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When the Orioles “threatened in the eighth, [relief pitcher] Lefty Jacobs took over and in his usual manner made short work of the rally idea.”1 — Baltimore Sun, May 9, 1938   Art Jacobs was an itinerant minor leaguer from 1923 to 1941. The southpaw began his career as a starting pitcher and in his […]

The 1945 Washington Senators1 intrigued war-weary baseball fans with an improbable pennant run. The team’s success stemmed largely from a unique pitching staff, dominated by four knuckleballers. The top performer was Roger Wolff, a journeyman right-hander who led the team with a career-high 20 wins. The second of ten children born to Leo and Eleanor […]

Jim “JD” Deshaies had a journeyman career as a left-handed pitcher for 12 years in the majors. At times he outshined some of his legendary rotation mates, but at others he suffered from shoulder injuries hampering his sneaky-fast velocity. Those injuries ultimately ended his playing days but paved the way for a second act as […]

In the days before players routinely wore gloves, the ability of a catcher to handle a fast pitcher or one with big curves was valued far more than his hitting. Bart Cantz was such a man. During three seasons in the majors (1888-90), Cantz finished with a batting average of just .157 with five extra-base […]

Gary Gaetti did it all over 20 seasons (1981-2000) for five major-league teams. He spent the first decade of his career with the Minnesota Twins, where he was a two-time All-Star and four-time Gold Glove winner at third base. In 1987, when the Twins won the first championship in franchise history, he was the MVP […]

Heinz Becker, the only German-born big-leaguer who played during the years of World War II, had a modest four-year career and appeared in just 152 games for the Chicago Cubs and Cleveland Indians. In 1945, his only full season in the majors, Becker became a fan favorite for the pennant-winning Cubs, and his feet were […]

Many baseball players from the New Orleans area signed professional contracts in the 1930s and 1940s. Ray Yochim rode the wave, along with other signees from his high school that included future major-leaguers Lou Klein, Mel Parnell, George Strickland, and Jack Kramer. Yochim missed three formative years of his professional development as a pitcher owing […]

Drafted out of high school, Don Aase began his professional baseball career with what might have seemed like something of a nightmare season for a pitcher — he was 0-10. When he made it to the major leagues five years later, he was hailed as almost the Second Coming for his debut year with the […]

Half of the most famous version of the “Pretzel Battery,” catcher Heinie Peitz was a noted “coacher”—more of a bench jockey in modern parlance—whose mouth gained him nearly as much attention as his play. For nine years of his 16-season (1892–1906, 1913) career, he was a Cincinnati Reds mainstay. When he retired, Peitz ranked 12th […]

After several trials as a starter with the Atlanta Braves in the 1970s and out of the big leagues in 1980, southpaw Jamie Easterly emerged as a dependable reliever for the Milwaukee Brewers in 1981, helping them to their first-ever postseason berth. He suffered a strained knee in 1982 and was not on the pennant-winning […]

Hugh Miller was a quiet man with a penchant for strife. His life was a constant seesaw ride—minor-league phenom, big-league flop, decorated war hero, hobbled veteran. His lows were lengthy and commonplace, his highs brief and extraordinary. Miller, born in St. Louis on December 22, 1886, was the second of four sons of John and […]

If the fates had been kinder to George “Kiddo” Davis, he would have had the opportunity to display his skills in five World Series during his eight major-league seasons. In two Series with the New York Giants, 1933 and 1936, the center fielder complemented his outstanding defensive work with 8 hits in 21 at-bats, a […]

Over his 16 major league seasons, Stan Bahnsen was a regular rotation starter, a workhorse in a three-man rotation, a closer for a while, and finally an all-purpose reliever and spot starter. Fans at the University of Nebraska named him “The Bahnsen Burner” for his blazing fastball; later in his career he would be “Stanley […]

The 1958 Philadelphia Phillies finished eighth in the National League, the first of four consecutive last-place finishes. Despite that record, the team was not devoid of achievements. Several players generated solid performances. Center fielder Richie Ashburn led the majors in batting with a .350 average. Left fielder Harry Anderson batted .301, hit 23 home runs, […]

Don Gutteridge always said he had a wonderful life. He was married to his wife, Helen, for 74 years. In his latter years, she was bedridden, but she was always there for him. “She pushed me on to do well,” he said. “She encouraged me and gave me a lot of confidence.”1  His son, Don […]

A three-game sub for the 1936 Boston Bees, Andy Pilney was a member of an elite but cheerless fraternity: All-American college football players whose hopes for a similarly sterling career in pro baseball were disappointed. Pilney lands in the middling rank of this group, his diamond fortunes falling somewhere between those of major league mediocrities […]

The gap-toothed smile of Dave Henderson is emblematic of the exuberance that he brought to the game and which he displayed unabashedly after slugging a playoff home run for the ages. A native of Merced, California, in the state’s Central Valley, Henderson was born on July 21, 1958, eventually filling out as a strapping 6-foot-2-inch, […]

Over the course of a 162-game season, there will invariably be games in which a team squanders a lead in the late innings and suffers a painful loss. When the season draws to a close and that team narrowly misses the playoffs, it’s only natural to look back upon the games that slipped away and […]

Tossing a shutout and striking out at least 10 batters in a game was not uncommon in Sandy Koufax’s illustrious 12-year big-league career. After all, he blanked opponents 40 times and reached double figures in punchouts 97 times in just 314 career regular-season starts. The Los Angeles Dodgers southpaw’s performance against the Pittsburgh Pirates in […]

Neither George Sisler’s homestanding St. Louis Browns nor Ty Cobb’s visiting Detroit Tigers had much of anything at stake as they wrapped up the 1925 season at Sportsman’s Park on Sunday, October 4. The Washington Senators had their second consecutive American League pennant in the bag; although well back, the Browns and Tigers had clinched […]

On Friday, October 8, on a beautiful afternoon in front of a Milwaukee County Stadium crowd of 50,135, for the second time in six days, Don Sutton took the mound for the Brewers in Game Three of the American League Championship Series. With the Brewers down two games to none to the California Angels and […]

For nearly two months in the summer of 1981, major-league stadiums were empty. On June 12, after a year of negotiations failed to produce an agreement on the structure of baseball’s free-agent compensation system, the players voted to strike. With the work stoppage still in progress on July 14, the All-Star Game was postponed. Instead, […]

This article appears in SABR’s “Harvey’s Wallbangers: The 1982 Milwaukee Brewers” (2020), edited by Gregory H. Wolf.   On June 2, 1982, general manager Harry Dalton’s firing of second-year manager Buck Rodgers and appointing longtime hitting coach Harvey Keunn as the interim manager was the final piece in the Milwaukee Brewers’ only World Series appearance. […]

SABR Bibliography Committee Research Guide No. 10: Baseball in History Journals (1980-88) Editor’s note: This guide was first published by the SABR Bibliography Committee in 1989. To download the original in PDF form, click here. By Jim SumnerApril 1989 This guide consists of all the articles I could find on baseball history published in history […]