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Pat Gillick served four different stints as a general manager, and during each his task was different. That he succeeded at all four marks Gillick among the very best in the history of the game. In Toronto, he built an expansion team into one of baseball’s best organizations (winning 86 or more games for 11 […]

William Orange Forman, who pitched briefly for Washington in 1909 and 1910, was born on October 10, 1886, in Venango, Pennsylvania, the youngest of William (Billy) and Almira (Myra) Forman’s three children. The elder Forman came to northwestern Pennsylvania during its oil rush, and made a living drilling wells and refining their product. Young Will […]

Right-handed pitcher Bill Pertica was a prospect who showed promise early in his career, had one prime season with the Cardinals, and ultimately faded into obscurity. He was born in Santa Barbara, California, on August 17, 1898, and made the big leagues (albeit about as briefly as possible) in his first year of pro ball. […]

The light-hitting, 5-foot-6 shortstop William Benjamin Fuller parlayed his excellent fielding into a nine-year career in the majors (1888-1896), beginning with a 49-game stint with the National League’s Washington Nationals. In 1889 he began a seven-year stretch as a starting shortstop, first with the American Association’s St. Louis Browns and then later back in the […]

As a minority-stake member of the Metropolitan Exhibition Company (MEC), Walter S. Appleton played a modest role in the establishment of professional baseball in New York City. Appleton was on the scene shortly after cigar maker John B. Day, the founder and dominant member of the MEC, moved the home games of the Metropolitan Base […]

Paul Blair is considered one of the premier defensive center fielders of his era. He made his major league debut on September 9, 1964, and played in 1947 games over a seventeen-year major league career, with his final game coming on June 20, 1980. He batted and threw right-handed but tried switch-hitting for a brief […]

Like the real estate business that he would later enter, success and failure during the career of late-19th century pitcher George Haddock was often a matter of location. When on the roster of bad clubs, Haddock regularly tasted defeat, losing a staggering 72 games over his first three full professional seasons. Yet once assigned to […]

A teammate of Allie Reynolds in their college days, James G. “Jimmy” Cleghorn was a full-blood Indian pitcher. He was born on December 18, 1916, on the Otoe/Missouria tribal reservation at Red Rock, Oklahoma. Cleghorn was three-quarters Otoe and one-quarter Sac & Fox, descending from his full-blood Otoe father, Grant Cleghorn, and his Otoe/Sac & […]

One of the greatest right-handed sluggers of all time, Ed Delahanty dominated the 1890s like no other hitter, batting better than .400 three times, leading the league in slugging percentage four times, and capturing three RBI crowns on his way to a lifetime batting average of .346, the fifth best mark in baseball history. Known […]

During the winter of 1911-1912, Dr. William D. Scanlan was obliged to make a life-altering decision. For the past seven years, he had been a pitching mainstay for the woeful Brooklyn Superbas. But during that same period, Doc Scanlan had also completed his medical studies, satisfied New York state licensing and internship requirements, and begun […]

Young Tommy Long had quite a productive two-year major league run in the mid-1910s. In 1911 he jumped from the First District (Alabama) Agricultural School squad to the majors in five months. Later, still listed as a rookie in 1915, his 25 triples set the St. Louis Cardinals record for triples in a season, and […]

For decades after they last played together, the Boston Red Sox’ outfield of Duffy Lewis, Tris Speaker, and Harry Hooper, who toiled next to each other for six years in the Deadball Era, was often considered the greatest in baseball history. Although all three, especially Speaker, were fine hitters, their reputation was due largely to […]

Chris Von der Ahe, owner of the St. Louis Browns in 1892, was known for his irrational and confrontational behavior. Rookie Frank Genins had a puzzling run-in with Von der Ahe to start his career. According to a 1913 Baseball Magazine article by William A. Phelon, Genins was acquired from Omaha over the winter, but […]

It is an oft-told story that legendary manager John McGraw, who led the New York Giants for 30 eventful years, had photographs of only two former players on his office wall: Christy Mathewson and Ross Youngs, today an almost forgotten Hall of Fame outfielder.1 Youngs personified the type of all-out hustle and will-to-win ballplayer that […]

Game Two of the NLCS was another extra-inning nail-biter, with the Pirates again prevailing in extra innings by a narrow margin. Only for drama, this game outdid its predecessor on several counts. Clutch hitting, controversy, terrible baserunning, heroics: it had it all. Chuck Tanner selected Jim Bibby, a strapping, intimidating right-hander, as his starter. The […]

When the August 15 game between the Boston Americans and Chicago White Sox was rained out, it was rescheduled as the first game of a doubleheader to be played on Wednesday, September 27, at Boston’s Huntington Avenue Grounds. Having won American League pennants in both 1903 and 1904, Boston was the reigning league champion, but […]

Fergie Jenkins was eager to join his new team after finding out that he had been traded from the Phillies to the Cubs. Jenkins and his wife, Kathy, drove through the night to get from Philadelphia to Chicago. The couple set out at 9 o’clock on the evening of April 21, 1966, and pulled into […]

Since he became a workhorse pitcher in 1908, Walter Johnson had become a model of both consistency and durability.1 Between 1910 and 1919 Johnson pitched in 454 games; he won 265 of them, including at least 20 in each of those 10 seasons. During the 10 seasons Johnson cemented his legacy as one of the […]

Griffith Stadium was death to home runs, yet inside-the-park home runs dictated the results in a game between the hometown Washington Senators and the Philadelphia Athletics. Ty Cobb, playing with the A’s at age 41 in what was his final year, batted second, going 0-for-4 and showing his liability in right field. Cobb hit 46 […]

Like all the other major-league teams, the Boston Red Sox had lost many of their best players to military service during World War II. In 1945 five pitchers who had been regulars, Tex Hughson, Joe Dobson, Mickey Harris, Earl Johnson, and Mace Brown, were serving in the military. The Red Sox had finished in fourth […]

In what was described by Bert Walker of the Detroit Times as “one of the most vicious slugfests seen on the local diamond this year,” the Detroit Tigers and the Chicago White Sox combined for 43 hits and 31 runs at Navin Field in the Motor City on Tuesday, June 2, 1925. The Tigers enjoyed […]

This article appears in SABR’s “When the Monarchs Reigned: Kansas City’s 1942 Negro League Champions” (2021), edited by Frederick C. Bush and Bill Nowlin.   Were it not for the Chicago Defender, New York Amsterdam News, Pittsburgh Courier, Baltimore Afro-American, and other African American newspapers, there would have been scant coverage of Black professional baseball. […]

The Boston Unions were one of the few ballclubs to complete the entire 1884 season of the Union Association in its sole year as a major league. The Union Athletic Exhibition Company (UAEC) owned the ballclub, which was admitted to the Union Association on March 17, 1884.1 The UAEC was formed a week later, on […]