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Like many of us, Rich Nye followed a winding path before finding his true professional calling. What sets Nye apart from you and me, though, is that his journey included pitching duels with Tom Seaver and Bob Gibson; road trips with Hall-of-Fame teammates Ernie Banks and Ferguson Jenkins; and head-to-head showdowns with the likes of […]

In Walt Disney’s Legend of Sleepy Hollow, Ichabod Crane was all arms and legs. Andy Boswell was a real-life version of that unique character, but unlike Ichabod, Boswell, whose 6’1” 165 pound frame was unusual for the times, was a talented athlete. Sadly in later life chronic arthritis would rob him of the use of […]

Remembered in Detroit as the pitcher who won both games of a doubleheader to effectively clinch the 1909 pennant, Ed Killian was also one of the stingiest pitchers in baseball history when it came to the home run. In his entire big league career, the left-hander surrendered just nine homers, and he once went nearly […]

“How does it feel to be the smallest player in the majors,” a Houston reporter asked Fred Patek in 1968. “A heck of a lot better than being the tallest player in the minors,” countered the rookie shortstop.1 Patek’s quip matched his quickness on the field and the basepaths for 14 years in the major […]

In the first years of Tommy Lasorda’s Hall of Fame career as manager of the Los Angeles Dodgers, he kept several large photographs on the walls of his office at the team’s spring-training complex in Vero Beach, Florida. There was one of himself and Walter Alston, his legendary predecessor, and another with Hall of Fame […]

For generations, many American fathers have raised their sons with dreams of emulating their baseball hero, Mickey Mantle. Chipper Jones’s father was no different. From an early age, his son reminded him of The Mick: a small-town country boy with charming good looks, a Southern drawl, and a preternatural ability to hit a baseball from […]

Pitcher Scott Service had a long and workmanlike professional career. He appeared in 338 major-league games from his debut on September 5, 1988, until his final game on September 26, 2004. With his minor-league games included, Service’s professional career spanned 905 games over 19 seasons from ages 19 through 37 (1986-2004), including the one game […]

If God had not created Hustling Dan O’Leary, Damon Runyon would have. O’Leary is not well known today but he was well appreciated by the sportswriters of his time, as he was usually involved in something that would make an amusing story. He danced on the edge of fame and infamy, and even The National […]

His big brother in college was Martin Luther King Jr. Somehow, it’s appropriate to begin with that fact when discussing Donn Clendenon. During his college years at Morehouse College, one of the most pivotal players in Mets history was mentored by the greatest and most pivotal African American of the 20th century. The big brother […]

“What other player is there who bats like [Carl] East, fields like East, throws like East from right field and then can pitch the kind of a game that Carl did yesterday?” — Wichita Beacon, July 6, 19211   Carl East was a pitcher and an outfielder in the minor leagues. Like Babe Ruth, he […]

In the estimation of nineteenth-century baseball historian David Nemec, Pittsburgh pitcher “Billy Gumbert may have been more talented than his younger brother Ad,”1 a 123-game major-league winner. But Billy’s disinclination to journey far from a budding career in local business restricted his ballplaying opportunities. He pitched only home games at Recreation Park after a morning […]

One of the best-hitting catchers in minor-league history, Everett “Yam” Yaryan batted .357 and slugged 41 home runs in 1920 for Wichita, Kansas, in the Western League. Only Perry Werden and Ernie Calbert had previously hit more homers in one minor-league season, and neither was a catcher.1 Yaryan’s banner year was his springboard to the […]

Maybe even three years in professional baseball seemed just a little too long. Signed by the Boston Red Sox, right-handed pitcher Frank Quinn started his career with the Birmingham Barons in 1948, spent parts of two years in the majors, and finished active service with Chattanooga in 1950. An arm injury caused him to leave […]

Brooklyn-born Mike Fiore was signed by the New York Mets on July 2, 1962, while he was still a 17-year-old student at Lafayette High School. He’d been the unanimous choice for all-city first baseman in the 1962 season, batting .476 with nine home runs. In three years of high school baseball, he had struck out […]

Gloria Elliott (nee Cordes) was born on September 21, 1931.1 Most girls her age came to womanhood during the post-World War II economic boom and taught or were secretaries; however, Cordes took a drastically different route. She became a bona-fide professional baseball player. Growing up during World War II in blue-collar Staten Island, New York, […]

Morrie Rath’s life could have been a Hollywood movie – the type of movie where the lead character keeps getting back up after getting knocked down. And for Rath’s movie, the final scene would have played out on October 1, 1919, during the first game of the infamous 1919 World Series. On the biggest stage […]

While professional baseball played a prominent role in the life story of pitcher-umpire-policeman George Bausewine, his impact upon the game was negligible. A one-game winner for the 1889 Philadelphia Athletics of the major-league American Association, Bausewine later spent a single season as a National League umpire. His life, however, was hardly without incident. A talent […]

It could be a good question in a serious trivia contest: “Who was the first African-American ballplayer honored by the Hall of Fame?” Rather few people would correctly guess Grover Jones. “My real name is Grover William Jones, Junior,” Deacon Jones explained in a 2008 interview. “Everybody started calling me Deacon because my father was […]

“If Shipke only becomes a hitter! His work at third [base] yesterday was classy from start to finish. He had several of the closest kinds of plays on pick-ups and other varieties of slow rollers, but he had the knack of grabbing them while at full speed … and getting them toward first without any […]

The once thick and perfectly groomed dark hair grew thin and gray over a professional career spanning a remarkable sixty-nine years. From 1920 to 1989, Johnny Neun served in the capacities of player, coach, manager, instructor and scout. Along the way, he earned a reputation as a great baseball mind, an excellent storyteller, and an […]

When big-league players heeded the call of duty during World War II, many teams were left scrambling to find replacement players. One such wartime player was slap-hitting Augie Bergamo, who debuted with the St. Louis Cardinals in 1944 after six years in the minor leagues. A versatile outfielder and pinch-hitter with a good eye, Bergamo […]

SABR maintains a Triple Play Database, which lists all major-league triple plays executed since 1876. Through the 2024 season, there have been 737 of them. Sometimes whole seasons go by without even one triple play. There are devoted fans who have attended hundreds of baseball games who have never seen one. Sometimes, however, triple plays […]