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After experiencing success in its infancy as the birthplace of professional baseball, Cincinnati was without a championship team from 1883 until 1919. Although the 37 years without a winner were hard to swallow, the Queen City faithful continued to come out to the ballpark and root for a number of talented athletes wearing the Cincinnati uniform. […]

Ezra Sutton matured at the perfect time to join baseball as it morphed from a merely amateur endeavor played by people during the recreational hours to a sport that paid its players, allowing them to pursue their passion as a vocation. Sutton played for teams in the old National Association of Base Ball Players, the […]

Alan Nathan never played in a big-league baseball game. Or in the minor leagues. Or at the collegiate level. He last grabbed a mitt and ran out on the field as a Maine high school freshman before deciding his exceptional foot speed was better suited for the track team. This lifelong Boston Red Sox and […]

Jimmie Wilson was a two-time All-Star catcher whose major league career spanned 23 years (1923-46) as a player, manager, and coach with four different National League teams. He played on four pennant winners, was a coach on a fifth, and was a member of two World Series championship teams. He is best remembered for his […]

Bert Thiel pitched four games for the 1952 Boston Braves, the extent of his major-league career. He had a long minor-league pitching career with 145 wins. He pitched two seasons of winter ball with Caguas, in Puerto Rico; managed in the minors; and scouted. His baseball mentors were George Selkirk, his manager with the 1953-55 […]

When asked to name the best catchers of the nineteenth century, most baseball historians wouldn’t have to name very many before they mentioned Charlie Bennett, a fan favorite who was admired for his intense toughness and true love of the game. He was one of the most durable and best defensive catchers during an era […]

The first of three Grillis to play major-league baseball, Guido John Grilli had the briefest career of the three. In 1966 he was 0-1 for the Boston Red Sox and 0-1 for the Kansas City Athletics.    Grilli put in his time in the minor leagues. He was first signed by Red Sox scout George […]

In 1941, the book on 23-year-old Eddie Pellagrini was as a “good field, no hit” shortstop. “[He] may not hit as well as [others] but he’s certainly a fine prospect … ‘Pellagrini is a faster fielder than [most],’” said San Diego Padres player-manager Cedric Durst. It thus came as a surprise five years later when […]

Tall, trim Oklahoma native Ralph Terry won 107 major-league games over 11-plus seasons, from 1956 into 1967. His most stellar and productive campaign was 1962, when he led the American League in wins, with 23, and compiled a 4.0 WAR for pitchers. Yet, he is most notably recalled for being on the mound in crucial, […]

Josh Gibson has often been called “the black Babe Ruth” since he, like the Sultan of Swat, was his league’s most-feared home run hitter, but Wilmer Fields – Gibson’s teammate during four of his seasons with the Homestead Grays – had much more in common with the Babe than Gibson did. On the surface, this […]

Marvin Miller, the great labor leader of major-league baseball, shared fond memories of his youth: “One of my biggest thrills was sitting in the old left-field bleachers … at Ebbets Field in the 1920s. We’d watch the Dodgers take fielding practice. When fielding practice was over, Rube Bressler, the Dodger left fielder, would throw a […]

Rufus “Sonnyman” Jackson was born on May 1, 1900, in Columbus, Georgia, to Rufus Jackson Sr. and Rosa Bell Dixon, both Georgia natives.1 Rosie and her son remained close enough throughout his life that in 1940, when he was already a successful businessman and often-time courthouse visitor, she was still living with her grown son. […]

Mort Cooper was a big, burly pitcher who anchored the pitching staff for the St. Louis Cardinals’ three consecutive World Series teams from 1942 through 1944. Plagued by arm miseries his entire career, Cooper recovered from an elbow operation to lead the National League with 22 wins, 10 shutouts, and a 1.78 earned-run average in […]

Joe Herr was a power-hitting shortstop in St. Louis in 1888, first for the minor league St. Louis Whites of the Western Association, and then for the St. Louis Browns in the major league American Association. Between the two clubs that year he hit seven home runs, three of which went over the left field […]

Born as Colonel Buster Mills, this outfielder-turned-soldier during World War II got a little extra kick out of going up to ranking officers and introducing himself as Colonel Mills. His father was Elvis, a merchant who owned a general store in Ranger, Texas, about 65 miles east of Abilene in the west central part of […]

As of the end of the 2014 season, 18,400 players are recognized by Baseball-Reference as having played in the major leagues. Of this group 595, or a little over 3 percent, share an interesting distinction: They played their first major-league game for a team that won the World Series that year. Eleven of this group […]

Although the Purdue University Boilermakers football team ended the 1960 season with a mediocre 4-4-1 record (despite which they still finished the season ranked 19th in the Associated Press poll), they nevertheless snared two signature victories. On October 15 Purdue hosted then-unbeaten and third-ranked Ohio State University and upset the Buckeyes, 24-21. The following month […]

Mexican League president Jorge Pasquel, right, sits with the son of catcher Mickey Owen on his lap and outfielder Danny Gardella, left, during a 1946 game in Veracruz, Mexico. (SABR/The Rucker Archive)   Cardinals owner Sam Breadon called him likeable and said he was “the most dynamic fellow I’ve ever met.”1 Branch Rickey said he […]

“Ripley’s Believe It or Not” featured Charley Gelbert in 1941, noting that he “played 239 major league games with a broken leg.” Shortstop Gelbert put in four full seasons with the St. Louis Cardinals and played in back-to-back World Series, losing one and then winning one. And then an offseason hunting accident nearly ended his […]

Jack Kibble’s cup of coffee with Cleveland in the summer of 1912 amounted to just five games, but with teammates the likes of Nap Lajoie, Shoeless Joe Jackson, and Ray Chapman, it surely amounted to a lifetime of stories told at his cigar shop and sporting goods store back home in Montana. John Westly “Happy […]

By the dawn of the 1955 season, the New York Yankees were one of only four teams that had yet to integrate.1 Jackie Robinson had debuted for the Brooklyn Dodgers eight years earlier, and several Black players had established themselves as stars with teams in the American and National Leagues – particularly Larry Doby in […]

Going into 2017, not many in baseball had high expectations for the Arizona Diamondbacks or Colorado Rockies. Both were National League West Division afterthoughts after a 2016 season in which Colorado went 75-87 and Arizona 69-93. The D-backs had not made the postseason since 2011, the Rockies since 2009. When ESPN consulted 35 experts for […]

As the morning of August 6 dawned, the Boston Beaneaters, losers in the previous day’s contest, enjoyed a slender two-game lead over the Baltimore Orioles. Two strong pitchers, Boston’s Fred Klobedanz and Baltimore’s Arlie Pond, were facing each other. Each team had lost 27 games to this point in the season, but Boston had won […]

This article was published in From Setbacks to Success: The 1945 Cleveland Buckeyes (SABR, 2025), edited by Vince Guerrieri, Thomas Kern, and Bill Nowlin.   As 1945 dawned, World War II was winding down toward its conclusion – even if that wasn’t apparent as the year began. After repelling the Nazis in the Battle of the […]