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In his first full season in the majors, Dan Griner lost a big-league-most 22 games with the moribund St. Louis Cardinals in 1913. But few probably gave him a hard time for that dubious feat because “Big Dan,” a chiseled 200-pound former football player, didn’t take kindly to insults. He KO’d three teammates the following […]

Don Wheeler was an outstanding athlete from Minneapolis, Minnesota, who had a nine-season career in professional baseball over a period of 12 years. A catcher, Wheeler spent his first years in pro ball in the shadow of another Minnesota catcher, Wes Westrum, but Wheeler got his chance to play in the major leagues after he […]

Catcher Milt Welch, who made a single appearance for the Detroit Tigers, was the last surviving player from the 1945 World Series championship team. In fact, that was his only game in the majors. Welch became part of the club of big-league players (nearly 1,000 strong) who realized their dream for just a day. Welch […]

The manager of the Hotel del Comercio in Caracas, Venezuela, summoned George Genovese for a phone call from the San Francisco Giants in November 1963. It sent Genovese’s hopes soaring. “Maybe I’m their new manager,” he said to his wife, June. When the call was completed, Genovese was crestfallen. His career as a manager was […]

He was a star pitcher, one who not only threw a no-hitter — against none other than Rube Foster’s 1915 Chicago American Giants1 — but also tossed a four-hit complete game against the 1911 Pittsburgh Pirates. He was, for parts of two decades, a manager who is credited with at least 196 career wins. He […]

Vern Hoscheit’s career in professional baseball spanned six decades. Signed as a catcher by the New York Yankees in 1941, he had little hope of making the major-league roster with Bill Dickey and later Yogi Berra ensconced behind the plate. The Yankees front office took notice of Hoscheit’s leadership potential and made him a player-manager […]

Outfielder Carroll Hardy played for four major-league baseball teams between 1958 and 1967. Over time he has come to be known largely for one at-bat, in which he hit the ball back to the pitcher in the first inning of a late September game of almost no consequence in the standings, but most of his […]

Two-time minor-league batting champion Ralph Sharman enjoyed a productive late-season tryout with the 1917 Philadelphia Athletics. Eschewing a potential full-season roster spot for 1918, Sharman instead enlisted in the Army in order to serve his country. Tragically, the 23-year-old soldier became the second player who had reached the major leagues to die while serving in […]

Personal problems rooted in a car accident stopped Dinny McNamara from fulfilling what might have been a legendary Boston sporting career. Still, before his troubles intervened, McNamara became a multisport high-school and college star, an outfielder with the 1927 and ’28 Boston Braves, and head football coach at Boston College – all before his 30th […]

A strong, quiet leader. Steady and determined. One of the best minds in baseball. All apt descriptions of the often-overlooked player, coach, and manager Bob Lillis. In 1928, Perry Reed Lillis, born in Michigan, married Lillian Pearl Porterfield, from Oklahoma. The couple had two sons: Jack Howard Lillis, born in 1928, and Robert Perry “Bob” […]

Billy Moran joined the Los Angeles Angels midway during the team’s inaugural season in 1961, but it was 1962 in which both Moran and his club broke out in a major way. The infielder, who would spend seven seasons in the major leagues, posted career numbers across the board that season. In 160 games he […]

Eight major-leaguers died while serving in World War I.1 The third of these casualties, Eddie Grant, had the longest playing career and is also well remembered because he received a plaque in center field at the Polo Grounds. The shortest career on this list belonged to Alexander Thomson Burr, a pitcher who played just one […]

Edmund Hearne enjoyed two cups of coffee in 1910, one on June 9 and one on June 10. That was the sum total of shortstop Hearne’s experience in the major leagues. Two games, two at-bats. “Hearn, a California recruit, played shortstop for Boston, and performed well in the field.” So read the wire-service note in […]

Lefty Gomez made a lasting mark on baseball for two reasons. Not only was he one of the two or three finest pitchers of his generation, but he was probably the wittiest person ever to wear a major league uniform. In a 14-year big league career spanning 1930-43, all but one game of which was […]

Baseball and football are very different games. In a way, both of them are easy. Football is easy if you’re crazy as hell. Baseball is easy if you’ve got patience. They’d both be easier for me if I were a little more crazy – and a little more patient. – Bo Jackson1   No record […]

University of Tennessee football and baseball star Hunter “Dodo” Lane darted in and out of professional ball in less than 24 months, yet still ascended to the major leagues. The infielder became a “one-hit wonder” with a 1-for-15 performance for the 1924 Boston Braves, before opening a successful politically-involved law practice in the Memphis area. […]

There was no digging in at home plate when Rube Melton was on the mound. Standing six feet five and weighing 205 pounds, Melton was blessed with a right arm capable of throwing a baseball with speed that few possessed. Brooklyn Daily Eagle columnist Tommy Holmes wrote that Melton was “very fast and uncommonly wild.”1 […]

Donald Paulson, a slender, hard-throwing, right-handed pitcher from a small town in Minnesota, could hardly realize how successful he would become by learning to “paint the corners” of home plate. But the talented, eager, and hard-working minor leaguer – better known today as the painter Buck Paulson – used baseball to learn how to succeed […]

Half of the most famous version of the “Pretzel Battery,” catcher Heinie Peitz was a noted “coacher”—more of a bench jockey in modern parlance—whose mouth gained him nearly as much attention as his play. For nine years of his 16-season (1892–1906, 1913) career, he was a Cincinnati Reds mainstay. When he retired, Peitz ranked 12th […]

Lenny Levy’s career defies conventional logic. A washout in one year of minor-league D-level baseball (years later, Baseball Digest called him “hardly more than a semipro player”), he fashioned a professional career with the Pittsburgh Pirates that began in 1934 and ended in 1964 with only a break for World War II. He was a […]

Eddie Brown was a great hitter and a superb defender for the New York Giants, Brooklyn Robins, and Boston Braves during the roaring decade of the 1920s. Over the span of 20 seasons in professional baseball, Brown patrolled all three outfield stanchions, covered first base one full season, and handled shortstop another. As a rural […]

One of the most charismatic players of his era, Bill Monroe starred for several leading African-American professional teams from 1899 until his untimely death in 1915. In the field, he excelled at third, short, and second. At the plate, his speed and power enabled him to shine either as a lead-off man or in the […]

Despite his status as a budding star for the St. Louis Cardinals, a month into the 1955 season rookie pitcher Luis Arroyo longed to be home in Puerto Rico with his pregnant wife. As only the fifth pitcher in the formerly segregated major leagues to hail from Puerto Rico, he had no army of fellow […]

To former Los Angeles Dodgers great Tommy Davis, the American League’s adoption of the designated hitter in 1973 was a godsend. “If it wasn’t for the designated-hitter rule … I probably would be [home] in Los Angeles right now, working eight hours a day,” he told The Sporting News three months into the season.1 The […]