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“Although Father Time has tried to mock the dean of pitchers in either major leagues,” opined a sportswriter poetically about 36-year-old Walter Johnson in 1924, “the old man with the scythe could not have the cunning and strength from that great arm today.”1 The Washington Senators hurler continued his season-long resurgence by holding the St. […]

The Houston Astros rolled into Baltimore on August 9, 2019, riding a six-game winning streak during which they had put up double-digit run totals in three games, including 14 runs against the Colorado Rockies two days earlier. After eking out a 3-2 victory over the Orioles in the first game of a three-game set, the […]

Hall of Famer Don Drysdale won 209 games and hit 154 batters. He won the Cy Young Award in 1962. (SABR-Rucker Archive)   Los Angeles Dodgers pitcher Don Drysdale was known to inflict fear in batters. At 6-feet-5-inches tall, he was intimidating on the mound, unafraid to plunk a batter with one of his fastballs. […]

The Detroit Tigers were one win from their first World Series appearance in over 20 years. After 12 straight losing seasons from 1994 through 2005, the Tigers carried a commanding three-games-to-none lead over the Oakland Athletics in the 2006 American League Championship Series into a cool Saturday evening in the Motor City. They appeared unstoppable, […]

Despite signing with the Chicago White Sox in mid-March, John Skopec had no guarantee of making the Opening Day roster in 1901 – it actually appeared that he would face a daunting uphill climb to do so.1 The White Sox, who won the 1900 pennant when the American League was a Class A minor league, […]

Norris O’Neill, one of three nineteenth-century baseball figures nicknamed Tip, made a name for himself on the West Coast, where he captained the Oakland squad for several years. He played and/or managed in the minors from 1885 to 1899. In his youth, O’Neill was an acclaimed catcher, but after turning pro he tired of the […]

In spring 1912, the assets that accompanied 20-year-old middle infielder Bill Stumpf onto the roster of the New York Highlanders included defensive versatility, a strong and accurate throwing arm, and the promise exhibited the previous year during his professional debut campaign with a mid-tier minor league club. One spring later, a powerless bat, an erratic […]

Cleveland manager Kerby Farrell rushed to the mound after pitcher Herb Score was struck in the face by a line drive off the bat of the Yankees’ Gil McDougald on May 7, 1957. “He was bleeding from his eyes, nose, mouth and ears. All we could think of doing was trying to save his life,” […]

Glenn Beckert had a good-but-not-great career for the good-but-not-great Chicago Cubs teams of the late 1960s and early 1970s. Those teams starred a quartet of baseball immortals in Ernie Banks, Ferguson Jenkins, Ron Santo, and Billy Williams. Steadily and sometimes spectacularly manning the keystone sack and batting second, Beckert made four All-Star teams, received MVP […]

It was strawberry fields forever where Kenny Rogers grew up, on a 15-acre strawberry farm in Dover, Florida, in the heart of Hillsborough County, just a bit west of Plant City, home of the annual state Strawberry Festival. Plant City was also where the Cincinnati Reds held spring training for many years, so Rogers grew […]

Eddie Bressoud played over 1,000 big-league games as a shortstop in a 12-year career, primarily for the New York and San Francisco Giants, and the Boston Red Sox. He played 10 or more games at each of the other three infield positions, and one inning in left field. He was a .252 career batter who […]

On September 30, 2011, after his team’s 86th victory of the season, Anaheim Angels general manager Tony Reagins resigned his position. Three days later, owner Arte Moreno announced that the team had declined to renew the contracts of assistant to the general manager Gary Sutherland and assistant general manager Ken Forsch. For the 65-year-old Forsch, […]

With a lineup featuring Nap Lajoie and Shoeless Joe Jackson, the Cleveland Naps were expected to contend for the 1912 American League pennant. The club, however, proved a disappointment. By early September, a 54-71-2 (.432) record placed the Naps closer to the AL bottom than the top, and cost first-year manager Harry Davis his job. […]

Sam Nahem was a so-so pitcher who logged a 10–8 won-loss record and a 4.69 ERA in four partial seasons with the Dodgers, Cardinals, and Phillies between 1938 and 1948. Despite this unremarkable record, Nahem was a remarkable major leaguer in many ways. He was the only Syrian and one of the few Jews in […]

In all of Major League Baseball history, 119 players originated in the “Tree Planters’ State”1 of Nebraska. Charlie Abbey was the first, arriving during “the mauve decade”2 of the 1890s. Abbey doggedly zig-zagged his way through the loosely knit minor leagues with uneven progression. He was an anomaly as a lefty second baseman early on […]

Until Rickey Henderson donned New York Yankee pinstripes in 1985, Fritz Maisel’s 74 stolen bases had been the franchise’s single-season record for 71 years. The diminutive Maisel, nicknamed “The Catonsville Flash” for his Maryland hometown, spent all or parts of six seasons (1913-1918) with the Yankees and St. Louis Browns. For 57 years he was […]

Hard-throwing right-hander Bill Dietrich battled wildness, struggled with his temper, and endured chronic elbow pain that resulted in two operations to fashion a 108-128 record and log in excess of 2,000 innings in parts of 16 injury-plagued big-league seasons (1933-1948) while playing for primarily second-division clubs. Twice waived out the American League in 1936, Dietrich […]

Bobby Roth, sometimes called Braggo, was an often insufferable self-promoter who bounced around among six American League teams in the years surrounding World War I, and was on the wrong side of two of the most lopsided trades of the Deadball Era. A player with diverse skills, Roth won a home run title and also […]

When Jeff Montgomery took the mound for the Cincinnati Reds on August 1, 1987, he was living out the storybook baseball tale. A three-sport athlete from small Wellston, Ohio, Montgomery grew up a couple of hours down the road from Riverfront Stadium in the era of the Big Red Machine. His idol, Reds manager Pete […]

A versatile fielder who could play second, third, or short, Heinie Zimmerman rose to prominence with the Chicago Cubs during the early teens as a lovable eccentric whose aggressive batting style won the loyalty of fans and the respect of opposing pitchers. But despite winning the National League’s Triple Crown in 1912, the lifetime .295 […]

Longtime Los Angeles Times columnist Jim Murray once wrote that Ralph Garr was as hard to get out as an impacted tooth.1 Getting “The Road Runner” out was an especially difficult task in his signature year, 1974, in which he won the National League batting title, hitting .353. This came after finishing second to Joe […]

One of the things the classic movie Field of Dreams brought to light, via the tale of the now-legendary Archibald “Moonlight” Graham, was plight of the many players who had a chance to play in only one major-league game. During the war years, the Pittsburgh Pirates had a 6-foot-3, 175-pound pitcher by the name of […]

There are many quotes regarding the importance of living life. Just look it up on the internet; it’s a fact! One such quote is “It is not the years in your life but the life in your years that counts.” That quote is attributed to Abraham Lincoln … and Adlai Stevenson … and Dr. Edward […]

In 1955 Toledo, Ohio, suffered the double indignity of losing both its baseball team and its baseball park. The departure of the Toledo Sox and the fall of Swayne Field were unexpected, sudden, and brutally final, and the effects were long-lasting. As the 1955 baseball season drew to a close, no one in Toledo suspected […]