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Looking back when he was nearly 70 years old, 19th-century pitcher Bob Black said, “I tell you this modern baseball is made to order for hitters. When I was pitching the distance was 50 feet, and you could take a hop, step, and jump and believe me, there weren’t any Babe Ruths or Jimmie Foxxes […]

Infielder Syd O’Brien was one of three brothers, all of whom signed to play baseball for the Boston Red Sox. Syd was the first to sign, and the only one of the three to make it to the big leagues. His mother helped land three men on the moon. Syd was born in Compton, California, […]

Don Hopkins, an outfielder by trade, got into 85 big-league ballgames in 1975 and 1976. He made just eight plate appearances and played 10 innings in the field. Yet he scored 25 runs and stole 21 bases. How did he compile such bizarre statistics? He was the third of Charlie Finley’s “designated runners” with the […]

The St. Louis Cardinals captured three National League pennants during the 1980s. The team’s stalwart second baseman during the successful run was Tom Herr, a line-drive hitter who played outstanding defense and had a knack for getting on base. In his All-Star season of 1985, Herr hit .302 with career bests in home runs (8) […]

“Lou Brock is the symbol of great base stealing, but today I am the greatest of all time.”1 — Rickey Henderson, May 1, 1991   The above proclamation was part of a short speech made by Oakland’s Rickey Henderson just moments after he stole base number 939 in his career. The thievery of third base […]

From 1953 through 1956, Jim Woods was Mel Allen’s and Red Barber’s partner on New York Yankees radio/TV. One day, eying Woods’ slight overbite and gray buzz cut, Enos Slaughter jibed, “I’ve seen better heads on a possum.” In 1958 Jim moved to Pittsburgh, where announcer Bob Prince’s wife called Woods’ spouse “Mrs. Possum.” In […]

Hoss Walker was a baseball lifer. He enjoyed a 20-year playing career in Black Baseball and then managed for nearly a decade. Prior to playing a single game in the major Negro Leagues, he was a teenage pioneer playing a small role in growing the game of baseball in the Far East. He played with […]

Wilbur Good was a Deadball Era pitcher (5 games) and outfielder who posted pedestrian statistics (.258/.322/.342) in 749 games for six major league clubs. He left the majors as that era ended and became a feared hitter in the minors where he posted a career .335 average while playing into the 1930s. When his playing […]

A few more feet was all Clint Conatser needed. His hard shot to center with the bases loaded and the Braves trailing 4-1 in the eighth inning of Game Six of the 1948 World Series was caught by Cleveland’s Thurman Tucker against the outfield fence; had the ball hit or cleared the wall just above […]

Born into a baseball family on September 2, 1933, during the first year of the presidency of Franklin Roosevelt, Glenna Sue Kidd grew up playing ball and working with her close-knit family on the Kidd farm near Choctaw, Arkansas. She had three brothers – the youngest was Joe – and two older sisters, Juanita and […]

Jake Jones made one of the loudest debuts in the history of the Boston Red Sox. After Joe Cronin swapped slumping first baseman Rudy York — who had knocked in 119 runs for the AL champs in 1946 — to the visiting Chicago White Sox for Murrell Jones on June 14, 1947, York’s first response […]

Otto Schomberg was a hitting wonder in his one full year in the big-leagues (1887). Poor fielding and health issues saw him out of the majors after the following season, but the Wisconsin native then became a major-league lumberman with other substantial ventures. Otto H. Schomberg was born in Milwaukee on November 15, 1864. His […]

William Michael Stanton was born on June 2, 1967, in Houston, Texas. His sports path was trending toward football until a blindside block tore his knee cartilage at Midland High School. Stanton was committed to the University of Arkansas, but the school withdrew after the injury. Stanton switched to baseball and was a Texas All-State […]

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 […]

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 […]

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, […]

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 […]

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 […]

This material was gathered and re-typed from the original newspaper stories by Bill Nowlin, in 2016, to accompany publication of the SABR book Boston’s First Nine: The 1871-75 Boston Red Stockings.   Some Newspaper Coverage of the 1874 European Tour of the Red Stockings and Athletics The bulk of the material presented here is comprised […]