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Cy Falkenberg was perhaps the most unlikely pitching star of the Deadball Era. Nothing special for most of his career, he developed a deadly emery ball at age 32 in 1913, and rocketed to the forefront of major league pitchers. “Falkenberg has upset all possible existing dope, has broken preconceived notions into a million scattered […]

An Indianapolis native and prosperous city hotelier with no previous connection to baseball, J. Edward Krause served as club president and principal public spokesman for the Indianapolis Hoosiers, the premier franchise of the Federal League for the first two of the circuit’s three-season existence. On the field, the Hoosiers were sterling, capturing the flag in […]

St. Louis Browns owner Phil Ball, second from left, meets with American League owners Frank Navin (Detroit Tigers, far left), Clark Griffith (Washington Senators, middle), Ben Shibe (Philadelphia A’s, second from right), and American League president Ban Johnson, far right, in Chicago, circa 1920. (Chicago History Museum, Chicago Daily News collection, SDN-062283)   Phil Ball […]

James Gilmore, left, and Charles Weeghman of the Federal League, circa 1914 (LIBRARY OF CONGRESS)   In the early 1890s “Lucky Charlie” Weeghman descended on Chicago as a teenager seeking fame and fortune. A natural salesman, he soon became one of Chicago’s best-known restaurateurs and a celebrity man about town. Then the baseball bug bit. […]

While common wisdom dictates that baseball games are won with bats, balls, and gloves, Charlie Dressen believed until his dying breath that any game could be won with brains. Well, any game could be won with his brains. And it’s not hard to see why. Few field leaders had the percentages figured better than Dressen, […]

Right-handed pitcher Chick Brandom reached the pinnacle of his professional career at the tender age of 22. A promising but little-used member of the 1909 World Series champion Pittsburgh Pirates, Brandom fared poorly the following spring and was promptly relegated to the minors by the pitching-rich Pittsburgh club. He remained there until reprieved by the […]

George Kaiserling was born to a German immigrant couple, Frederick and Johanna (Becker) Kaiserling, on May 12, 1893, in Steubenville, Ohio. He was the sixth born of eight, six sons and two daughters. His father worked as a millhand in the basic steelmaking industry and his mother was a homemaker.1   There is only data […]

Although twice a 20-game winner in the Federal League, lefthander Gene Packard lingers in baseball’s consciousness only because of a phrase once purportedly inscribed next to his name: 1918 Series fixer. The accusation, attributed to a diary maintained by Chicago White Sox club secretary Harry Grabiner, did not surface during Packard’s lifetime. Rather, it appeared […]

Bill Phillips’s professional baseball career spanned a quarter century from 1890 to 1915. A right-handed pitcher, he was a five-time 20-game winner in the minors and pitched for the Cincinnati Reds for six seasons. A smart and respected baseball man, Phillips managed several teams, most notably the Indianapolis Hoosiers, champions of the Federal League in […]

Jim Suchecki was born in Chicago of Polish-American parents. All four of his grandparents had come to America from Poland, but his parents – Joseph Suchecki and the former Josephine Piotrowski – were both born in Illinois. James Joseph Suchecki was their first-born, arriving on August 25, 1927. About five years later, they had another […]

On his 18th birthday, righty Chris Haughey appeared in his only major-league game, pitching for the Brooklyn Dodgers on October 3, 1943. He appears to be one of only three players in big-league history whose lone appearance came on his birthday.1 It was a Sunday afternoon game in Cincinnati, the last game of the season. […]

Before the lumber,1 natural gas,2 and oil3 industries brought unprecedented economic growth to Louisiana in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, baseball had already established itself as a favorite pastime throughout the state, centering on the cities of New Orleans and Shreveport.4 Baseball teams, created and maintained by industrial magnates, emerged. One such team, […]

Joe Azcue caught just shy of 1,000 major-league baseball games for six different big-league teams — all but his first 14 games played in the American League. An All-Star with the Cleveland Indians in 1968, Azcue was solid on defense with a .992 lifetime fielding percentage. José Joaquín (Lopez) Azcue was born on August 18, […]

The cover photo on the Sunday magazine insert of the June 29, 1958, edition of the Columbus (Ohio) Citizen was of a young boy wearing a Little League baseball uniform gazing admiringly at an older, bespectacled gentleman who was squatting, a baseball bat in hand. As the accompanying article explained, the man in the photo […]

Edwin Lee Wells, an American League southpaw, pitched for the Detroit Tigers (1923-1927), New York Yankees (1929-1932), and St. Louis Browns (1933-1934). His major-league record consists of 68 victories versus 69 defeats, with a cumulative earned run average of 4.65. A farm boy, Ed Wells was born Ashland, Ohio, on June 7, 1900, to Loyal […]

Mel McGaha’s life was part Frank Merriwell, part Greek tragedy. Like Merriwell, the fictional athlete popularized in dime novels, McGaha (pronounced mŭ-GAY-hay) was a clean-cut, handsome figure who excelled in multiple sports as a collegian. A University of Arkansas graduate, he was a basketballer drafted by the New York Knickerbockers, a two-way football player signed […]

In his 92 years of life, Clarence Eldridge wrote for big-city newspapers, practiced law, held leadership roles at an automobile manufacturer, worked in New York’s advertising world, occupied senior positions at two well-known food companies, and served as a marketing and management consultant with such sagacity that he was eventually elected to the American advertising […]

Refreshed from a day off, the Indianapolis Hoosiers of the Federal League hosted the Brooklyn team, owned by brothers Robert and George Ward. Robert had ascribed the team its name after the Ward Bakery Company’s best-selling product, Tip-Top Bread. The Indianapolis club was owned by Harry Sinclair, a millionaire by age 30, at the time […]

As the Tip-Tops and Peppers traveled from Brooklyn to Harrison, New Jersey, for the second game of their two states/same-day twin bill, they may have been delayed by the estimated 15,000 fans also on their way to the Newark team’s ballpark.1 Even if inflated, the number suggested that Federal League baseball was far more popular […]

Most players would consider entering an early September game hitting .287 with 24 home runs to be a pretty impressive season. But for Joseph Paul DiMaggio, those numbers were not up to the standard he’d set in his illustrious career. The 35-year-old center fielder, in his 12th major-league season, had hit below .305 only once, […]

Federal League Park in Indianapolis, looking in from the right-field fence. (Indianapolis News, January 27, 1917)   The city of Indianapolis has been home to four short-lived major-league franchises. The first two — the 1878 Indianapolis Blues of the National League and the 1884 Indianapolis Hoosiers of the American Association — were noncompetitive and disbanded […]

New York Giants manager John McGraw, left, and team owner Charles Stoneham in the early 1920s. (NATIONAL BASEBALL HALL OF FAME LIBRARY)   INTRODUCTION The New York-San Francisco Giants baseball club is among the most storied franchises in the annals of professional sport. To fans, mention of the club’s name promptly evokes images of Willie […]

Federal League Park in Indianapolis, looking in from the right-field fence. (Indianapolis News, January 27, 1917)   Specifically constructed in 1914 to serve as the home field for the Indianapolis Hoosiers, Federal League Park was a state-of-the-art steel and concrete stadium with a seating capacity in excess of 20,000. Only three years later, the handsome […]

On July 17, 1904, future Hall of Famer Clark Griffith pitched the homestanding New York Highlanders to a 3-1 victory over the Detroit Tigers in a contest that was atypical for the era in several respects. First, the game, a makeup of an earlier rainout between the clubs, was played on a Sunday. Avoidance of […]