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Harry Byrd Highway runs west from US 401 for about five miles along South Carolina Route 34/151, and past Darlington Raceway, NASCAR’s first paved superspeedway. The 1.25-mile egg-shaped oval, built in 1950, is a shrine for stock-car racing comparable to what Wrigley Field is for baseball. Many racing fans visiting the Darlington Raceway Stock Car […]

Hanson “Hans” Horsey had a whirlwind four-inning cup of coffee with the 1912 Cincinnati Reds as a 22-year-old pitcher tasked with “taking one for the team” in an April blowout loss. But the slightly-built (5-foot-11, 165 pounds)1 right-hander, drafted after two seasons in Class-B baseball, pitched six more seasons in the minor leagues before returning […]

In 1970 sportswriter Ted Blackman quipped, “If John Bateman bought a pumpkin farm, they’d cancel Halloween.”[fn]“Hustling Bateman Frets in Hospital Bed,” The Sporting News, April 18, 1970, 24.[/fn] The luckless reference was to the cursed timing of a kidney injury that hospitalized the Montreal Expos starting catcher two days before the start of the 1970 […]

Marty Krug appeared in only 20 games in 1912, his rookie season, mostly as a pinch-hitter, or a late-inning replacement. He watched the World Series from the superior but disappointing vantage of the winning team’s bench. He never once stepped onto the field against the New York Giants in those eight dramatic games. The knock […]

One of the most important games hurled by Clement Walter Labine took place at Ebbets Field in Brooklyn on October 9, 1956. The day before, Don Larsen had pitched a perfect game for the New York Yankees to beat the Brooklyn Dodgers, 2-0, in the fifth game of the World Series. Dodgers manager Walter Alston […]

Harlond Clift was the major leagues’ first modern third baseman, an outstanding defensive player who also possessed power, production, and patience at the plate. Until Clift came to the majors in 1934, third basemen – with the notable exceptions of Home Run Baker and Pie Traynor – were primarily thought of as being similar to […]

Seventy percent of the world is covered by water, the rest is covered by Devon White. Considered one of the best defensive outfielders to play the game, White was a human highlight reel who worked tirelessly to hone his craft. He was a raw athlete when he was drafted as a third baseman in the […]

“Baseball is our way of life in the Amaro family,” said Rubén Amaro Sr. Four generations of Amaros have played professionally. Amaro’s father, Santos, had a long and distinguished career in Cuba and Mexico. His son, Rubén Amaro Jr., became a player, executive, and coach in the major leagues. Rubén Sr. was in the majors […]

Jimmy Jones ended his major-league career with one sweep of his arm. The last-place New York Giants were struggling on August 6, 1902, having lost three straight to Pittsburgh and facing Jack Chesbro, who was on the way to a 28-win season. The Giants were in a foul mood and complained about umpire Bob Emslie […]

They called him “The Blazer.” As a minor leaguer he drew comparisons to Jackie Robinson. Don Blasingame wasn’t as talented as Robinson, but he was good enough to play 12 years in the major leagues, with appearances in an All-Star Game and a World Series. He married a Miss America finalist, who was the daughter […]

On the way to a last-place finish, the 1914 Cincinnati Reds regularly auditioned marginal pitching prospects. Among these hopefuls was Pat Griffin, an inexperienced 21-year-old righthander plucked from a Northeast Ohio semipro team. Assigned ninth-inning relief duty in a lost-cause game against the defending NL champion New York Giants, recruit Griffin turned in a nightmarish […]

“My only regret is that I can’t sit in the stands and watch myself pitch.”1 No one ever accused southpaw Bo Belinsky of being modest. And probably no pitcher in baseball history ever got more mileage out of 28 wins (against 51 defeats) in parts of eight big-seasons as Belinsky. Belinsky took baseball by storm […]

This is a man who keeps busy. In 36 years as a major-league scout, he conducted over 1,000 tryouts. As an international scout, he’s visited more than 40 countries, sometimes on multiple occasions – for instance, Australia at least 25 times – while flying something like 100 different airlines. He’s signed at least one player […]

John Kieran stands among the legends of baseball writing with his J.G. Taylor Spink Award and place of honor in the Scribes and Mikemen exhibit at the Baseball Hall of Fame.1 But baseball and even the broader realm of writing sports per se occupied only a part of Kieran’s career as a newspaperman, and he […]

It all started to unravel when they returned from Honolulu. A team of baseball all-stars from the Pacific Coast League had sailed across the blue Pacific for a post-season barnstorming escapade to Hawaii. It was 1914, and the ballplayers were surely enjoying what young men do in the tropics. It’s a wonder they ever came […]

It’s called “The Imperfect Game.” On July 9, 1969, Mets ace Tom Seaver retired the first 25 Chicago Cubs to face him at Shea Stadium. Then a 22-year-old rookie utilityman named Jimmy Qualls stroked a clean base hit. Seaver came close several times more but never got a no-hitter until he was traded to Cincinnati. […]

Marty Keough came from a family with a deep sports tradition that so far encompasses four generations and both genders. His father was Cecil D. “Zeke” Keough, a star right-hander at the University of California at Berkeley. Marty said, “He beat USC, I think, two or three times in one year. That was his claim […]

Gary Wagner threw a no-hitter in the first game he ever pitched — for his college team. Wagner was a right-handed pitcher who worked in 162 major-league games over six years in the majors for two teams, the Philadelphia Phillies and the Boston Red Sox. Four of his games were starts; primarily he worked as […]

Del Baker was born and raised about as far from the big leagues as possible, yet he ultimately became famous as baseball’s canniest sign-stealer. Along the way, he also managed the Detroit Tigers to within a whisker of a world championship. In 1892, Delmer David Baker was born in Sherwood, Oregon, then a small rural […]

Soon after the 1967 World Series ended, Fleetwood Recording Co. released a long-playing phonograph record, The Impossible Dream, a reprise of the Boston Red Sox magical same-year pennant. Narrating, Sox announcer Ken Coleman hailed “an affair twixt a town and a team,” telling how the Boston American League Baseball Company used wonderwork to wave 1967’s […]

Columbia University went through six baseball coaches in eight years from 1906 through 1913. But in 1914, former big league pitcher Andy Coakley joined the program, handling pitchers and catchers. He became the Lions’ head coach in 1915 and remained in that job for 37 years, stepping down after the 1951 season. Coakley shaped the […]

Introduction On Saturday, March 25, 1905, a small yet curious article appeared in the Salt Lake Telegram that announced a baseball game to be played the following day between the Salt Lake Browns and the Ogden Chocolates at Walker’s Field in Salt Lake City.1 This would be the first formally organized game of baseball between […]

Plummeting through a disastrous homestand in 1950, the onset of an eight-season purgatory in the lowest rungs of the National League standings, the Pittsburgh Pirates called up Vern Law from their Double-A affiliate in New Orleans. In Law’s first big-league start, on June 11 at Forbes Field, the 20-year-old right-hander outlasted Philadelphia Phillies ace Robin […]

On April 29, 2007, in the seventh inning of a tie game with the Atlanta Braves, Colorado Rockies rookie shortstop Troy Tulowitzki turned a Chipper Jones line drive into an unassisted triple play,1 just the 13th by a National or American League player since the beginning of the twentieth century.2 In the 11th inning, another […]