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Although most people familiar with Jean Cione knew her as a longtime professor of sports medicine and director of women’s athletics at Eastern Michigan University, she also had an earlier career as a standout player in the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League (AAGPBL). Cione primarily pitched and played first base for five teams between 1945 […]

The baseball lifer has been around almost as long as the professional game itself. The lifer profile usually begins with a decent, but rarely superabundant, degree of natural playing ability. Thereafter added to the mix are variables like baseball intelligence, leadership skills, a keen eye for judging talent, perseverance, and the ability to function without […]

“Mr. D’Acquisto, Mr. D’Acquisto, you just broke the radar gun, the last pitch was 100 miles an hour and the gun just broke!” Pitching for the Chicago White Sox’ AAA Denver Bears affiliate in 1983; 31-year-old John D’Acquisto had other things on his mind as he as he crossed the foul line on his way […]

The man who broadcast Jackie Robinson’s first season with the Dodgers recalled that, as a boy in Sanford, Florida, “I saw black men tarred and feathered by the Ku Klux Klan and forced to walk the streets. I had grown up in a completely segregated world.” Red Barber confessed that when he learned the Dodgers […]

Most of the former ballplayers we read about were well known, or at least regulars, on their respective big league clubs. But since ball clubs usually have 25-man rosters, the majority of players were neither stars nor regulars. Instead, they played backup roles, riding the bench and waiting for their turn while the starters played […]

Justin Fitzgerald was small. Had a bad arm. Even a bad leg. Even caught the Spanish Flu. Yet he managed to hit over .300 for close to a decade with the San Francisco Seals, winning acclaim as one of the fastest and most exciting players in the Pacific Coast League in the 1910s. He was […]

Bumps Horning’s six years in the lowest depths of the minor leagues made him a baseball radical. After being sold without his consent, re-assigned over his objections, and released with no severance pay, he concluded that Organized Baseball didn’t give a damn about players. He took his grievances to the US Congress. In widely publicized […]

He’s been termed a “reluctant pioneer.” All Pumpsie Green wanted to do was play professional baseball. He didn’t even aspire to the major leagues at first, and would have been content playing for his hometown Oakland Oaks in the Pacific Coast League. That said, Pumpsie Green took pride in the fact that he helped accomplish […]

The one year he ventured to the East Coast to play, Charlie Graham suffered through one of the worst seasons any Boston baseball team has ever experienced. Graham spent the rest of his lifelong baseball career in the West, and transitioned from player to manager to become a very prominent and successful team owner. Charles […]

“That was the best play I’ve ever seen in my life.” — Happy Chandler, soon-to-be commissioner of baseball, September 18, 1945, reportedly commenting on a sparkling play by Johnnie Cowan in the 1945 Negro World Series1 From his Stockham Valves and Fittings industrial league team in Birmingham, Johnnie Cowan moved in 1940 to the Birmingham […]

Although Ransom “Randy” Jackson later suggested with tongue somewhat in cheek that he went into professional baseball “for lack of anything better to do; I had to earn money somehow,”1 he in fact had options in 1947 when he caught the attention of the Chicago Cubs. Set to graduate from the University of Texas, he […]

Patsy Tebeau was a pugnacious competitor from the mean streets of St. Louis who sought any advantage he thought he could gain. His tactics delivered a brand of baseball that clearly was much dirtier than you see in the modern game. Bill James has written about 19th century baseball: “The tactics of the eighties were […]

Terry Hughes was a ballyhooed prospect. “I wanted to sign Hughes more than any boy I’ve ever seen,” said Boston Red Sox scout Mace Brown. “He’s got all the equipment.”1 After the Chicago Cubs made Hughes the second overall pick in the June 1967 draft, their manager, Leo Durocher, said, “All I know is that […]

A fiercely independent individual, Heinie Meine had a curious career in organized baseball. Starting off in the Texas League in 1921 as a spitballer after the major leagues had banned the pitch, the right-handed Meine made one uneventful appearance for the St. Louis Browns in 1922, then waited seven years for his next shot in […]

There have been countless cosmetic changes in how baseball has been played during the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, but the tools and rules of the game — and of the professional sport — have not been radically altered. A spectator from 1901 would recognize the game in 2021. The revolutionary advances occurred in the 19th […]

Was it fate that placed infielder Mel Hoderlein with the 1948 Boston Red Sox rather than the Philadelphia Athletics? Writing in Sports Collectors Digest, Brent Kelley makes the point that Hoderlein probably would have had a much longer big-league career had he been signed to an Athletics contract (that team’s 1948 infield had an average […]

Tom Hayes is a footnote in baseball history. To the extent that he is remembered at all, it is for selling 19-year-old Willie Mays to the New York Giants and setting him on his path to immortality. However, in his time, this shrewd, gruff man was a towering figure, a pioneer whose impact in the […]

Don Leshnock finished his big-league pitching career with the enviable statistics of a 0.00 earned run average and 18.0 strikeouts per nine innings pitched. Although his “cup of coffee” Major League Baseball career only lasted all of one game, Leshnock was a stellar college baseball player and also enjoyed several successful minor-league seasons. Donald Lee […]

Ron Hassey is the only catcher to have been behind the plate for two perfect games in the major leagues. Hall of Famers Johnny Bench, Mike Piazza, Mickey Cochrane, Carlton Fisk, Gary Carter, and Roy Campanella did not catch any. Buster Posey, Yogi Berra, and Iván Rodríguez have “only” one to their name. In fact, […]

Remembered for his blazing fastball, Monty Kennedy had an abbreviated minor-league baseball career that was quickly interrupted by military service. Perhaps because of this lack of development time, Kennedy struggled constantly with his control during his time with the Giants and the club eventually ran out of patience with him. However, Kennedy displayed flashes of […]

An outstanding three-sport high school athlete from Lima, Ohio, Bill Sharp earned a football scholarship from powerhouse Ohio State before entering professional baseball. With the Chicago White Sox and Milwaukee Brewers, Sharp was a spray-hitting swinger and a skilled defensive outfielder for parts of four major-league seasons (1973-1976) before knee problems ended his career. William […]

The Polo Grounds, an odd name for an odd stadium, was home to several baseball teams, most notably the New York Giants until the team moved to San Francisco following the 1957 season. Its horseshoe-shaped grandstand and elongated playing area provided for ridiculously short distances down the foul lines and equally ridiculous long distances to […]

Olive Little wasn’t particularly interested in joining the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League (AAGPBL) for its inaugural 1943 season – at least initially.1 She had a good teaching job in Poplar Point, Manitoba, and had been recently married. “Then they offered me twice as much in a week as I had been making in a […]

This article appears in SABR’s “Pride of Smoketown: The 1935 Pittsburgh Crawfords” (2020), edited by Frederick C. Bush and Bill Nowlin.   As the 1935 baseball season approached, Pittsburgh Crawfords owner Gus Greenlee had every reason to be optimistic about his team’s chances to win the Negro National League championship. Although the 1934 squad had […]