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As the New York Yankees gathered for spring training in February 1968, manager Ralph Houk shared his take on the team’s outlook. “The strength of our club is the pitching staff,” he told New York Daily News columnist Gene Ward. Later in the interview he admitted that hitting was the club’s greatest weakness.1 As if […]

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 […]

With a score of 2-2 after two innings, the August 13, 1950, game between the Rochester Red Wings and Jersey City Giants of the Triple-A International League wasn’t shaping up as much of a pitchers’ duel. Then the game’s starters took control. Rochester’s Tom Poholsky, a 20-year-old prospect, and Jersey City’s Andy Tomasic, a 32-year-old […]

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 […]

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 […]

The most athletically gifted of three big league brothers, Charlie High hit .323 across 14 minor league seasons, but could not turn that heavy hitting into anything more than a pair of September tryouts with the last-place Philadelphia Athletics in 1919 and 1920. Charles Edwin High was born December 1, 1898, in Ava, Illinois, to […]

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’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. […]

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 […]

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 […]

In a widely circulated national profile of the Brooklyn Dodgers’ Billy Loes in the Saturday Evening Post in 1953, journalist Jimmy Breslin described the young hurler as a “Dizzy Dean from the sidewalks of New York.”1 That reference would not have been lost on readers at the time. The former 30-game winner Dean parlayed his […]

Rubén Gómez was the second pitcher from Puerto Rico to reach the majors — and the first to start and win a World Series Game. He led the New York Giants to a 6-2 win in Game Three at Cleveland on October 1, 1954. A limber 6 feet even and 170-175 pounds, Gómez was amazingly […]

When the expansion Kansas City Royals hired Cedric Tallis as the team’s GM, he assumed an almost impossible task. Before the first expansion season was even half over in 1969, Kansas City owner Ewing Kauffman was proclaiming that a glorious future was not far away. A hard-driving yet generous pharmaceutical entrepreneur, Kauffman publicly stated that […]

Born on January 21, 1959, in San Cristobal, Dominican Republic, José Uribe found a path from the pockmarked, rock-and-dirt baseball fields of the Dominican Republic to international baseball success. Named the All-Decade Shortstop of the 1980s for the San Francisco Giants,1 he played well in an unforgettable World Series with the team in 1989. In […]

In a period of volatility, heartbreak, and disaster for the New York Mets — including the death of owner Joan Payson, the trading of Tom Seaver to the Cincinnati Reds and Dave Kingman to the San Diego Padres on the same day, and last-place finishes from 1977-79 and 1982-83 — backup catcher Ron Hodges provided […]

Harland Rowe served Connie Mack. He served his country in combat. And he served banking customers in his Maine hometown for 50 years. The latter two accomplishments dwarf the first; Rowe was one of those players for whom pro baseball was more of a footnote in life than a defining highlight. His career consisted of […]

Ray Rippelmeyer pitched 39 1/3 innings in 18 games for the 1962 Washington Senators. Over 11 minor-league seasons, the right-hander compiled a .579 winning percentage with a record of 114 wins and 83 losses in 330 games. He also played winter ball in the Dominican Republic and Puerto Rico. After his playing days, Rippelmeyer’s work […]

Three great passions shaped Gordon Richardson’s career in baseball: his family, his southwest Georgia farm, and his dream of becoming a big-league pitcher. Richardson (nicknamed Gordie) once characterized his fastball as “not overpowering.” Instead he was a control specialist with good breaking stuff and an excellent change-up.1 He acknowledged that he had to hit his […]

Alex Gaston was noted as the poor-hitting catcher who broke up his own brother’s no-hitter. It was on September 12, 1926, in the second game of a doubleheader in St. Louis. Milt Gaston was pitching for the Browns and brother Alex was playing for the Red Sox. Boston had won the first game, 11-3. Milt […]

San José de la Sabana might as well be a Hamlet from a Latin American magical realism novel. Is there something in its water? Or perhaps a spell cast by the village witch? The small town of Caruao, La Guaira on Venezuela’s central coast is the cradle of a family tradition started by José Elías […]

Bob Locker threw 879 innings in the major leagues. His career earned-run average was 2.75. Pitching for the White Sox in the mid-1960s, he was an ace for a bullpen that led the league in ERA for four straight years. Oakland manager Dick Williams deployed him as his designated rally-killer in 1971, when the A’s […]

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 […]