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More than a century ago, the Detroit Tigers staged the biggest ninth inning come-from-behind-victory engineered in baseball. It still stands.1 The inaugural 1901 American League season was scheduled to open in Detroit on Wednesday, April 24, but rain just before game time prevented play. The next day was sunny, warm for April, and “a day […]

After a season spent at or near the top of the league and the ultimate prize within sight, the exhausted Athletics arrived in St. Louis on September 20 with a 2-½ game lead over the Browns. As fans back in Philadelphia anxiously awaited news and planned a victory parade, the Athletics and Browns split the […]

Perhaps no player in the annals of baseball has had his reputation sullied more than Ty Cobb, thanks primarily to Al Stump, who served as the ghostwriter for Cobb’s autobiography and whose later magazine article and biography created a sensationalized portrait of Cobb as an outright fiend. Charles Leerhsen rehabilitated Cobb’s name to a great […]

Two years after this game, the Boston Red Sox were well on their way to winning the American League East. That team went on to win the 2018 World Series, marching through each of the three rounds of the postseason with only one loss per round. The 2018 Red Sox featured an outfield of Andrew […]

The New York Mets had good reason to be tired when they took the field at Shea Stadium at 1:10 on Thursday afternoon to wrap up their four-game series with the Chicago Cubs. About 12 hours earlier, manager Willie Randolph’s squad had left the diamond after an 8-1 victory that began more than three hours […]

The 1961 major-league season was barely three weeks old the day 29-year-old Willie Mays produced perhaps the greatest offensive performance of his legendary career. Led by Mays, the San Francisco Giants came to Milwaukee for a three-game series with the hometown Braves. Just a year away from the World Series, the Giants were a team […]

The month of August had not been kind to the Red Sox. They had lost nine of 13 games, including a walk-off loss to the Indians the night before on a Carlos Santana home run. At 63-59, they were third in the AL East, 17 games back of the Yankees. For their part, the Indians […]

Heading into the 1921 season, St. Louis Cardinals outfielder Austin McHenry had shown promise in his two full seasons with the club. He hit. 286 in 1919 and .282 in 1920 with a combined 112 runs batted in.1 But no one would have predicted that his 1921 campaign would cause The Sporting News to proclaim […]

To Milwaukee fandom, the 1964 home opener represented a potential turning point for their baseball franchise. After back-to-back World Series appearances in 1957 and ’58, the Braves had settled into a string of lackluster campaigns, finishing generally in the middle of the pack. More critically, attendance at County Stadium had declined in the post-Series years, […]

On a pheasant-hunting trip during the offseason, Fergie Jenkins said he would try to win 20 games again. His teammate, Billy Williams, stated that he would try to hit 40 home runs for the first time in his career.1 The 26-year-old Jenkins had won at least 20 games for three consecutive seasons coming into 1970. […]

There was no lack of fan interest in the pennant races in 1908. Baseball fans were immersed in two of the great pennant races in modern history. As the curtain came down on September, no fewer than six teams, three in each league, had a shot at the league pennant in 1908. In the NL, […]

As if the 2020 season wasn’t strange enough, an unusual incident occurred at Fenway Park during a late-season Sunday afternoon game against the visiting New York Yankees. The announced attendance for the game was 0 – yes, zero – as it was for every game all season long at the Boston ballpark. The COVID-19 pandemic […]

It had been something like feast or famine for the Boston Red Sox for the six years leading up to the 2018 season. From 1998 through 2011, the Red Sox were consistently competitive, never finishing below third in the American League East Division while making the postseason eight times. Having not won a World Series […]

The last time the Boston Red Sox had played a game in Buffalo was on July 6, 1917 – and that was an exhibition game. In the first two decades of the twentieth century, the team played four exhibition games there, all against local minor-league teams: April 18, 1903: Boston 8, Buffalo 7 April 13, […]

Pedro Felix Borbón Marte (also known as Pedro Borbón Jr.) was born on November 15, 1967, in the town of Valverde de Mao, Dominican Republic. He is the son of workhorse relief pitcher Pedro Borbón, a two-time World Series champion with the Big Red Machine and 2010 inductee into the Cincinnati Reds Hall of Fame. […]

The 1958 Philadelphia Phillies finished eighth in the National League, the first of four consecutive last-place finishes. Despite that record, the team was not devoid of achievements. Several players generated solid performances. Center fielder Richie Ashburn led the majors in batting with a .350 average. Left fielder Harry Anderson batted .301, hit 23 home runs, […]

The brief major-league career of Reading, Pennsylvania, native Franklin “Heck” Heifer consisted of 17 appearances (15 as a position player and 2 as a pitcher) with the 1875 Boston Red Stockings of the National Association of Professional Base Ball Players. After his time with Boston, Heifer’s professional career consisted of playing for a number of […]

Among the classic baseball records, Ty Cobb’s 4,191 hits and Babe Ruth’s 714 home runs have fallen, but Cy Young’s 511 victories remain ingrained in the pantheon. And yet, many modern-day fans have shed their fascination with pitchers’ wins, understanding that the sport is a team-wide effort, rather than an individual competition. However, when a […]

“A real man is Bill Tuttle – someone who will stand up and tell the truth.” – Joe Garagiola, 1998[1] Bill Tuttle was a capable journeyman outfielder who played during 11 seasons in the American League (1952; 1954-63). He had his best year at age 25, manning center field for the 1955 Detroit Tigers. He appeared […]

For a player who appeared in only 19 games during part of a nineteenth-century season, Daniel Albion Jones Jr. received an inordinate amount of notoriety. Among the many cameo players who flitted briefly across the major-league scene, Jones was perhaps the most unique. He was a Yale man who sang in the college’s glee club. […]

He was a left-handed hitter who batted .285 over the course of 16 seasons, and Clark Griffith called him Washington’s greatest centerfielder, claiming that he played the position more shallow than any man in baseball. Yet Clyde “Deerfoot” Milan achieved his greatest fame as a base stealer. After Milan supplanted Ty Cobb as the American […]

Dike Varney’s major league career was more than a cup of coffee but not quite a potful — three games — flashing by like the 20th Century Limited express train that débuted in 1902. It’s the same year that Varney took the hill for the Cleveland Blues/Bluebirds/Bronchos of the American League. Varney’s baseball journey took […]

Editor’s note: This article first appeared in SABR’s “Unions to Royals: The Story of Professional Baseball in Kansas City,” the 1996 SABR convention journal. For a multimedia history of SABR conventions, click here. Long forgotten by most Kansas Citians, the 1915 Federal League gave the city its first real major-league pennant race, and still it […]