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A practicing dentist in the offseason, pitcher Ed Lafitte was a lanky, square-jawed journeyman in the American and Federal Leagues during the Deadball Era. No one knew just what to expect when righty Doc Lafitte took the mound. His hurling was often wild and occasionally brilliant, sometimes both in the same game. His historic contributions […]

In his first three professional seasons, James “Wickey” McAvoy played for a World Series champion, an American League champion, and a team that lost 109 games. This dramatic shift of fortune required no action on McAvoy’s part: The catcher joined Connie Mack’s Philadelphia Athletics in 1913 and lingered there as Mack traded some of his […]

The fractured skull Philadelphia Athletics shortstop Skeeter Newsome suffered on April 9, 1938 left a gaping hole in the club’s defense. Ten players, including Newsome after he recovered, attempted to fill the void through the 1939 season. One was Al Brancato, a 20-year-old September call-up from Class-A ball who had never played shortstop professionally. Enticed […]

New York’s Penn Station was all hustle and bustle on the sunny afternoon of June 12, 1941. The Brooklyn Dodgers were gathering to board a train bound for Pittsburgh. The trip would then continue west to St. Louis, where a crucial series with the Cardinals awaited the two early rivals in the National League pennant […]

For more than 70 years, pitcher Joe Cleary was the last native of Ireland to play in the major leagues. Appearing in just one game in 1945, Cleary had the misfortune to post a lifetime 189.00 earned run average, the highest on record for pitchers who retired at least one batter, when he yielded seven […]

Eduardo Green (1920-1980) never played in the majors. In fact, he played only 11 games in Organized Baseball at the Class B level. Yet under different circumstances, he almost certainly could have been a big-leaguer. La Gacela Negra — The Black Gazelle — still stands as one of the greatest players in the history of […]

Right-handed pitcher Bill Evans had a very brief major-league career, with a total of one decision (sadly, for him, a loss) in the 13 games he pitched over two seasons of big-league baseball. He worked in four games in 1949 for the White Sox, and in nine games in 1951 for the Red Sox. He […]

A star athlete in high school and at the University of Michigan, Elmer Gedeon played a handful of games for the Washington Senators in 1939. He died while flying a bombing mission over France in 1944, less than a week after his 27th birthday. James T. Taaffe, a fellow officer in the U.S. Army Air […]

Ten years a backup catcher for five major league teams, Matt Batts was born and raised in San Antonio, Texas. He lived in the north part of the city at the time, but San Antonio has grown so much since he was born on October 16, 1921, that where he lived would be nearer the […]

John (Jack) Burwell Reed played the outfield in the regular and post-season for the fabled 1961 New York Yankees, and contributed to their pennant-winning efforts in 1962 and 1963. He was Mickey Mantle’s defensive replacement for most of these three seasons.  Jack was a terrific high school/college athlete in Mississippi, winning the state quarter-mile run […]

Lefty Sullivan had everything a pitcher could want: a blazing fastball, a knee-buckling curve, a disappearing spitball, and pinpoint control. The one thing he couldn’t do was field. Because he felt dizzy every time he picked up a bunt – a lifelong heart condition cut off the flow of oxygen to his brain when he […]

“Me a pop-off? Aw, that’s bunk.” — Mickey Harris, Boston Post, May 20, 1941 Mickey Harris is well known for an impressive amount of self-confidence and for posting a 17-9 record as one of the key components of the starting staff that carried the 1946 Boston Red Sox to their World Series showdown with the […]

Mike McNally emerged from the gritty Lackawanna Valley before World War I to fashion a half-century career in baseball. A deft, light-hitting utility infielder, he played 10 seasons in the big leagues, twice scored spectacularly in the World Series, and went on to become a popular manager, scout, and front-office executive. Along the way, irrepressible […]

World War II ended when the Axis powers surrendered to the Allied powers in 1945. Men and women of the U.S. Armed Forces returned to an America deeply affected by years of war, and they sought to resume a simple, more pedestrian way of life. They looked to an America which embraced enterprise and entertainment, […]

Joe Burt Scott’s professional baseball career intersected with the emerging opportunities in the sport following Jackie Robinson’s 1947 debut with the Brooklyn Dodgers and the waning years of the Negro Leagues. This left-handed first baseman and outfielder was 26 years old in 1947, when he hit .400 for the Memphis Red Sox of the Negro […]

Harry O’Neill played in just one major-league baseball game, had no times at bat, and no putouts or assists. Still, he won a measure of immortality as one of only two major leaguers who lost their lives during World War II. He was killed in action on March 6, 1945, during the battle for the […]

War was raging in Europe as the 1941 baseball season came to a close. News of the fighting kept fans justifiably preoccupied, while the pennant races served as a badly needed diversion. The New York Yankees captured the American League flag, and then defeated the National League champion Brooklyn Dodgers in the World Series. A […]

Brooklyn–born Gennaro Joseph Casale, better known as Jerry, played 11 seasons in professional baseball beginning in 1952 and concluding in 1963. During a five-year stretch, from 1958-1962, he pitched for three major-league teams, a hard-throwing right-hander and recorded his best season in 1959 as a 13-8 rookie with the Boston Red Sox. Casale was a […]

Solly Salisbury was an adventurer, a newspaperman, a soldier, a certified hero, and a ballplayer. He bombed in his only two professional games for the Philadelphia Phillies in 1902, but he was still good enough to be remembered in his home state 50 years after leaving the game. Solly was born William Ansel Salisbury on […]

Andrew Lawrence Patterson was born on December 19, 1911, in Chicago.1 Both of his parents died while he was extremely young, so the duty of raising the boy fell to his maternal grandparents.2 Pat, as he became known, discovered athletics early on and augmented his classroom education as a multisport athlete at integrated Washington High […]

By September 30, the next-to-last day of the regular season in 1933, the teams playing in that season’s World Series, the Washington Senators and New York Giants, had already clinched their respective league pennants.1 However, there were still tight races for second and third places in the National League. The Pittsburgh Pirates held a one-game […]

June 1940 ended with the reigning National League champion Cincinnati Reds in first place, 1½ games ahead of the second-place Brooklyn Dodgers. The Reds fell from the top spot by losing their first two games in July, but recaptured first place with a seven-game winning streak, and led the NL the rest of the way. […]

In 1794, the legislature of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania codified a portion of English common law governing observance of the Christian Sabbath, or day of rest. The laws, known as “blue laws,”1 criminalized “any worldly employment or business whatsoever on Sunday (works of necessity, charity, or wholesome recreation excepted.)”2 Those laws were still very much […]

Brooklyn fans could barely believe what they were seeing. After losing the first two games of the 1947 World Series, their team rebounded to win the next two games at Ebbets Field. The fifth game, the last one to be played in Flatbush for the Series, was packed with fans hoping to see the Dodgers […]