Search Results

Left-handed pitcher William Oliver “Billy” O’Dell, nicknamed “Digger” after a character in the radio-TV show The Life of Riley, was signed by the Baltimore Orioles as a bonus baby right out of Clemson University, and never played a day in the minors. In his 13-year major-league career, he pitched in five seasons for the mediocre Baltimore […]

He was known among his colleagues and sports scribes as “The Silencer,” a name he acquired from a Pacific Coast League sports writer in 1962 while playing for Portland. The nickname followed him through his professional baseball career. Dan Osinski, who would later pitch for the Boston Red Sox, was an original “fireman,” as the […]

Chances are if one were to poll SABR members about the greatest left-hander in the history of the Dodgers franchise, the most frequent response would be, “Sandy Koufax.” But they would be incorrect. Without a doubt, the honor of greatest southpaw in organizational history belongs to Vincent E. Scully. Since the emergence of baseball broadcasts, […]

Suggest today to Costen Shockley that judging by the newspaper headlines of 50 years ago he must have been quite a high-school baseball player, and he replies with a prideful chuckle that conveys barely a trace of conceit, “Yeah, I was pretty good.” Indeed he must have been. After dominating on the baseball diamond for […]

Just five short years after the Pittsburgh Pirates won the 1979 World Series championship, the team had fallen to last in the National League East. They were on their way there again in 1985 – but a rebuild was under way, as the trade for Bob Kipper that August showed. The deal in which the […]

A 6-foot-3, 190-pound1 coal miner from eastern Pennsylvania, Barney McFadden was a hard throwing righthanded pitcher in the early 20th century. After appearing in nine National League games for two teams, his career was abbreviated by control problems. Bernard Joseph McFadden was born on March 29, 1875,2 in the Eckley Miners’ Village in Luzerne County, […]

Charley Pride, the son of a Mississippi sharecropper, dreamed of becoming a Hall of Famer. “Years from now,” he once said, “when they ask who hit the most home runs, I don’t want the answer to be Babe Ruth, I want it to be Charley Pride. When they ask who was the last player to […]

“Oh, Gertrude, when sorrows come they come not as single spies but in battalions.” – Hamlet, Act 4, Scene 5, a favorite quote of Ned Martin when the Red Sox were having a particularly bad day   “With this back and these knees? Mercy,” Ned Martin asked rhetorically, using his trademark exclamation when asked if […]

Although forgotten today, Frank McQuade was a figure well-known to New Yorkers of the Jazz Age. Among other things, McQuade was a highly visible Manhattan magistrate, an influential Tammany Hall operative, and widely regarded as “the father of Sunday baseball in New York.”1 He was also a peripheral target and/or government witness in various municipal […]

Because he was born on an Indian reservation, Bob Johnson was considered a ward of the government. He and his older brother Roy Johnson, whose career began in 1929 with the Detroit Tigers, were both born in Pryor, Oklahoma (some 35 miles east of Tulsa) – before Oklahoma became a state.1 Roy was the eldest […]

After his playing days, Cecil Cole watched a lot of baseball games in his hometown of Connellsville, Pennsylvania, with local sportswriter Jim Kriek. “A brief chat with him could make the day brighter,” Kriek recalled. “We had a lot of good conversations and laughs, not only about baseball, but everything in general.” Kriek was well […]

Tony Lloyd at Birmingham’s Rickwood Field in 2023 (Courtesy of Jeb Stewart)   Tony Lloyd1 was a second baseman for the Birmingham Black Barons in 1959, which was his only season in professional baseball. He was a right-handed hitter and thrower who stood 5-feet-9 and weighed 150 pounds.2 Anthony Carl “Tony” Lloyd was born on […]

Nicknamed “The Mayor” because of his enthusiasm for meeting and helping others, Sean Casey proved to be one of baseball’s best ambassadors through his determination to benefit his teammates and community at large. Leading through his competitive spirit, the lefty-hitting first baseman batted .302 over 12 major-league seasons (1997-2008). After his playing career, he became […]

At age 25, Bob Elson had the ideal attributes to appeal to a fledgling radio industry. With a clear voice, an engaging personality, and the innate skill to immediately convert the action before him into words, he was able to parlay a radio contest in St. Louis into a broadcasting career in Chicago covering more […]

Written in blue ink on his minor-league questionnaire was Wayne Granger’s ambition in baseball: “To be a steady starter in [the] major leagues.”1 In a major-league career that spanned nine seasons and seven teams, the right-hander never started a game. But his sinkerball and lanky, 6-foot-2 build helped Granger become the model of durability as […]

With their first-round pick in the 1978 amateur draft, the Minnesota Twins selected Lenny Faedo, a high-school shortstop from Tampa, Florida. Sixteen rounds later, the Twins selected Kent Hrbek, a first baseman from Kennedy High School in Bloomington, Minnesota. Faedo and Hrbek both rose through the Twins farm system quickly. Faedo made his major-league debut […]

He describes himself as a very easy-going guy, but in the next breath he’ll tell you he’s a full-blooded German with a hot temper that sometimes explodes.” — Earl Lawson, The Sporting News1 The Kansas City Royals gathered in February 2008 at their spring facility in Surprise, Arizona. One coach, rumbling around on a golf […]

“I don’t care for Rockefeller’s millions and I have no desire to share Wilson’s honors,” Heinie Wagner once quipped to a group of players during a long, hot train ride out west. “But I would like to be as good a pitcher as Walter Johnson and always be able to pitch for a team as […]

Newly recruited from the Pacific Northwest League, boyish left-hander Jimmy St. Vrain pitched capably for the Chicago Cubs in early part of the 1902 season. Plagued by poor defensive support – more than one-third of the runs surrendered by St. Vrain were unearned – he posted a hard luck 4-6 record, with a fine 2.08 […]

Sam Nahem was a so-so pitcher who logged a 10–8 won-loss record and a 4.69 ERA in four partial seasons with the Dodgers, Cardinals, and Phillies between 1938 and 1948. Despite this unremarkable record, Nahem was a remarkable major leaguer in many ways. He was the only Syrian and one of the few Jews in […]

Son of a great baseball man, scout and executive Mel Didier, Bob Didier has been in the game for more than five decades, almost as long as his father. He was a professional catcher from 1967 through 1976, including one full season and parts of five others in the majors. He has since served as […]

Jim Leyland spent more than two decades in professional baseball as a minor-league catcher and manager and major-league third-base coach before getting his first big-league managing job with the Pittsburgh Pirates in 1986. In the third game of a career that spanned 22 seasons and resulted in his 2024 selection for the National Baseball Hall […]