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George Shuba greets Jackie Robinson at home plate on April 18, 1946. (Courtesy of Greg Gulas, Carrie Anderson, Mike Shuba)   The 1946 Montreal Royals of the International League have received much attention over the years because Jackie Robinson broke Organized Baseball’s historic and shameful color line by playing second base for the Royals.1 But […]

It was a hot summer day in 1897 when hundreds of fans of the Federalsburg Club in Maryland gathered for a game. This small town of barely a thousand people was proud of their team. Little did they know that three of the young teenagers taking the field for them that day would soon be […]

When the Yankton Treaty was signed in 1858, the United States government acquired a large parcel of land: the northernmost part of the Louisiana Purchase of 1803, much of which had been Sioux Indian land. In 1861, the area was incorporated as the Dakota Territory. Its borders changed over the next decade, at one time […]

Fort Hood’s Student Regiment Team, from the September 23, 1943 issue of The Hood Panther. (Courtesy of tankdestroyer.net)    When searching “Camp Hood Baseball,” three words come up often: Jackie, Robinson, and court-martial. Numerous articles have been written about Robinson’s time at Camp Hood—many about his August 1944 court-martial after refusing to move to the […]

Editor’s note: This article appeared originally in Black Ball: A Negro Leagues Journal, Vol. 7 (McFarland & Co., 2014). The long relationship between Negro League baseball and Yankee Stadium that provided the Black leagues with both income and prestige began in 1930 when a millionaire lent his prized major league ballpark to a man who […]

Telephone card souvenir from the 1986 Super Major Series (Robert Fitts Collection)   Opposing thoughts can complement one another and fill our lives with elegant contradictions. In ancient Chinese philosophy, this theory was known as yinyang. In Japan, the word is inyo. Although frequently associated with Eastern thought, inyo is a universal part of the […]

Baseball is thankfully free of artificial boundaries of time which confine other sports. This freedom helps to shape the unique magical charm that is an evening at the ballpark. Fans never know whether it will be a two-hour squeaker or whether they may be enchanted until past sunrise by the first-ever wild 12-hour 46-inning slugfest. […]

Floyd County, Georgia, in the northwest corner of the state, once supported eight different textile mills, each with a baseball team composed of mill workers. These teams became the formally organized Northwest Georgia Textile League and flourished between the 1930s and 1950s, providing Floyd County with three decades of industrialized community recreation that has not […]

“When I go, I want to be buried in my umpiring suit, holding my indicator.”1 When Tom Gorman died, his children carried out their father’s final desire. Gorman was dressed in his suit, which was meticulously buttoned, and wore his blue cap with the white “NL” embroidered on the front of it. He also held […]

At the conclusion of the Boston Red Sox’ disappointing 1993 season, general manager Lou Gorman, manager Butch Hobson, and assistant general manager Mike Port met with a couple of the team’s controlling partners, Haywood Sullivan and John Harrington, to talk about the status of the team and coaching staff.  The quintet resolved to make a […]

“The D is silent.” — Jamie Foxx as “Django” in “Django Unchained”   Joe Zdeb probably smiled when he first heard that line because he’s been saying it his entire life. Rare is the article in Zdeb’s early career that doesn’t include some reference to his name. Writers, or Zdeb himself, would typically settle on […]

Undefeated in 1971 for the Kansas City Royals, and again in 1974 for the Boston Red Sox (he was 1-0 for both teams), left-hander Lance Clemons lost his only decision for the Cardinals in 1972.  His major-league record stands at 2-1 with a career 6.06 earned run average in 19 games and 35 2/3 innings. […]

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 […]

He was the first amateur player selected by his expansion franchise and became its first home-run champion, alas, when the parent team was in a different city. In his major-league debut, he dropped the first ball hit to him for an error and got his first hit, a triple, in his second at-bat. Nine days […]

If Calvin Schiraldi had never been called upon to pitch in the sixth game of the 1986 World Series, we might think of his career in baseball as a story of encountering and overcoming adversity — a series of comebacks. But Red Sox manager John McNamara did call Schiraldi in from the bullpen in the […]

Baseball in the 1880s was at times chaotic, with teams and leagues forming and folding, and clubs moving from league to league, often in the same season. One club from St. Paul even spent just a few weeks as a “major league team” – without ever playing a home game.1 The career of Jack Gorman […]

St. Louis merchant and businessman Hugo Duesenberg died on February 14, 1941, and his passing was noted by the Post-Dispatch in a brief item that listed a wife and five children as survivors. No mention was made of the notorious act thirty-four years earlier that had made headlines all across the country. Perhaps that is just as […]

“I got traded for him and now he’s my insurance broker,” said Bill Buckner in 2011.1 Buckner was recalling a January 1977 trade when the Los Angeles Dodgers sent both him and Ivan de Jesus to the Chicago Cubs for Mike Garman, Rick Monday, and a minor-leaguer. Buckner settled in Boise after his baseball career; […]

Norman “Bobby” Robinson was the starting center fielder on the 1948 Birmingham Black Barons team that played in the last Negro League World Series. At least he was until an injury sidelined him. By the time he returned to action, he was moved to left field because a rookie and future baseball legend had replaced […]

Herm Winningham’s professional career lasted 13 seasons. Yet only after the third time that he was a first-round draft pick did the speedy outfielder sign and turn pro. He played in the majors with four teams from 1984 through 1992. A skillful defender and bunter, Winningham got into 868 games at the top level, starting […]

Name the winningest right-hander of the mid-1970s to early ’80s and most might guess Tom Seaver, Jim Palmer, Nolan Ryan, or Phil Niekro, but they’d be wrong. Over a seven-year stretch, from 1975 through the strike-shortened 1981 season, the Kansas City Royals’ Dennis Leonard led all right-handers with 120 victories, a figure that only southpaw […]

José Luis Meléndez García was born on September 2, 1965, in Naguabo, a small town on the eastern coast of Puerto Rico. The municipality is famous for its empanadillas de chapín, a tasty fried turnover stuffed with cowfish. Blessed with a powerful right arm, Meléndez was destined to toil not as a fisherman, but rather […]

The Southern Tier Expressway does not lend itself to reflection or nostalgia. The six-lane divided highway breaks off from Interstate 81 in Binghamton, New York, and heads west, offering drivers — when construction allows — the fastest possible route to Elmira, Corning, the Finger Lakes, and other destinations in the Empire State’s southern and western […]