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“I didn’t like how my baseball career ended, particularly because I was so young. I won only 19 games total. But I realized how fortunate I was to have made it to the majors. Not many make it. And how many guys who played for many years didn’t get to play in the World Series […]

Fewer than 30 major-league players have gone on to be physicians; half of those were pitchers. Several had noteworthy accomplishments. John Lee Richmond pitched the first perfect game in professional baseball history, in 1880; and Hub Pruett faced Babe Ruth on 30 occasions between 1922 and 1924, striking him out 11 or 12 times.1 Richmond […]

High atop the left-field foul pole in Wrigley Field waves a flag bearing Cubs uniform number 14, retired in honor of a slugging 1953 rookie. Paul Schramka wore number 14 for Chicago on Opening Day, 1953, when he pinch ran for Clyde McCullough in the seventh inning against Cincinnati. He did not score. Two days […]

Fred Spencer, penner of passionate prose. In the summer of 1910, wooing his newfound love, Blanche Enlow of Hannibal, Missouri, with a barrage of penny postcards from his various stops with the Hannibal Cannibals of the Class D Central Association, the 25-year-old pitcher-outfielder came up with such gems as, “Howdy! Well, how are you?,” and […]

In an issue published a few days after the grand opening of Forbes Field, Sporting Life extolled Pittsburgh team owner Barney Dreyfuss: “[he] had the mind to conceive and the courage to execute the plans which have given the world the grandest and most costly ball park in existence, deserves the greatest credit, highest praise, […]

In 1954 Gus Triandos, a powerfully built catcher who hit a lot of home runs, was languishing in the New York Yankees’ farm system. To the one-year-old Baltimore Orioles, a team that had a severe shortage of talent, Triandos seemed plenty good enough. And he was: After being sent to the Orioles in a blockbuster […]

Hal Trosky played first base for the Cleveland Indians and the Chicago White Sox in the 1930s and 1940s. His career reached its apex in 1936, when he led the American League in runs batted in with 162, yet he has largely been consigned to historical obscurity. This anonymity is not only due to the […]

Several people served as the architects of the 1979 Pittsburgh Pirates team, but no one had as much influence as general manager Harding “Pete” Peterson. Peterson had been employed by the Pirates organization throughout his entire adult life, serving as a player, minor-league manager, scout, director of scouting, vice president, and general manger. Peterson helped […]

Dave Jolly was 28 years old when he made his major-league debut as a member of the Milwaukee Braves. Both he and the team arrived in Milwaukee the same year, 1953. Over the ensuing five seasons the soft-tossing, durable right-handed pitcher became an integral member of the Braves bullpen, throwing 291 innings over that span, […]

Eddie Kasko was a major-league infielder with four different teams from 1957 through 1966, an All-Star for the Cincinnati Reds in 1961, and he hit .318 in that year’s World Series. He managed the Boston Red Sox for four full years, 1970 through 1973, with a winning record each season and two third-place and two […]

Between 1870 and 1920, over a million Swedes emigrated to the United States, primarily seeking greater economic opportunities.1 This influx produced notable second- and third-generation Swedish-American baseball stars like Charles “Swede” Risberg and Freddie Lindstrom. But only four Swedish-born players made the big leagues. Collectively they appeared in just 149 major-league games.2 Pitching for the […]

Tillar “Pug” Cavet won 302 games in a career that spanned two decades. He won 11 games in the majors, with the 1914-15 Detroit Tigers, and 291 in the minors. He was a four-time 20-game winner, with Mobile in 1913, Nashville in 1917, and Indianapolis in 1919 and 1921. The 6-foot-3, 175-pound southpaw pitched side-arm […]

The story of a hometown boy making good is firmly entrenched in baseball lore. Lloyd Merritt was born and raised in St. Louis, guided his American Legion team to the national championship game, and led the Cardinals in appearances in 1957, the crafty sinkerball reliever’s only season in the big leagues during his nine-year professional […]

Vic Janowicz was the first winner of college football’s Heisman Trophy to play major-league baseball. He should have stuck to football. “He’s all right carrying the baseball, but he can’t throw it or hit it,” an unidentified Pittsburgh Pirates teammate said.1 Janowicz gave up baseball after two futile seasons and moved on to the National […]

The Moose from Moosup – an easy nickname to pin on a 6-foot-5, 220-pound ballplayer who hailed from the village of Moosup, Connecticut. Right-handed-hitting Walt Dropo played for parts of 13 major-league seasons, with a solid .270 average (.326 on-base percentage, .432 slugging average), and 152 career home runs.  Dropo easily won the 1950 Rookie […]

Frankie Frisch may have been playing possum, or just being coy. But after the St. Louis Cardinals won Game Six of the 1934 World Series, the big question was which pitcher manager Frisch would send to the hill for the seventh and deciding game. His star pitcher, Dizzy Dean, was coming off a loss in […]

“[Joe] Taylor has such a vile reputation that I guess I couldn’t have the remotest interest in him, but he impressed me very much as a player.” – Branch Rickey1 “When Taylor is ‘right’ he is definitely a Major League hitter. He has great reflexes, terrific wrist action and tremendously quick hands. He has as much […]

The story of J.W. Porter is one of paradox. A talent of renown, he was praised by scouts as perhaps the greatest prospect they had ever seen. Before he was 18 years old, the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown hung a plaque bearing his name. He received a record signing bonus; but his rise […]

The small mining community of Swoyersville, Pennsylvania, located near Wilkes-Barre, was home to only 5,000 or so inhabitants but gave five ballplayers to the major leagues: Adam Comorosky, Dick Mulligan, Packy Rogers, Steve Shemo, and Harry Dorish. The town also contributed professional athletes in other major-league sports as well. Dorish himself also played football and […]

In 1962 the Los Angeles Times veteran sportswriter Braven Dyer offered in three short sentences an apt analysis of the brief career of Ron Moeller: “Moeller is something of a problem pitcher. At times, he seems to have everything. The next time out, he seems devoid of confidence.”1 Emerging on the major league stage in […]

“Tacky” Tom Parrott enjoyed a long and colorful career in professional baseball, showing both great athletic talent and a gift for showmanship. Forgotten today, for a brief time he earned a reputation as one of the game’s best players. He was the second native Oregonian to play in the major leagues, debuting eleven months after […]

Boston Red Sox manager Ed Barrow scoffed at the very idea. Turn Babe Ruth, one of baseball’s top pitchers, into an everyday player? Just to let him hit some home runs and revel in the glory? Barrow imagined the wisecracks that would certainly follow. “I’d be the laughingstock of baseball if I changed the best […]

This article was originally published in Ebbets Field: Great, Historic, and Memorable Games in Brooklyn’s Lost Ballpark (SABR, 2023), edited by Gregory H. Wolf.   The Brooklyn Eagle, beginning in 1946, staged its “Brooklyn Against the World” competition at Ebbets Field. The main forces behind the game were Branch Rickey of the Dodgers and Lou […]