Search Results

As the spring of 1974 turned to summer, the San Francisco Giants were slumping. They were 33-36 and in fifth place in the six-team National League West Division, already 12 games behind the first-place Los Angeles Dodgers. By Friday, June 21, as they arrived in Los Angeles to open a three-game series with the Dodgers, […]

Matty Alou was the middle of three Dominican-born brothers who came up with the San Francisco Giants in the early 1960s. He joined older brother Felipe on the Giants roster in 1960, and three years later, their younger brother Jesús arrived. On September 10, 1963, the three brothers made history when, for the first time, […]

“[He] pitched with devastating speed, his curves breaking fast and baffling the best of the Cubs hitters,” gushed the Associated Press after Dizzy Dean’s record breaking performance.1 The 23-year-old Cardinals hurler fanned 17 to set a post-1900 record for most strikeouts in a game. St. Louis sportswriter L.C. Davis exulted that “the Great Dean proceeded […]

“Night baseball will never happen in Washington,” said Clark Griffith, the president of the Washington Senators and owner of the team’s ballpark. In 1930, Des Moines, Iowa, had hosted the first professional night baseball game. This failed to impress Griffith, who said, “You can make it as strong as you want that I’m opposed to […]

“The law of averages had to catch up with you.” – Rusty Staub, May 25, 1973, after driving in the decisive run in a very long game.1   Marathon games dot the histories of the New York Mets and the Los Angeles Dodgers. The Brooklyn Dodgers played 26 innings against the Boston Braves on May […]

The summer of 1934 was one of the hottest on record in Chicago. Although the heat was nothing out of the ordinary for Negro League All-Stars like Alex Radcliff and Satchel Paige, who both grew up in Mobile, Alabama, it was still fortunate for them, and for the fans attending the matchup of the best […]

As the Cheers resident know-it-all Cliff Clavin might have said, “It’s a little-known fact …” that the first major-league All-Star Game held at Comiskey Park in 1933 was not the only inaugural All-Star competition held that year at the ballyard that Charles built. Following on the heels of the Comiskey classic, Pittsburgh Crawfords Secretary Roy […]

It said a lot about who Addie Joss was that the Cleveland Indians were willing to risk suspension — or worse, given American League President Ban Johnson’s capriciousness — to attend his funeral. And the event that was organized three months later as a benefit said even more about who Joss was as a pitcher, […]

On September 19, 1988, the Pittsburgh Pirates paid tribute to the Homestead Grays by hoisting a black-and-white commemorative flag over Three Rivers Stadium. The occasion commemorated an event from 40 years earlier, when the Negro National League’s Grays defeated the Birmingham Black Barons, champions of the Negro American League, four games to one in the […]

J. Leslie Wilkinson (1878-1964) was one of the most respected and influential figures in the history of Black baseball. His trailblazing role in helping to found the Negro National League in 1920, in addition to his establishing and operating the renowned Kansas City Monarchs for many years, earned him a plaque in the National Baseball […]

Billy Horne was a Negro League second baseman and shortstop who played for several clubs in his 15-season career, from 1935 to 1949. He was a left-handed hitter, threw right-handed, stood 5-feet-5 and weighed 152 pounds. Nicknamed Little Grumbler and Aussa, Horne was regarded as a fine defender and appeared in several all-star games.1 William […]

“He was a beautiful person. Yes he was. Cool Papa Bell. He was a lovable person. And still is. And always has been. I love him. My goodness, that’s one beautiful man.” – Dave Barnhill (hard-throwing ace pitcher and all-star of the New York Cubans)1 “He had time for everybody. Never hurried. Signed autographs, talked […]

Often referred to as the Pittsburgh Crawfords’ “normal fall back man” to Satchel Paige,1 Bertrum Hunter was among the many supporting stars who helped make the 1935 Crawfords the greatest Negro League baseball team of all time. For five years, from 1932 to 1936, the Crawfords were considered the “Yankees of the Negro Leagues” as […]

Negro Leagues encyclopedist/historian James A. Riley summarized outfielder Pete Washington’s skill set as one of a “very fast outfielder with exceptional range afield … got a great jump on the ball and was one of the best defensive outfielders in the East during the ’20s and ’30s. However, his offensive punch was not equal to […]

A classical pianist who played at Carnegie Hall by 16, a World Series champion baseball player with one of the major league’s glamour franchises by 23, and an actor sharing screen time with Tallulah Bankhead and Zsa Zsa Gabor on a top-rated television series before he turned 30, Al “The Bull” Ferrara has had enough […]

Rocky Ellis is one of the many Negro League players whose statistics tell only a fraction of the full story. Sandwiched between official league contests were the numerous battles against teams of varying skill. These games made up the meat of a player’s diet but usually are not taken into consideration when the breadth of […]

The 1935 Pittsburgh Crawfords are often considered to be the Negro Leagues’ equivalent of the 1927 New York Yankees. That Yankees team had six future Hall of Fame players: Lou Gehrig, Tony Lazzeri, Babe Ruth, Earle Combs, Waite Hoyt, and Herb Pennock, along with manager Miller Huggins, general manager Ed Barrow, and owner Jacob Ruppert. […]

Lloyd Pepper Bassett made his name in Negro League baseball as the “Rocking-Chair Catcher.” If calling a game and receiving pitches while sitting in a rocking chair seems like a gimmick, the reason is that it was one. Bassett began his professional career with the New Orleans Crescent Stars, and low attendance led him to […]

Bill Harvey was a left-handed pitcher and outfielder who played parts of up to 21 years in the Negro Leagues, Mexico, and Puerto Rico. Though unimposing both physically (5-feet-8, 175 pounds) and statistically (31-52, 5.68 ERA in 140 official Negro League games), Harvey had a long and colorful career that was not without its share […]

The greatest shortstops in Negro League history were John Henry Lloyd (first), Willie Wells (second), and Dick Lundy (third), according to a 1952 Pittsburgh Courier poll of Negro baseball experts. Today Lundy is less well known than Lloyd and Wells, who are in the Hall of Fame, but during his career, everyone following Negro League […]

A master of the one-liner, Billy Grabarkewitz once claimed that “Abner Doubleday dreamed up this game [of baseball] to drive people crazy.”1 Perhaps no one knew this more than the diminutive right-handed hitting infielder whose entire career pivoted on injuries. It was injuries that slowed Grabarkewitz’s march to the big leagues; injury to fellow infielder […]

This article appears in SABR’s “Pride of Smoketown: The 1935 Pittsburgh Crawfords” (2020), edited by Frederick C. Bush and Bill Nowlin.   The Pittsburgh Crawfords franchise, one of the most famous in the history of black baseball, was started in 1926 by a group of youths connected to one of Pittsburgh’s neighborhood recreation clubs. For […]

This article was originally published in Ebbets Field: Great, Historic, and Memorable Games in Brooklyn’s Lost Ballpark (SABR, 2023), edited by Gregory H. Wolf.   On July 30, 2006, Effa Manley was inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame. She and her husband, Abe Manley, had been at the helm of one of the great […]

This article appears in SABR’s “Pride of Smoketown: The 1935 Pittsburgh Crawfords” (2020), edited by Frederick C. Bush and Bill Nowlin.   Introduction “Since the August Day in 1933, when ‘King’ Cole of Chicago, Gus Greenlee of Pittsburgh, and Tom Wilson of Nashville, saw a dream, which originated in the minds of Roy Sparrow and […]