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Roberto Clemente, the first great Latin American baseball star to enter major-league baseball and make it into the Hall of Fame, debuted for the Pittsburgh Pirates in right field as a 20-year-old on April 17, 1955. This was only one year after the Pirates’ acquisition of Curt Roberts, the African American second baseman from the […]

When there’s a band in the house for a Wednesday game, you know it’s gonna be a special evening. Commissioner Kenesaw Mountain Landis designated June 30, 1943, as one of baseball’s two “war relief” days, with all proceeds from the eight games played that day committed to the war effort.1 Spectacles were scheduled by the […]

On May 12, 1939, the St. Louis Browns hosted the Detroit Tigers for the first of a four-game series but lost 1-0. After the Browns won the second game of the series, 5-3, on May 13, the two teams participated in a 10-man trade, sending players to the opposing dugouts for a doubleheader on May […]

Twelve games into the 1939 season found both the Philadelphia Athletics and St. Louis Browns at or near the bottom of the American League standings. The Athletics had managed only three wins, with only one victory in their last eight games. They had scored just 18 runs in that span. The Browns did not have […]

“It was about time we beat ’em here.”1 That’s what 48-year-old2 future Hall of Fame reliever Hoyt Wilhelm told reporters after the Atlanta Braves defeated the Los Angeles Dodgers, 4-3, on September 2, 1970. The Dodgers were in Atlanta for a four-game midweek series, their final visit of the season to Atlanta Stadium. The fourth-place […]

The Dodgers hosted the Pittsburgh Pirates for a Thursday afternoon doubleheader at Ebbets Field, with the Pirates only one game behind the Boston Braves in the National League standings. They’d been in third place for most of the season, but had tied for first for one day, June 16. The second game was a makeup […]

The 1938 season was a good one for the Pittsburgh Pirates: a second-place finish, just two games out. But it was the heartbreaking September collapse that made it a season Pirates fans don’t enjoy talking about.1 The team featured four future Hall of Famers: manager Pie Traynor, shortstop Arky Vaughn, and outfielders Paul and Lloyd […]

 When Pie Traynor reached the major leagues1 as a 21-year-old rookie with the Pittsburgh Pirates in 1920, his manager was George Gibson, a rookie skipper and a local fan favorite throughout his Deadball Era tenure as the team’s catcher. Although Gibson delivered a positive overall 201-171 record in two-plus seasons at the Bucs’ helm, by […]

It was a perfect September afternoon for a ballgame in Washington: 78 degrees and sunny. A sellout crowd of 40,493 awaited the game and a postgame concert by Dierks Bentley. The Nationals fans were hoping to see Gio González (19-8, 2.95 ERA) become the first 20-game winner of the season. While at the ballpark the […]

On July 30, 1968, Washington Senators shortstop Ron Hansen pulled off one of baseball’s rarest and most difficult feats when he turned an unassisted triple play against the Cleveland Indians. This diamond rarity took place at Municipal Stadium in Cleveland during the bottom of the first inning after leadoff hitter Dave Nelson singled and Russ […]

Looking at Ken Silvestri’s major-league statistics could leave the impression his baseball career was marginal at best. He played in 102 games in eight seasons spread over 13 years, hit five home runs, and had a .217 batting average. However, by the time he died at 75, in 1992, he had spent more than half […]

After a rough rookie season with the lowly St. Louis Browns in 1933, Jack Knott emerged as a rubber-armed swingman-reliever. He appeared in more games over a four-year stretch (1934-1937) than any other AL hurler, and later transitioned into a once-a-week-type starter for the Chicago White Sox and Philadelphia Athletics. Like those of many players […]

Johnnie Dawson’s life was bookended by unknowns. His early life was full of uncertainties and the end of his life passed without mention. Even his date of birth is up for debate. Most sources agree that Dawson was born on November 8, but the year varies from 1914 to 1915 to 1916. The birth year […]

Few Major League players were traded as often as pitcher Louis Norman “Bobo” Newsom. The name Bobo came about because Newsom never could or would remember anybody’s name, so he called everyone Bobo and thus earned that nickname for himself. Barrel-chested, standing six-foot-three and weighing more than 200 pounds, the colorful right-hander was talkative and […]

A strong-armed power hitter who “swung so hard he raised dust clouds,” Frank Fernandez spent parts of six seasons in the major leagues (1967-72) as a backup catcher and occasional outfielder.1 As a Staten Island, New York, high schooler, the multisport athlete competed on New York’s biggest stages. He signed with the Yankees at the […]

Catcher Fred Walters worked in 40 games for the Boston Red Sox in 1945. The former Mississippi State football star went on to manage five seasons in the minor leagues and ultimately become a scout for the Red Sox, while officiating both football and basketball for many years. Fred was his first name, not a […]

In the California winter leagues of 1929, California resident and Toledo Mud Hens manager Casey Stengel spotted a hard-hitting shortstop named Bill Knickerbocker. Stengel convinced the teenager to try out for the Mud Hens in the spring. The youngster hitch-hiked across the country in 1930 to join Toledo at spring training in Anniston, Alabama. Knickerbocker […]

Once described as the “Heinz of Baseball” because of his variety of pitches and deliveries, Elmer Ponder tossed a two-hit shutout for his first big-league win as a late-September call-up with the Pittsburgh Pirates in 1917. After missing almost a season and a half because of World War I, Ponder went on to post a […]

Hank Severeid caught for four major-league teams between 1911 and 1926, appearing in 1,390 games, and for almost a dozen minor-league clubs before and after the majors. A tough, durable backstop, he caught in at least 100 games a season for in eight of his ten years with the St. Louis Browns, one of the […]

Walt Tragesser’s career could be defined by the things he missed out on. A Boston Brave in 1913 and 1915, Tragesser did not play for the 1914 “Miracle Braves” that upset the heavily favored Philadelphia Athletics to win the World Series and enter baseball legend. And he missed the chance to catch a no-hitter thrown […]

One can sensibly argue that Hugh Mulcahy was one of the hardest-luck pitchers in baseball history. At first glance a pitcher with a 45-89 career record and a lifetime earned-run average of 4.49, one who was twice the league leader in losses, is not exactly a player one thinks of as a victim of bad […]

In literature’s most famous soliloquy, Hamlet agonizes: To be, or not to be: that is the question:Whether ‘tis nobler in the mind to sufferThe slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,And by opposing end them? Hamlet chose to be. Willard Hershberger chose not to be. Why? The slings […]

Lew Simmons was a popular performer as a minstrel entertainer both before and after his time in baseball management. One of many persons who linked the theater with nineteenth-century baseball, Simmons was a noted banjoist, a professional comedian of great repute, and an end man with the tambourine in the minstrel show.1 There is considerable […]

This article was originally published in SABR’s The National Pastime, Vol. 15 (1995).   The 25th Infantry Regiment baseball team, c. 1918. (JERRY MALLOY)   The 25th Regiment of United States Infantry was one of four African-American Regular Army units cre­ated after the Civil War, the others being the 24th Infantry, and the 9th and […]