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Paul Lehner grew up in a coal-mining family and likely was headed for a life in the mines, but a talent for baseball brought him to the big leagues and gave him the opportunity to play for five different teams over the course of seven seasons. He was a left-handed outfielder and occasional first baseman […]

Pack your bags. Frank Lane’s in town. The compulsive trader known as Frantic Frank shuffled at least 690 players in 414 transactions with five teams.1 Wherever Lane went, turmoil followed. He traded one manager for another. He traded a home run champion for a batting champ. He traded local heroes and future Hall of Famers. […]

In a brief major-league career, he appeared in only 92 games. Yet Buzzy Wares played an important role in helping the St. Louis Cardinals win seven National League pennants and five World Series championships. Clyde Ellsworth Wares was born on May 23, 1886, the younger of the two children of Rosa Wares and Frank Wares, […]

Johnny Ostrowski shares the same Polish ancestry as Carl Yastrzemski, but his Red Sox career was in many ways the polar opposite of that of the Hall of Fame legend. While Yaz accumulated a team-record 11,988 regular season at-bats over 3,308 games, Ostrowski is one of 12 position players to appear in only one game, […]

Joseph John Brovia, who starred on California sandlots and in high school as a righthanded pitcher and a lefthanded-hitting outfielder, signed his first professional contract before he turned eighteen in 1940. When he joined the San Francisco Seals for the 1941 season, he was already a rising star. By the time his playing days were […]

Jake Jones made one of the loudest debuts in the history of the Boston Red Sox. After Joe Cronin swapped slumping first baseman Rudy York — who had knocked in 119 runs for the AL champs in 1946 — to the visiting Chicago White Sox for Murrell Jones on June 14, 1947, York’s first response […]

Cecil Kaiser earned the respect of his Negro League peers during a career that included seasons with the Homestead Grays and Pittsburgh Crawfords, all-star appearances, a stint with a well-known barnstorming team, and one especially strong Winter League performance. The southpaw had two different nicknames that spoke of his prowess on the mound: “Minute Man,” […]

National League umpire Cy Rigler was a model of restraint in confrontations involving disputed calls, earning a reputation as the “least thin-skinned” of his contemporaries. The genial arbiter chose the role of peacemaker, refraining from profanity and seldom ejecting a player or manager, and it’s a good thing that he did——Rigler stood nearly 6’0″ and […]

Reuben Stephenson was nicknamed “Dummy” by the fans and scribes because of his deafness. In baseball, friends, teammates, and opponents usually just called him “Steve” or “Stevey.” He grew up catching at the New Jersey School for the Deaf but landed with the Camden semi-pro club in 1892 as a center fielder, much to his […]

Casey Stengel, manager of the Brooklyn Dodgers from 1934 to 1936, was impressed with New York Giants left fielder Jo-Jo Moore. “Every time we play the Giants, Moore is robbing one of our hitters of an extra-base hit with a great catch,” said Stengel. “Every time I look up from the bench Moore is rounding […]

If “Who was Joe Tipton?” was the answer on Jeopardy!, the writers might have struggled to provide the clue. Perhaps only the savviest of baseball fans would be able to recall the backup catcher of seven seasons in the majors. Tipton’s seven years, all in the American League, were highlighted by 1948. In his rookie […]

In February of 2006, Orestes “Minnie” Miñoso was preparing himself for the day he had anticipated for many years. Considered by a significant group of historians, statisticians, and old-time fans to be among the best baseball players not enshrined in the Hall of Fame, Miñoso awaited the voting results of the Committee on African-American Baseball, […]

Mike Blyzka was part of one of major-league baseball’s biggest trades – a 17-player mega-swap between the Orioles and Yankees in the fall of 1954. Headlining New York’s acquisitions were future Cy Young Award winner Bob Turley and Don Larsen – the pitcher who later twirled the only (as of 2022) perfect game in World […]

Harry Byrd Highway runs west from US 401 for about five miles along South Carolina Route 34/151, and past Darlington Raceway, NASCAR’s first paved superspeedway. The 1.25-mile egg-shaped oval, built in 1950, is a shrine for stock-car racing comparable to what Wrigley Field is for baseball. Many racing fans visiting the Darlington Raceway Stock Car […]

Gene Autry was the kind of man who paid the bills for old friends in their old age, rode in the front seat beside his chauffeur, and showed up in the bar of his resort hotel to lead guests in a sing-along. During his heyday as a singing cowboy, his fans ranged from the obvious […]

Left-hander Ted Bowsfield spent seven seasons in the big leagues, initially signing with the Red Sox but later becoming arguably the best pitcher in the first year of Los Angeles Angels baseball. He later became director of stadium operations and team travel for the Angels, then head of the Kingdome in Seattle. Bowsfield was born […]

Equally at home rounding the bases or rounding up cattle, Dave Philley played major-league baseball with the same no-nonsense efficiency he successfully utilized in operating his 557-acre ranch and managing his other business enterprises. David Earl Philley was born on May 16, 1920, in Garret’s Bluff, a suburb of Paris, Texas, in the northeastern part […]

This ballpark in the far northern reaches of Manhattan stood for just around two decades, from the late 1910s until 1938. Along with baseball, it hosted various other sports. Though no major-league games ever took place at Dyckman Oval, plenty of big-leaguers played in semipro games there. Babe Ruth came at least twice, in 1920 […]

The New York City hosting the 1977 All-Star Game had drastically changed in the 13 years since the Mets hosted the 1964 Midsummer Classic. In the summer of ’77, Big Apple residents lived in fear of the “Son of Sam” serial killer stalking the outer boroughs, and on July 13, the entire city was plunged […]

The first one didn’t count. If you want to get technical about it, the Astros’ first victory in the Astrodome was a 2-1 win in a 12-inning exhibition game against the New York Yankees that inaugurated the stadium on April 9, 1965. And according to Rusty Staub, that game had a Game Seven air about […]

Entering the 1958 season, only two major-league teams – the Detroit Tigers and the Boston Red Sox – had never employed a Black player. Controversy in each city guaranteed that the first player across the line would play under extra attention and pressure. The Tigers acted first, introducing their first Black player in June.1 The […]

“Any time they cut into your arm, you’re going to worry, but I think I’ve proved I’m all right,” said Nolan Ryan, the California Angels’ flamethrower, after fanning 18 Chicago White Sox.1 The White Sox’ Ralph Garr, a former batting champ with the Atlanta Braves, agreed, gushing that Ryan “threw better than anyone I’ve seen […]

Philadelphia Athletics left-hander Bobby Shantz – just 5-feet-6 in height and 139 pounds – led the American League with 24 wins, and a .774 winning percentage in 1952; he was the runaway choice as the league’s Most Valuable Player, receiving 16 of 24 first-place votes. But in 1953 a shoulder injury limited Shantz to 16 […]

On June 19, 1977, theatrical rock singer Alice Cooper played his first live concert in almost two years, headlining a five-performer bill at California’s Anaheim Stadium before 40,000 fans. Cooper focused on songs from his recently released Lace and Whiskey album, on which he portrayed a hard-drinking private detective named Maurice Escargot.1 It was Cooper’s […]