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By the time the Cubs and Giants renewed their rivalry in 1908, it looked as though the Giants might not be a factor in the pennant race, or even in the rivalry. The Giants arrived at the West Side Grounds in late May in the midst of a miserable 20-game road trip. They had gone […]

Is it better to start a World Series with a rested team or with one riding the wave of momentum? The defending World Series champion New York Yankees clinched the 1962 American League pennant on September 25, five days before the end of the season.1 In the National League, the San Francisco Giants trailed the […]

In seven seasons of futility, the New York Mets had never won more than 73 games in a season or finished higher than ninth place in the National League. With the 1969 expansion, plus divisional play, the team was guaranteed to finish no lower than sixth place. Led by manager Gil Hodges, in his second […]

For as long as he could, Fermín “Mike” Guerra kept playing baseball all year around, in his native Cuba and in the United States. The two lands obviously had quite different cultures, baseball and otherwise, and Guerra even told Roberto Gonzalez Echevarría that he had been initiated into santería, the particular syncretic Afro-Cuban religion.1 Fermín […]

Some baseball players evoke a position. Recall catcher Mickey Cochrane. Others define managing: Connie Mack comes to mind. Many broadcast as a color analyst or play-by-play man, like Bob Uecker and Bob Costas. Few have performed all of the above at one time or another as well as the Blue Jays’ John Albert “Buck” Martinez, […]

A member of the three-time American League champions, Ed “Farmer” Willett was a fixture in the Detroit Tigers rotation from 1908 to 1913. During that six-year period, the 6-foot, 183-pound right-hander won at least 13 games in each season, topping out with a career-high 21 victories in 1909 when the Tigers captured their third consecutive […]

Sportswriters treated pitcher Monte Weaver as a curiosity during his nine seasons with the Washington Senators and Boston Red Sox. He was a college professor, a mathematician, a hypochondriac and – most radically – a vegetarian, according to the sports pages. Montie Morton Weaver was born on June 15, 1906, in Helton, North Carolina, a […]

Dick Stuart was fun – as long as you didn’t have to be on the field with him. He ran the bases head down and looking anywhere except at the third-base coach or the outfield or a teammate who might be able to tell him something, often sending his team out of the inning. As […]

Bill Cissell went from a farming community in Perry County, Missouri, to becoming “baseball’s costliest player.” The right-handed multi-position infielder played nine seasons in the major leagues from 1928 to 1938. He was found in 1949 “painfully ill and penniless in a gloomy one-room Chicago apartment” living with his 13-year-old son Gary. He’d been there […]

Right-hander Bob Purkey learned the knuckleball from Branch Rickey and fashioned a 13-year big-league career with a smorgasbord of pitches plus excellent control. Robert Thomas Purkey was born in Pittsburgh on July 14, 1929. His father, Edward, was an insurance agent and his mother, Anna, a homemaker. The Purkeys had two other sons, Edward and […]

Don Gross had a 13-year career in professional baseball as a left-handed pitcher, including a brief spell with the Pittsburgh Pirates at the beginning of the 1960 season. He pitched in 1950-1952 and 1954-1963, with time out in most of 1952 and all of 1953 while in military service). For much of his time he […]

 “Riggs Stephenson is a brilliant hitter, steady fielder, and a southern gentleman,” wrote Chicago Cubs beat reporter Edward Burns in 1929, as the rugged Alabaman was en route to a .362 batting average and 110 runs batted in for the pennant-winning Cubs.1 Blessed with eagle eyes, but cursed with a poor throwing arm, the career […]

Lou Berberet was a very solid defensive catcher. With a fielding percentage of 1.000 as a catcher in 1957, he joined an elite group as only the third catcher in major-league history with zero errors in more than 350 chances. Since that time, eight other catchers have had error-free seasons with that number of chances.1 […]

Third baseman Ty LaForest had one of the best home debuts in Boston Red Sox history. Just 21 months later, he was dead. LaForest was a local kid, called up to the big leagues after a superlative season in Double-A (then the top minor-league classification). Playing his first game on the road in Washington on […]

There is nothing more exhilarating or more intoxicating in baseball than the seventh game of a best-of-seven championship series. It is an unforgiving arena where history is written of both the heroes who carry the day and their vanquished opponents. Winning pitchers in a game seven instantly become legends not only to their own team’s […]

Few individuals in the history of baseball can boast of a career to rival that of Clark Griffith’s. In terms of duration, as a player, manager, and executive, it was one of the longest ever, spanning nearly 70 years. Griffith is the only man in major league history to serve as player, manager, and owner […]

It would have been fun to see Gene Brabender wrestle with Frank Howard: “a polar bear versus a grizzly,” suggested his old teammate, Jim Bouton. At 6 feet, 5 1/2 inches and 225 to 240 pounds, “Bender” gave away roughly two inches and 30-40 pounds to “Hondo.” Yet the big man from Black Earth, Wisconsin, […]

It’s a common tale. A major-league prospect falters after being celebrated as a highly significant addition to the team. So goes the story of Albert LaVerne “Bunny” Fabrique, who played in 27 games for the Brooklyn Robins in 1916-1917 and enjoyed a reported, though improbable, familial lineage to King Louis XVI.1 In 1917 spring training […]

To say that Alexander Schacht was obsessed with baseball is to understate. He was possessed by it. Schacht was an undersized man with an oversized heart and love of baseball. It consumed him as he traveled from hamlet to hamlet trying to sell his wares as a pitcher. When he did finally make it to […]

Third-string catcher Charlie “Legs” Dorman played in his lone major-league game on May 14, 1923, for the Chicago White Sox only after the starting catcher was removed and the backup split his finger open on a foul ball. Dorman took quite the circuitous route to his one moment on the big stage: from a San […]

During the 1920s and 1930s the New York Giants captured seven National League championships. While they had great outfielders like Mel Ott and Ross Youngs as well as solid pitching, most prominently Carl Hubbell, it was their infield that anchored the team in its success. George Kelly, Fred Lindstrom, and Bill Terry each had a […]

Warren Harvey “Curly” Ogden became part of World Series lore in 1924 when Washington manager Bucky Harris started him in Game Seven as a ploy to fool Giants manager John McGraw. The idea was to get McGraw to play rookie first baseman Bill Terry and other left-hand batters against the right-handed Ogden, so that Harris […]

Gabby Street may not have been much of a batsman in his career. His high mark for batting average was .238 in 1905, a season he split between Cincinnati and the Boston Beaneaters. Perhaps he was aided by only 105 at-bats, the second lowest total of his career. There may have been a slight decrease […]

Editor’s note: Have you ever wondered where the statistics that appear on Baseball-Reference.com or Retrosheet.org come from? For those of us who access those indispensable websites every day, it’s hard to imagine a time when historically accurate baseball stats weren’t readily available. But those stats weren’t handed down through the years in pristine, pre-formatted fashion […]