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A teenaged soda vendor at the new Birmingham minor-league ballpark, a low minors “doubleheader” workhorse, a victor over Walter Johnson, and a tragic victim of tuberculosis at 31, Pop-Boy Smith is an enigmatic figure in the Southeast baseball scene from the 1910s and early 1920s. Clarence Ossie Smith was born on May 23, 1892 in […]

Scott Cooper was born the day after the St. Louis Cardinals beat the Boston Red Sox in Game Seven of the 1967 World Series. In 1986 he was drafted by the Red Sox and was a two-time All-Star for them. Prior to the 1995 season he was traded to the Cardinals where he played for […]

Marc Sullivan started 35 games in 1986 as backup to All-Star catcher Rich Gedman. He made the squad in spring training because of his defensive skills, but many critical Red Sox fans and beat writers would not overlook his offensive shortcomings. He hit only .193, with 23 hits in 119 at-bats, and seemed to be […]

He was born Harry I. Dalton on August 23, 1928, in West Springfield, Massachusetts, the same hometown as Leo Durocher. He graduated as an English major from Amherst College in Amherst, Massachusetts. Historically, Amherst faced Williams in the world’s first intercollegiate baseball game in 1859. He had been accepted to the Columbia University School of […]

When the expansion Kansas City Royals hired Cedric Tallis as the team’s GM, he assumed an almost impossible task. Before the first expansion season was even half over in 1969, Kansas City owner Ewing Kauffman was proclaiming that a glorious future was not far away. A hard-driving yet generous pharmaceutical entrepreneur, Kauffman publicly stated that […]

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 […]

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 […]

The man the Boston Globe called the “ultimate utility man,” Randy Kutcher, played from 1986 through 1990 for the San Francisco Giants and the Boston Red Sox.1 Primarily an outfielder, he played every position on the field except for first base and pitcher, though his time at catching was limited to the final three innings […]

Tommy Moore was drafted as an outfielder but made it to the majors as a pitcher. He appeared with four teams in parts of four seasons from 1972 through 1977, posting a won-lost record of 2-4 and an ERA of 5.40 in 42 games, largely in relief. “He would have been a great candidate for […]

“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. […]

One week in June 1988. Zach Crouch’s major league debut was on June 4, 1988. The young pitcher came into a game at Fenway Park, with the Toronto Blue Jays leading the Red Sox, 7-2, in the top of the ninth. The Jays had already scored four runs in the inning, off ace reliever Lee […]

Texan outfielder C. L. Taylor was the first star of the new West Texas League in the summer of 1920. The “sphinx-like speed merchant”1 also led the Texas-Oklahoma League in hitting in 1922. At age 27, in the spring of 1925, he reached the majors but went hitless in six at-bats with the Chicago Cubs. […]

Pitching isn’t just about throwing hard. It’s about contrast and ball movement, and Enrique Romo kept hitters off stride and guessing. He had a broad repertoire, featuring a screwball, which he delivered from various arm angles while constantly changing speeds. “He’s the kind of pitcher you don’t want to face even once in a game,” […]

At approximately 3:15 P.M. on Monday, October 8, 1956, Babe Pinelli’s right arm shot upward, ending Game Five of the World Series. Pinelli did more than punch out Brooklyn Dodgers pinch-hitter Dale Mitchell to conclude a 2-0 New York Yankees victory; his called third strike completed Don Larsen‘s perfect game, the only one in World […]

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 […]

The New York Yankees had long been out of contention by Friday night, September 17, 1982. Their 14-0 loss at the hands of the Milwaukee Brewers that night signaled their statistical elimination from the race. Harvey’s Wallbangers moved to a two-game lead over the Baltimore Orioles in the American League East Division, while the Yankees […]

Manny Mota is frequently considered to be the Montreal Expos’ first player.1 Although Mota was the initial player chosen by the Expos in the National League expansion draft in October 1968, he wasn’t the first player under contract with the fledgling organization. That honor went to pitcher Dave Hartman, who was drafted by Montreal in […]

Gary Carter earned the nickname “Kid” when he first came to spring training with the Montreal Expos at age 19 in 1973.1 He, along with Larry Parrish, Ellis Valentine, André Dawson, and pitcher Steve Rogers, would turn out to be the core players of this franchise in the late 1970s and early 1980s. But Carter, […]

Like thousands of youth pitchers, Frank Castillo dreamed of winning a game in the major leagues. He was drafted out of Eastwood High School in El Paso, Texas, in the sixth round of the June 1987 amateur draft by the Chicago Cubs and progressed quickly through the minors. After reaching Triple-A Iowa to start the […]

The rumors were swirling in July 1988. The Boston Red Sox were 43-42 and nine games behind the first-place Detroit Tigers in the American League East. Would Boston make a change at the top? “It would come as a surprise to me,” said manager John McNamara, when he was told about speculation that he would […]

The Los Angeles Dodgers were having a weird week. Two nights earlier they had forfeited a game to the St. Louis Cardinals when their fans threw souvenir baseballs onto the field to protest the umpire’s strike calls.1 It had been 16 years since a major-league game had been forfeited (the infamous Disco Demolition Night game). […]

In conjunction with SABR’s Eight Myths Out project, here are specific examples of factual errors or misinformation that appear in Eight Men Out, both the 1963 best-selling book written by Eliot Asinof and the 1988 film directed by John Sayles. Certain entries on this list may seem like pedantic nitpicking: surnames misspelled, Abe Attell’s boxing […]

The Growth of the Society By the fall of 1974 the membership of the Society had risen from the original 16 members to 230. It climbed slowly but steadily through the ’70s, reaching 300 in October 1975, 350 at Society’s fifth birthday in August 1976, 410 in December 1976, and 634 in July 1978, before […]