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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 […]

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 […]

“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 […]

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, 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 […]

A GPS search for “middle of nowhere” might lead you to Tovar, Venezuela, a town of roughly 42,000 people located more than a mile up in the Andes. It is an unlikely birthplace for a Cy Young Award winner, but in a ballpark in Tovar there is a proud sign that says, “Welcome to the […]

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 […]

A member of the Washington Nationals, a short-lived 1872 National Association club, Oscar Bielaski is generally recognized as the first major league ballplayer of Polish descent. Other aspects of his five-season professional career are less noteworthy. A low-average singles hitter and a poor defensive outfielder, Bielaski holds another, less enviable distinction – that of being […]

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 […]

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 […]

Former Boston Red Sox right-handed pitcher Gordon McNaughton, working as a postal clerk in Chicago, was enjoying the company of Mrs. Dorothy Moos in a hotel room when his jilted girlfriend, Mrs. Eleanor Williams, entered and shot and killed him. Williams used the service pistol of policeman Barney Towey, who was left sleeping in the […]

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 […]

In 1966 New York Mets’ coach Yogi Berra scanned the Pittsburgh Pirates’ spring training camp in search of the right-handed reliever whose contributions from the bullpen led the New York Yankees to an American League crown two years earlier. “Where’s Mikkelsen?” the former skipper asked. “He helped me win the pennant in 1964 . . […]

Former major league player and scout Lenny Yochim once said in a New Orleans Times-Picayune interview, “I had a good life doing something I love.”1 From his teenage days in the Crescent City in the 1940s until his retirement in 2002, Yochim spent practically every summer participating in some aspect of the sport to which […]

For a brief period in the early 1890s, Al Johnson was an influential, if not overly trustworthy, actor on the major league baseball scene. A wealthy young industrialist, he was the first and the most important of the money men attracted to the Players League cause. In the league’s formative days, Johnson recruited other capitalists […]

In the spring of 1962, Meredith “Moe” Morhardt was in an enviable position. The left-handed hitting first baseman was starting his first full season with the Chicago Cubs and had been assured that he wasn’t going to be sent back to the minors. There was only one problem – he wasn’t playing. By mid-May, Morhardt […]

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 […]