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Dave Eiland holds a unique baseball record: He is the only major-league player to give up a home run to the first batter he faced, and to hit a home run off the first pitcher he faced. But his contributions to the game go beyond that unusual historical footnote. A “pitch to contact”1 right-handed pitcher […]

More than 30 years after his major-league playing days, one-time journeyman pitcher Alex Ferguson contemplated the questionnaire sent to him by the Hall of Fame librarian. The information sought was matter-of-fact: height, weight, date/place of birth, ancestry, etc. The questionnaire did not ask Ferguson to identify the high point of his career, doubtless membership on […]

The high mark of Frank Allen’s six-year major-league career surely took place on April 24, 1915, when, in his fifth appearance for the Pittsburgh Rebels of the Federal League, he pitched a no-hitter in defeating the St. Louis Terriers 2-0 at Handlan’s Park in St. Louis. The masterpiece brought the 26-year-old southpaw’s record to 4-0 […]

Wally Backman was perhaps the first major-league manager fired before his team played a game. His fiery personality may have cost him another chance at managing in the majors. Three times he spent short stints in jail. He declared bankruptcy. From this sordid interval in life, he emerged to become a successful minor-league manager. Walter […]

Right-hander Schoolboy Rowe endured chronic, career-threatening shoulder pain to win 158 games in his big-league career from 1933 to1949. In his second season, he won 24 games, including an AL-record-tying 16 consecutive victories to help lead the Detroit Tigers to their first pennant since 1909. The next season, 1935, he won 19 games as the […]

Following a promising rookie year in 1989, pitcher Kevin Ritz found his career on shaky ground after struggling with extreme control problems for the Detroit Tigers over his next couple of seasons. This was exacerbated by a serious elbow injury suffered at the end of his tenure in Detroit that sidelined him for a full […]

On September 16, 1975, the Pittsburgh Pirates were wrapping up a three-game series with the Chicago Cubs at Wrigley Field. They held a six-game lead over Philadelphia in the National League East Division and the season was growing old. With only 12 games remaining on the Pirates’ schedule, time was indeed running out on the […]

A turn-of-the-century minor-league standout, Joe Bean was among those auditioned at shortstop by the pre-McGraw New York Giants. Sadly, Bean failed to impress, his hitting and fielding being deemed below big-league caliber. After appearing in 50 games, Bean was released by New York in late June of 1902. Thus came to its close the brief […]

A three-game sub for the 1936 Boston Bees, Andy Pilney was a member of an elite but cheerless fraternity: All-American college football players whose hopes for a similarly sterling career in pro baseball were disappointed. Pilney lands in the middling rank of this group, his diamond fortunes falling somewhere between those of major league mediocrities […]

Looking back more than a century, the high regard in which contemporaries held pitcher Al Maul is somewhat puzzling. The stats that he compiled during his 15-season major league tenure are far from eye-catching, and his record is dotted with extended periods of inactivity. Characteristically, his career highlights – a National League ERA crown in […]

“It’s too bad,” John Roseboro said, “because a ballplayer would like to be remembered for something better than a bloody brawl, but that’s what everyone always remembers.”1 What everyone remembers is August 22, 1965: the day Juan Marichal bashed Roseboro in the head with a bat. He was so quiet, he was nicknamed “Gabby.” Roseboro […]

With his thunderous left-handed home-run stroke, the self-converted catcher Carl “Swish” Sawatski established a reputation as one of the most feared sluggers in Organized Baseball by leading four different leagues in round-trippers in his first five years as a professional (1945 to 1949). Despite his slugging potential, Sawatski bounced around in four different organizations struggling […]

Written in blue ink on his minor-league questionnaire was Wayne Granger’s ambition in baseball: “To be a steady starter in [the] major leagues.”1 In a major-league career that spanned nine seasons and seven teams, the right-hander never started a game. But his sinkerball and lanky, 6-foot-2 build helped Granger become the model of durability as […]

William Ambrose Hulbert was president of the Chicago White Stockings, founder of the National League, and its second president. He was a big man, standing more than six feet tall and weighing over 200 pounds. An energetic and honest businessman and an enthusiastic civic booster, he often proclaimed that he would prefer to be a […]

Looking back more than a century after his passing, long-forgotten Deadballer Ote Johnson presents a study in contradiction. A multi-tool player, Johnson seemingly possessed the talent required for an extended major league career. Yet his record book entry is confined to the 1911 season with the New York Highlanders.1 The reason perhaps? Every playing asset […]

Pioneer Era outfielder John Hatfield was “widely regarded as one of the best ballplayers of the 1860s.”1 Thereafter he turned in a pair of first-rate seasons playing in the National Association, the game’s first professional league. Hatfield’s attributes included good hands, a live bat, and the most powerful throwing arm of his generation. At the […]

Ed Moriarty was a .324 hitter, rising star, and fan favorite with the Boston Braves in 1935. Well, in his first eight games, anyway. He then shocked the Boston baseball world by suddenly calling it quits, saying he had a higher calling and was going to enter the priesthood. This player with 34 at-bats was […]

“And in no field of American endeavor is invention more rampant than in baseball, whose whole history is a lie from beginning to end. … The game’s epic feats and revered figures … all of it is bunk, tossed up with a wink and a nudge.” — John Thorn, Baseball in the Garden of Eden […]

During the 2000s, Carlos Zambrano was a mainstay at the top of the Chicago Cubs’ rotation. Though lacking the renown of teammates like Kerry Wood, Mark Prior, and Sammy Sosa, the three-time All-Star led the Cubs in wins above replacement during the first decade of the new millennium. Nicknamed El Toro (Spanish for bull) and […]

Among the newcomers on the Brooklyn Superbas roster for the 1903 season was right-handed pitcher Henry Schmidt. At almost 30, he was getting a rather late shot at a major-league career, but had earned a look as a 35-game winner in the California League the season before. Soon Schmidt discovered that getting out National League […]

Six-foot-seven right-handed pitcher Rich Gale joined Tim Stoddard of Baltimore as the tallest players in the American League when he debuted with an excellent rookie season for the Kansas City Royals in 1978. For a team that would win a third straight division title, he earned 13 of his 14 victories by the first week […]

Tom Hanks made sure we all know “there’s no crying in baseball.” In addition to “crying,” the words “forgiveness” and “compassion” seldom are used regarding the game. Yet those two words are central to the career of Win Clark. As manager of the South Atlantic League Columbia (South Carolina) Gamecocks in 1908, he was tasked […]

The Detroit Stars held first place in the Negro National League when they arrived in Ohio to play the Columbus Buckeyes in July 1921. The Stars appeared set to maintain their pace when they took an early lead in the series opener at Columbus’s Neil Park on July 9, but the Buckeyes capitalized on shaky […]

Fenway Park’s iconic left-field wall, the Green Monster, has served as the canvas for many memorable home runs. The game-winner that Carlton Fisk waved fair in Game Six of the 1975 World Series cleared that 37-foot-tall left-field barrier, as did Bucky Dent’s go-ahead homer in the 1978 American League East tiebreaking playoff and the first […]