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Jay Kirke was a formidable hitter of the 1910s and 1920s. According to sportswriter Norman E. Brown, Kirke hit the ball “as hard as anyone who ever swung a bat.”1 His line drives “burned with smoke.”2 Kirke “hits everything — bad balls, good balls, curves, fasts and slows,” said outfielder Sherry Magee.3 A left-handed slugger, […]

A baseball writer once compared Charlie O’Brien to Barry Bonds. Using the game of Monopoly to describe the range of players in fantasy baseball, he wrote, “Barry Bonds is Boardwalk. He costs the most money. Charlie O’Brien is like Mediterranean. He goes the cheapest.”1 Okay, it wasn’t the most flattering comparison, but Charlie would take […]

Rube Foster was the star of the 1915 World Series, pitching two complete-game wins for the Boston Red Sox in a five-game series against the Philadelphia Phillies and going 4-for-8 at the plate. His ninth-inning single won Game Two. Foster played pro ball for just one team in the big leagues, the Red Sox, with […]

Cotton Knaupp played 1,555 games in the Southern Association, more than any other player.1 The most memorable of those games came on August 8, 1916. On that afternoon he was at second base for New Orleans as the Pelicans hosted the Chattanooga Lookouts. With the bases loaded in the sixth inning, Knaupp snagged a line […]

Ken Burns’s documentary Baseball opens with a line that characterizes the hard-driving spirit of Irish-blooded players like Jimmy Esmond, who came up in the early twentieth century. “The game’s greatest figures have come from everywhere: coal mines and college campuses, city slums and country crossroads. A brawling Irish immigrant’s son [John McGraw] who for more […]

Mexican League president Jorge Pasquel, right, sits with the son of catcher Mickey Owen on his lap and outfielder Danny Gardella, left, during a 1946 game in Veracruz, Mexico. (SABR/The Rucker Archive)   Cardinals owner Sam Breadon called him likeable and said he was “the most dynamic fellow I’ve ever met.”1 Branch Rickey said he […]

Anyone who has met a Braves fan in Boise, Idaho, has Ted Turner to credit. After purchasing the Atlanta Braves, Turner’s satellite television superstations offered the first nationwide sports telecast and made Braves fans out of people all over the United States, while setting a model for sports broadcasting in the twenty-first century.   Robert Edward […]

What happens when a diminutive Pennsylvania Dutch youngster falls in love with America’s Pastime? In the case of Elmer Yoter, he becomes a semi-pro in 1920 as a teenager and stays in baseball past his 60th birthday. He appeared in only 36 major-league games, but managed in over 2,700 minor-league contests, often as player-manager, with […]