Search Results

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 […]

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” […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

Vaughan Pallmore “Bing” Devine, a soft-spoken, modest man, spent more than a quarter-century as a baseball executive and played a major role in building four National League champions and three World Series winners. Devine left his biggest mark as the general manager of the St. Louis Cardinals, whose owner fired him in 1964 just as […]

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. […]

On June 14, 1952, Billy Harrell signed a contract with the Cleveland Indians which began a 15-year professional baseball odyssey. Across this career, he appeared in 153 major league games (136 with Cleveland and 37 with the Boston Red Sox) and 1520 minor league games with eight different teams. While his big league stats were […]

Nolan Ryan has more strikeouts and no-hitters than any other pitcher in history. Despite never winning a Cy Young Award, he started more games than anyone except Cy Young. Though he played mostly for mediocre teams, his 324 wins are as many as contemporary Don Sutton, who pitched for four pennant winners and just missed […]

For decades, Emil Verban was remembered as an obscure minor-league infielder who made the majors because of depleted wartime rosters, then played for losing teams and hit one home run in 2,911 times at bat. But more than 20 years after his retirement, Verban won a measure of fame as the namesake of the Emil […]

His big brother in college was Martin Luther King Jr. Somehow, it’s appropriate to begin with that fact when discussing Donn Clendenon. During his college years at Morehouse College, one of the most pivotal players in Mets history was mentored by the greatest and most pivotal African American of the 20th century. The big brother […]

  “One of the greatest things the Red Sox ever did in all the years I’ve known them was when they brought Pop Popowski up here after 30 years in the minors working with young players and made him a coach. He’s one of the greatest baseball men I’ve ever known in this game.” — […]

Serial retirement has a long tradition in sports. Boxing has produced many serial retirees, aging fighters who swear each fight is their last until the promise of another big payday becomes too much to resist. In the 2000s, no NFL season was complete without the will-he-won’t-he drama surrounding Brett Favre’s retirement. But perhaps the king […]

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 […]

A Sunday crowd of 24,129, including 261 servicemen, “got a double thrill at Forbes Field”1 when the Pittsburgh Pirates swept the visiting Brooklyn Dodgers in a doubleheader on July 15, 1945. The Bucs won the opener, 9-1, and then took the nightcap by a score of 15-3, a game that the New York Daily News […]

The knuckleball has danced through the fantasies of fans and ballplayers for generations. It looks so effortless, and those who master it can seemingly pitch until they’re 50 years old. Throwing a pro-quality flutterball is much harder than it looks, of course. But once in a while, the knuckler makes a big-league dream come true, […]