Search Results

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

“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 […]

In 1935 Cy Blanton broke in with the Pittsburgh Pirates in a blaze of glory. The hard-throwing right-hander with an array of screwballs, curves, and sinkers led the National League in ERA and tied for the lead in shutouts, and was the hardest-to-hit pitcher in the big leagues. In his first four seasons he averaged […]

“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. […]

Mike “King” Kelly was professional baseball’s first matinee idol: the first ballplayer to “author” an autobiography, the first to have a hit song written about him, and the first to have a successful acting career outside the game. A handsome man with a full mustache and a head of red hair, Kelly through his fame […]

“It would be hard to say I am not a typical minor leaguer.  I’ve spent 11 years in the minors, practically my whole career. It doesn’t feel good to say I am a typical minor leaguer. It doesn’t feel good to say it at all, but I suppose it’s the truth. I still keep hoping […]

Mike Palm is one of the relatively few Red Sox players to have been born in the city of Boston. Richard Paul Palm’s date of birth was February 13, 1925. After moving to a suburb, he picked up his nickname in high school, where Belmont High’s baseball coach was Myron “Mike” Palm, a former Penn […]

Roberto Clemente’s saga is the stuff of myth. Chuck Goggin’s saga — less so. That said, their two stories are forever linked in a way that would be possible only in baseball. In a coup of historic proportions, the Pittsburgh Pirates plucked Clemente from the Dodgers organization for next to nothing in the 1954 minor-league […]

Handsome, talented, admired, Arthur Rico was a three-sport star who made the majors with a hometown ball club without ever spending a day in the minors. After his return from World War I, he seemed destined to become one of baseball’s great catchers—expectations soon shattered in tragedy. Rico grew up in Boston, the son of […]

Growing up in Covington, Kentucky, just across the Ohio River from Cincinnati, Johnnie Heving enjoyed a long career spanning more than 30 years in professional baseball as a catcher and as a manager. His younger brother, Joe, worked as a pitcher, appearing in 430 major-league games to Johnnie’s 399, but spent fewer years in the […]

On a comfortable 72-degree evening on July 17, 1965, at Milwaukee’s County Stadium, Bob Sadowski held an equally comfortable 4-1 lead going into the top of the eighth. He also was throwing a no-hitter against his hometown Pittsburgh Pirates with a lineup featuring three future Hall of Famers including the great Roberto Clemente. Another of […]

Catcher Frankie Pytlak was the youngest of eight children born to Polish immigrants Casimir and Antoinette (Niemier) Pytlak. He was born as Frank Anthony Pytlak, in Buffalo, on July 30, 1908. His father, Casimir, had arrived from Poland in 1882 and at the time of the 1910 census worked as a blacksmith for the railroad […]

For one generation of Pittsburghers, Pie Traynor was that tanned, silver-haired old man on Studio Wrestling. For another generation, he was the monotone voice that came out of the radio every evening to talk about sports. But for an older generation — and for most baseball fans outside the Pittsburgh area — he was the […]

It was a small story in a national publication, and it suggested the possibility of a baseball first. Under the headline “Brothers Constitute a Battery,” the May 28, 1914, issue of Leslie’s Illustrated Weekly wrote, “The Boston Nationals have a battery this season composed of brothers, George and Fred Tyler. It is said that this […]

For the four years from 1931 through 1934 Edward Arthur Brandt, largely forgotten today, was one of the top left-handers in the National League. Toiling for the mediocre Boston Braves, Dutch, as he was called by his teammates, reeled off victory totals of 18, 16, 18, and 16 and was a big reason why the […]

Though Thomas Austin Brewer Jr. was a lifelong resident of Cheraw, South Carolina, he was born in North Carolina on September 3, 1931.1 Cheraw lies in the northern part of South Carolina and was a town of a few thousand inhabitants in 1931 so it happens that the nearest hospital was in Wadesboro, North Carolina, […]

One of the best-hitting catchers in minor-league history, Everett “Yam” Yaryan batted .357 and slugged 41 home runs in 1920 for Wichita, Kansas, in the Western League. Only Perry Werden and Ernie Calbert had previously hit more homers in one minor-league season, and neither was a catcher.1 Yaryan’s banner year was his springboard to the […]

When he took the mound on April 7, 1954, Chicago Cubs outfielder Hal Jeffcoat hadn’t pitched professionally since being hit hard in five games in the low minors eight years earlier. Yet, as spring training was ending, he held the Baltimore Orioles to two bloop singles and just one walk over five innings.1 This unexpected […]

Eddie Waitkus was a slick-fielding first baseman who in an 11-year big-league career for three teams batted a solid .285 and struck out only 204 times in 4,681 plate appearances. Although a fine ballplayer, he would today likely be little remembered but for what happened to him on June 14, 1949, in a room at […]

Special events were scheduled throughout the senior circuit season of 1951 to celebrate the league’s Diamond Jubilee 75th anniversary. National League ballclubs commemorated this historic event with a variety of ceremonies. The Boston Braves chose to bring back surviving members of the 1914 Miracle Braves World Series championship team as the Tribe’s jubilee contribution. A […]

The 105th World Series featured a rematch 59 years in the making between the New York Yankees and the Philadelphia Phillies. In 1950 the Whiz Kids from Philadelphia reversed 32 years of mediocrity and stunned the National League, winning just their second pennant in franchise history.1 Unfortunately, they ran into Joe DiMaggio and the Yankees, […]