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“They’ve made a simple game complicated,” Don Johnson said as he reflected on the changes he’s seen in baseball. “When I was on the Yankees, we had a few trainers. If you got hurt on the mound, they said, ‘Here have a beer, you’ll feel better.’ That’s all they told you. We didn’t have video. […]

Robert Alexander “Bob” Unglaub was, at best, an average ball player. One newspaper referred to Unglaub’s career as a “meteoric rise,” but in reality it was anything but. In fact, little in his professional or personal life was out of the ordinary, and his career was typical of the players of the dead ball era, […]

Right fielder Hank Bauer was a mainstay of the Casey Stengel–Yogi Berra Yankee dynasty who sparkled in the World Series spotlight. In the final game of the 1951 Series his bases-loaded triple broke a tie and gave the Yankees a 4-1 lead. After the Giants narrowed the margin to 4-3 in the ninth, with the […]

In 1977 the original Star Wars hit theaters; Jimmy Carter was sworn in as president; the first Apple II computers went on sale; and New York City lost power and was blacked out for 25 hours. But what most Oakland A’s fans of a certain age remember about that year — an otherwise dismal time […]

Like his Hall of Fame teammate, Ernie Banks, right-handed pitcher Bob Rush was just happy to be in the big leagues. “I never really regretted signing with the Cubs,” Rush said. In his 10 campaigns with the North Siders (1948-1957), the “Lovable Losers” finished in the second division every season and never had a winning […]

Bob Quinn was a baseball man for more than 60 years. He started as a player in the 1880s, although he never made the majors, and then became a business manager/general manager. At various points from 1917 through 1945, he held this role at the big-league level with the St. Louis Browns, the Brooklyn Dodgers […]

On September 27, 1947, a soft-spoken 24-year-old left-handed pitcher from Kansas toed the rubber at Wrigley Field preparing to make his first major-league start for the St. Louis Cardinals against the Chicago Cubs.1 The National League pennant race was over for the season and the Cardinals would finish second to the Brooklyn Dodgers. Eddie Dyer, […]

Born on October 17, 1859, in Hoagland, Ohio, a small town about 53 miles east of Cincinnati, William Ewing was the uncle of twentieth-century major league pitcher Bob Ewing and the older brother of major league pitcher John Ewing, with whom he formed a formidable battery for two years (1890-91) before John left the game […]

Max Manning was a man of many nicknames. Newark Eagles teammate Jimmy Hill gave him the moniker Dr. Cyclops, by which he became best-known in baseball circles. Hill had just seen the 1940 movie with that title, but he could not recall seeing any other player who wore glasses — especially thick spectacles like Manning’s […]

In 1895, Sammy Samuels became the fifth Jewish player to appear in major league baseball and one of just six in the 19th century. Samuels’ brief stint with the St. Louis Brown Stockings was notable for his struggles at the plate and at third base. In the decades that followed, his poor play would be […]

Catcher Russell “Hack” Ennis played in one major-league baseball game. Though he did not get to bat, he was behind the plate when Ty Cobb got his last hit in a Detroit Tigers uniform. On September 19, 1926, with his Washington Senators ahead, 7-6, Ennis entered in the bottom of the ninth inning of the […]

Gene Krapp, a diminutive right-handed spitballer, holds an iconic spot in the legendary halls of baseball journalism. Celebrated baseball writer Fred Lieb wrote in his memoir about the influence that writer Charley Dryden had upon Lieb’s career. Lieb was especially impressed with Dryden’s ability to occasionally slip a double entendre past an editor. Lieb wrote, […]

Elston Howard was born February 23, 1929, in St. Louis, Missouri, the son of Emmaline Webb and Travis Howard. A schoolteacher in Sikeston, Missouri, Emmaline fled to St. Louis when Howard, her principal, refused to marry her. She worked to become a dietician, and when Elston was 5 years old, she married Wayman “Big Poppy” […]

If a young, successful major league pitcher had decided to become an outfielder in 2001, it would have been news. And if he had hit above .300 for the next five straight years, culminating in 2005 by winning the league’s batting crown with a .377 average, he would have graced magazine covers. Finally, if upon […]

On June 24, 1970, the Cleveland Indians were visiting New York to play a doubleheader against the Yankees. Tribe catcher Ray Fosse went 2-for-4 with one RBI, one run scored and one walk as Cleveland won the first game 7-2 behind Sam McDowell’s tenth win. Fosse was scheduled to sit out game two, but he […]

In 1947 Clint Hartung, the Hondo Hurricane, was going to be the biggest thing to hit New York baseball since Babe Ruth. Like the Babe, the 6-foot-4, 215-pound giant could pitch and hit home runs out of sight. The Giants signed Hartung in 1941. He had led his high-school team in Hondo, Texas, to the […]

“Catchers are in demand,” declared the Fort Worth Record in 1907; they “are scarcer than snowflakes in July.”1 Catchers’ equipment was primitive, and injuries were common. Who wanted to endure abuse from fastballs and foul tips? Tommy Hess was willing. From 1890 to 1911, he caught for minor-league teams in at least 10 U.S. states […]

Tom Brokaw dubbed Americans who lived through the Depression and served in World War II “The Greatest Generation.” As a member of this group, Charley Stanceu (pronounced STAN- chew) found himself witnessing  some of the iconic events of that period. A rookie pitcher for the New York Yankees in 1941, he was in the dugout […]

“I was mean on the mound,” said Bob Buhl, a tough competitor for the Milwaukee Braves during their heyday in the 1950s.[1] Forming part of the Big Three with Warren Spahn and Lew Burdette, Buhl notched 109 of his 166 career wins for the Braves. Self-confident, brash, and sometimes wild on the mound, Buhl was […]

He was the eldest member of a quartet of baseball brothers unparalleled in the history of the game. The youngest, Ben Taylor, is a member of the National Baseball Hall of Fame, his just recognition after a career as one of the dominant first basemen and sluggers of the first part of the twentieth century. […]

The conclusion of a three-game series in Minnesota the first weekend in 1967 featured two teams fighting for the top spot in the American League and two of the top pitchers in baseball. The Minnesota Twins, second-place finishers in 1966, had to go through a managerial change in June to climb into the race. The […]

A freak ankle injury sidelined Roberto Clemente for four games in May 1955, momentarily sidetracking his spectacular rookie-year emergence in Pittsburgh. The 20-year-old native of Puerto Rico returned on May 29 with five hits in the Pirates’ curfew-interrupted 11-5 win over the Philadelphia Phillies in the second game of a doubleheader — but lost his […]

When the Indianapolis Clowns and the Chicago American Giants battled in a Negro American League game on May 12, 1946, it ultimately was an exercise in frustration for the players. The two teams played 20 innings, and with the game tied 3-3, it was finally called by darkness without a winner. But while the fans […]

In Wisconsin during the mid- and late 1950s, the most recognizable voices in the entire baseball-crazy state belonged to Earl Gillespie and Blaine Walsh, the Milwaukee Braves’ tandem of radio broadcasters. In stores, on front porches, in open convertibles at stoplights, their descriptions and accounts of the games was unavoidable. Love-struck residents of the Badger […]