Asked by a sportswriter in January 1912 which pitcher was giving him the most trouble in the American League, Ty Cobb did not mince words. “I believe I have never in my life faced a pitcher who bothered me so much as that man O’Brien,” he growled. “O’Brien has everything. He has a ‘spitter’ the […]

In 1964, a 24-year-old Dominican strongman named Ricardo Adolfo Jacobo (Rico) Carty burst into the major leagues like a tropical storm. After two hitless at-bats in 1963, Carty’s batting average (.330) in his first full season was the second highest in the majors. Only Roberto Clemente hit better, and only a phenomenal year by Philadelphia’s […]

Jack Dunn was a right-handed pitcher who played professionally during the late 19th and early 20th century. His signature pitch was a slow curveball, and he was one of the few pitchers of his era who did not wear a fielder’s glove. Dunn was also a skilled position player, playing equally well in the infield […]

“Jarvis fires away … That’s a fly ball, deep to left, back, back … HEY HEY! He did it! Ernie Banks got number 500! The ball tossed to the bullpen … everybody on your feet … this … is IT! WHEEEEEEEE!”— Jack Brickhouse, WGN-TV, May 12, 19701 When the curtain rang down on the 1969 […]

Gary Waslewski woke in his Peabody, Massachusetts apartment on the morning of October 11, 1967 as the starting pitcher in Game Six of the World Series. “I was reading the papers that morning, and one guy wrote that Gary Waslewski has as much chance of winning as Custer had of beating the Indians,” Waslewski said. […]

“For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?” The Bible may not have been referring to anything as crass as a baseball career, but this one sentence serves to describe Barry Bonds very well. A stellar career, rich, famous, holding many records, but his […]

Former Army drillmaster Clyde Barfoot, a tall, husky, brown-haired and blue-eyed pitcher, relied on a “twisting fadeaway” called a “screw ball,” much like Christy Mathewson before and Carl Hubbell after him.1 His three seasons in the majors were sandwiched around his most successful professional campaign, winning 26 games in the Pacific Coast League in 1925 […]

On June 17, 1994, the nation was glued to the live broadcast of police chasing a white Ford Bronco on Los Angeles’ Interstate 405. In the home clubhouse 2,300 miles away, the Cleveland Indians were no less riveted as they prepared for a match against the Boston Red Sox. Never confused for an intellectual titan, […]

“Gruber plays baseball the way paying customers expect to see a guy play baseball – at full speed. He runs hard. He crashes into things. He never met a takeout slide he didn’t like. He dives for balls, spending a measurable portion of each game at third base down on the ground. If he isn’t […]

Nicknamed “Moose” because of his 6-foot-5, 215-pound stature, Mike Marshall spent the bulk of his 11-year (1981-1991) major-league career with the Los Angeles Dodgers. Batting and throwing right-handed, he was primarily a right fielder, but with a number of games at first base and in left as well. During his nine seasons with the Dodgers, […]

Through 2024, over 23,000 players have played baseball in the major leagues; only 152 were born in Mexico. Fernando Valenzuela stands above them all. One of the game’s brightest and most beloved stars over the course of his 17-season MLB pitching career (1980-1991, 1993-1997), Valenzuela’s 173 victories, six All-Star selections, and 41.5 career WAR topped […]

“He was the greatest manager I ever played for, perhaps the greatest manager who ever lived, and that includes managers in the big leagues. I’ve never played for a guy who could get more out of every ballplayer than he could. He knew how to communicate with everybody and to treat every player as an […]

In 1978 Cincinnati Reds’ manager Sparky Anderson, referring to the San Francisco Giants’ mound corps, said, “That’s the best pitching staff in baseball and Knepper is their best pitcher.”1 A year later, future Hall of Famer Willie McCovey echoed this sentiment when he compared his club’s rotation to the Los Angeles Dodgers’ fearsome staffs of […]

The man who broadcast Jackie Robinson’s first season with the Dodgers recalled that, as a boy in Sanford, Florida, “I saw black men tarred and feathered by the Ku Klux Klan and forced to walk the streets. I had grown up in a completely segregated world.” Red Barber confessed that when he learned the Dodgers […]

Like Bob Caruthers, Jack Stivetts, and Guy Hecker, right-hander Dave Foutz embodied a singular 19th-century baseball species: the staff ace so adept with the bat that he was often penciled into the lineup on his pitching off-days. In fact, after a thumb injury reduced his hurling effectiveness, Foutz spent the latter part of his career […]

This article was originally published in the June 2023 edition of the SABR Black Sox Scandal Committee Newsletter.   First baseman Hal Chase was implicated in the Black Sox Scandal and the subject of many accusations of game-fixing during his major-league career. But how crucial was his role in the fixing of the 1919 World […]