Search Results

The bottom of the first inning of the game between the Cleveland Indians and Baltimore Orioles on September 5, 1989, showed the athleticism of Brad Komminsk that had excited scouts and executives for over a decade. With two outs, Cal Ripken, Jr. took John Farrell’s first pitch to deep left-center field. Chasing the ball, Komminsk […]

Career goals for a kid growing up in rural Kansas are pretty simple – either he works the family farm or comes up with a talent that allows him to see a world beyond a wheat field. The talent in Jerry Robertson’s right arm opened doors for him and allowed his childhood dream of being […]

Middleboro, Massachusetts has a long and rich baseball history. While every generation has a favorite candidate, determining the greatest player is not really debatable because only one man has gone from the baseball diamonds of Middleboro to the major leagues. Cyril Arlon Morgan was born in nearby Lakeville on November 11, 1895 to Joseph and […]

The man who hit the first home run at Fenway Park was a native of North Grafton, Massachusetts: Hugh Frederick Bradley. Bradley’s parents were Joseph A. Bradley and Sarah Nutting Bradley and they celebrated his birth on May 23, 1885. Hugh had one brother, John E. Bradley, 11 years his junior. The first time we […]

The National Baseball Hall of Fame has an extensive library, packed with research materials. Most players have a file at the Hall, whose contents are made available to researchers. Some files are fairly thick. Most contain some basic information about the player, including a certificate of death for a deceased player, and newspaper clippings that […]

Right-handed pitcher Cory Bailey was a 15th-round draft pick of the Boston Red Sox in 1991 at the age of 20. His lengthy career ran through 2008 and featured stints in both the American League and National League, as well as Japan’s Central League, Taiwan’s Chinese Professional Baseball League, and Venezuela’s winter league. In the […]

“Excellence may have many definitions, but Tip-Top Bread defines excellence: the supreme, clean, healthful loaf,” touted a 1914 newspaper advertisement.1 Robert B. Ward’s bakeries produced nearly 250 million loaves in 1913.2 Ward became a baseball magnate in 1914 when he acquired the Brooklyn franchise in the upstart Federal League. The team was named the Tip-Tops […]

Carl Yastrzemski was legendary in Boston — and throughout baseball. In his 23-season Hall of Fame career with the Red Sox, he made 18 All-Star teams, and won three batting titles, seven Gold Gloves, and the 1967 Triple Crown before retiring in October 1983. Two generations later, the Yastrzemski name returned to the majors.1 His […]

After the Brooklyn Tip-Tops rallied for a one-run victory over the visiting Pittsburgh Rebels in the first game of a Labor Day doubleheader, Brooklyn fans were treated to another come-from-behind one-run victory in the second game. In addition to a five-run rally by the Tip-Tops in the bottom of the eighth inning, the second game […]

Just a year after winning the World Series in 2013, the Red Sox were struggling. With only two days left in June, they were in fourth place in the American League East, seven games behind first-place Toronto and five games behind the third-place Yankees. They had finished in last place in 2012, before bounding to […]

As the Los Angeles Angels rolled into town on July 1, Red Sox fans were uneasy. High hopes for the Red Sox were being dashed. They had lost 17 of their last 29 games and trailed the Baltimore Orioles by four games for the AL East lead. Many of the Red Sox faithful were looking […]

The 2016 season was something of a breakout for Mookie Betts. It was his second full season in the major leagues, playing outfield for the Boston Red Sox. He’d hit for the same .291 batting average in both 2014 and 2015, but in 2016 the 23-year-old Betts improved to .318 and drove in a career-high […]

As the Indianapolis Hoosiers (63-49) prepared to host the Brooklyn Tip-Tops (54-53) in a doubleheader, the Hoosiers had a 1½-game lead over the Chicago Chi-Feds (62-51) in the first year of the new Federal League. Brooklyn was in fifth place in the standings 6½ games behind Indianapolis. Indianapolis had won seven of its last eight […]

It was a rough September 1991 for David Cone. The Mets right-hander had been sued for $8.1 million by three women who claimed that he had threatened them at Shea Stadium in August. Cone admitted to confronting the women but denied threatening them. “In a span of 15 seconds I must’ve dropped 90,000 F-bombs. I’m […]

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)   When the International Olympic Committee chose Montreal as the host city for the 1976 Winter Olympics, Jean Drapeau, the mayor of Montreal, told the […]

The Federal League’s Newark (New Jersey) Peppers, in the midst of a four-game winning streak, were hosting the Kansas City (Missouri) Packers for game one in an expected four-game series. The Peppers were doubtless happy to be hosting anyone after coming off a five-city, 21-game road trip.1 Newark dipped to 43-43 after losing seven of […]

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 […]

It was a battle for the American Association pennant, but “not a good game from a scientific standpoint,” opined the St. Louis Globe-Democrat.1 The first-place Philadelphia Athletics (63-28) arrived in the Gateway City to kick off a pivotal three-game series with the second-place St. Louis Browns (61-31). On a season-ending 13-game road swing, the Athletics […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

Here are the SABR Defensive Index™ rankings through games of June 16, 2019. For the seventh consecutive season, the SDI will be used to help select the winners of the Rawlings Gold Glove Award and Rawlings Platinum Glove Award™, presented by SABR. The SABR Defensive Index accounts for approximately 25 percent of the Rawlings Gold […]