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It was a dreary, overcast day in Brooklyn on April 15, 1954. The visiting Pirates were at Ebbets Field to face the Dodgers. The home team had jumped out to a 7-1 lead courtesy of home runs by Roy Campanella, Jim Gilliam and Jackie Robinson. Tex Ricard, the Dodger PA announcer announced a pitching change […]

The talent-starved Washington Senators of the early 1950s recognized Tony Roig’s potential early in his professional career. But after giving the infielder several opportunities in the majors, the Senators eventually gave up on him because of weak hitting at the top level. Roig adjusted his approach at the plate, and the result was increased offensive […]

Art Doll had a strong arm which allowed him to play professional baseball as both a catcher and a pitcher. His talents, however, resulted in only seven major-league games for the Boston Braves/Bees of 1935, 1936 and 1938, where he pitched in four games and caught three others. “Moose,” as he was known for his […]

The 1924 Cleveland Indians were mired in the second division and put out the call for talent. Eventually they looked at 43 players. Infielder Freddy Spurgeon was brought to town with seemingly no minor-league background. He had been a high-school and college multisport athlete in Michigan, but his name appeared nowhere in baseball annals in […]

Tommy “T-Bone” Giordano appeared in only 11 games in the majors at the end of the 1953 season, but he spent nearly his entire adult life in Organized Baseball as a player, manager, scout, and front office executive. Before he died in February 2019 at 93, he was the MLB’s oldest active scout. As director […]

Charles Albert Bender with the Philadelphia Athletics. (Library of Congress)   American Indian. Innovator. Renaissance man. Charles Albert “Chief” Bender lived a unique American life, fashioned a Hall of Fame career, and was an important member of modern baseball’s first dynasty. He silently struggled against racial prejudice, became a student of the game, and was […]

Remembered for his blazing fastball, Monty Kennedy had an abbreviated minor-league baseball career that was quickly interrupted by military service. Perhaps because of this lack of development time, Kennedy struggled constantly with his control during his time with the Giants and the club eventually ran out of patience with him. However, Kennedy displayed flashes of […]

At one end of the Red Sox dressing room stood a pitching master, a winner of 306 games and a future Hall of Famer with “flecks of gray in his hair,” wrote Bill Parrillo of the Providence Journal.1 His reputation preceded him. At the age of 41, Tom Seaver was in a Red Sox uniform […]

Although Randy Myers had been just promoted from the minors and was but a bit player on the 1986 Mets, his subsequent baseball career was filled with numerous stellar achievements. He was a dominant closer for several teams, was selected for four All-Star teams, was a key contributor to a World Series champion team, and […]

Right-handed pitcher Bill Hogg seemed destined for stardom when his 33 wins on the Pacific coast in 1904 earned him a ticket to the New York Highlanders in the American League. Two years later combined with Al Orth and Jack Chesbro to help the Highlanders climb to second place. But like so many other tragic […]

June 15, 1977 is a black day in the history of the New York Mets. On that date, in what came to be known as The Midnight Massacre, M. Donald Grant, the team’s chairman of the board, traded away Tom Seaver, a/k/a “The Franchise,” to the Cincinnati Reds for Pat Zachry, Doug Flynn, Dan Norman, […]

No less an authority than Ted Williams referred to him as “the greatest young hitter I’ve ever seen.”1 His immense power drew comparisons to Hall of Famers Harmon Killebrew and Eddie Mathews, while his value was glimpsed in an unexecuted one-for-one swap with the California Angels’ future Cooperstown inductee Nolan Ryan. (The talks collapsed only […]

Despite 100-plus big-league victories, a half-dozen straight workhorse campaigns of 200-plus innings tossed, and a crucial role in a historic mid-’60s American League pennant drive, Pedro Ramos’s small degree of diamond immortality will likely always rest upon two individual pitches tossed in the midst of an erratic 15-season sojourn. Both fateful deliveries came while he […]

By his second year in the majors in 1958, sweet-swinging Harry (The Horse) Anderson of the Philadelphia Phillies was one of the premier left-handed power hitters in the game. But after his fourth year, he was back in the minor leagues, struggling to regain the batting stroke that had abandoned him as quickly as it […]

It’s not every part-time player with a brief major-league career who takes part in a historic baseball event. However, when Emil “Hap” Huhn of the Cincinnati Reds crouched behind the plate in the bottom of the first inning at Chicago’s Weeghman Park preparing for Fred Toney’s first delivery, that is exactly what was about to […]

“You can’t win ’em all.” It’s said with a shrug, a human acknowledgement that nobody goes undefeated, that nobody is perfect, that even if you do everything possible sometimes you will lose. The origin of this phrase could be Connie Mack after the 1916 Philadelphia A’s went 36-117. But it could also be from Cliff […]

Russ Nixon spent more than half a century in baseball. A catcher who played 12 years for the Red Sox, Indians, and Twins, he went on to coach and manage at levels from rookie ball to the major leagues, with five seasons as a big-league manager.     The son of farmers Thomas and Edith Nixon […]

In sports, college or professional, individual or team, nothing captures a fan’s interest quite like a streak. This is especially true with baseball. Whether it is a team’s winning or losing streak or a player’s performance within the chalked lines, the fanfare and pressure may build each day. The fervent fan or even the uninformed […]

Gaylord Perry, one of the premier pitchers of his generation, won 314 games and struck out 3,534 batters, but his place in baseball history rests mainly with his notorious use of the spitball, or greaseball, which defied batters, humiliated umpires, and infuriated opposing managers for two decades. But make no mistake: he was also a […]

Right-hander John Leister (pronounced Lister) worked in 10 major-league games for the Boston Red Sox: eight in 1987 and two in 1990. He’d been considered for a career in professional football — but baseball proved to be his calling. After his six-year pro career (1984-90) ended, he became a college coach. John William Leister was […]

The 1882 New York Metropolitans were a strong independent professional club, winning 101 games against top competition, before joining the upstart American Association as a major-league team in 1883. (SABR-Rucker Archive)   On May 8, 1961, the name of the National League’s newest expansion club was officially announced. The fledgling team was to be called […]

East Field as pictured in 2021.   Over the course of a month and a half in March and April 1980, East Field in Glens Falls, New York, went from an unremarkable city-owned baseball field notable mainly for its swampiness to a showcase for some of the Chicago White Sox’ top prospects.1 It happened this […]