Search Results

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 […]

It seems appropriate somehow that Henry Aaron’s last moonshot came on the anniversary of Neil Armstrong’s one small step for man and one giant leap for mankind. No one knew it at the time, but the 10,134 fans at County Stadium who saw Aaron’s mighty swing propel a ball over the fence for the 755th […]

Going into Game Three of the 1981 American League Division Series, the Milwaukee Brewers faced a challenge: Make history, or go home. The Brewers – founded as the Seattle Pilots in 1969 – earned their first postseason berth in the strike-altered 1981 season. But the New York Yankees beat the Brewers in Milwaukee in the […]

No one in baseball had a better view of Don Baylor’s 1982 season than Reggie Jackson, who usually followed Baylor in the California Angels batting order. And what he saw were a couple of different Baylor. “He can get with it in the clutch,” Jackson said. “Like Paul Newman in Cool Hand Luke: ‘He gets […]

The Orioles’ most one-sided Opening Day victory in Baltimore came in 1973. Aging stars Brooks Robinson and Dave McNally had a lot to do with it, but the brightest star of the day was 23-year-old left fielder Don Baylor. On the day the American League ushered in the designated-hitter era, Baylor — a future outstanding DH — notched […]

After a one-year hiatus because of the COVID-19 pandemic, MLB All-Star Week returned in July 2021. The site was Denver’s Coors Field, home of the Colorado Rockies.1 Alongside the All-Star Game and Home Run Derby, one of the biggest attractions was the All-Star Futures Game, a seven-inning contest that showcases the most highly touted prospects […]

The Kansas City Star ran a headline on May 22, 1958, as the Boston Red Sox arrived in town for the opener of a three-game series with the Kansas City Athletics: “What’s Wrong with Ted?” Boston’s slugger Ted Williams had led the American League with a .388 batting average in 1957 – the year he […]

Cal Ripken Jr. was hurt and grieving and, for perhaps the first time in his entire life, no one was quite sure what to expect when he stepped on the baseball field during his 19th major-league season. The Baltimore Orioles’ “Iron Man” had voluntarily ended his record-setting streak of 2,632 consecutive games played near the […]

The magic number was 3 at County Stadium in Milwaukee on Saturday, May 14, 1983, as the Brewers hosted the Boston Red Sox. The temperature was brisk (53 degrees) but Ben Oglivie was hot, entering the game hitting .323 with a .427 on-base percentage. His bat would play a deciding role on this evening. The […]

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, […]

John Schuerholz spent 26 seasons as a big-league GM, winning 16 division titles, six pennants, and two World Series. In Kansas City he oversaw that franchise’s first World Series. After moving to Atlanta, he took over a team that had lost more than 90 games four consecutive years and won the next 14 division titles […]

Baseball pioneer Abraham Gilbert Mills is remembered-if at all-today for heading the “Mills Commission” which concluded that the game of baseball was invented in America by Civil War General Abner Doubleday. However, this actually represents a very small piece of Mills’ fascinating life. Born March 12, 1844, in New York City, Mills lived there until […]

Mark Brouhard isn’t one of the names people think of when they discuss the 1982 Brewers. Many other players who were a part of Harvey’s Wallbangers went on for storied, even Hall of Fame-worthy careers. Paul Molitor, Robin Yount, Rollie Fingers, Don Sutton, Cecil Cooper … this team was a who’s who of great Brewers, […]

The archives of baseball are filled with the stories of players whose major-league careers spanned one year, others who played a decade or more, and an unfortunate few who only grabbed a cup of coffee, arriving after years in the minors and leaving after a scant handful of games that gave their careers a certain […]

If any player could be called Mr. Brewer it is Robin Yount. He played his entire 20-year major-league career with the Milwaukee Brewers, debuting as an 18-year-old shortstop in 1974, and helped reinvigorate and re-energize a fan base that had been reeling since the Braves abandoned Milwaukee for Atlanta in 1966. Yount led the Brewers […]

“I loved Fenway. I loved playing there,” said southpaw Bruce Hurst, who hurled for the Boston Red Sox from 1980 to 1988 before signing as a free agent with the San Diego Padres.1 Best known for his command performance in the 1986 World Series against the New York Mets, which included two impressive victories and […]

Few if any baseball men have worked harder for longer than Mel Didier. He pitched just two years in Class D, but he spent more than 60 years in professional baseball as a scout and executive. As former Los Angeles Dodgers GM Fred Claire said, “I don’t know of anyone who has been in more […]

Pete Vuckovich was a menacing figure. He was big: 6-feet-4 and 220 pounds (or more). He glowered over a Fu Manchu mustache and often had a few days’ growth elsewhere to go with his long, unkempt hair. While pitching, he had “a streak of calculated weirdness.”1 Rasputin comparisons arose, and he encouraged them, applauding the […]

After an All-American career as a DH and pitcher at the University of Arkansas, Tim Lollar broke in to the big leagues as a reliever with the New York Yankees in 1980. Traded to the San Diego Padres the following season, Lollar emerged as one of the senior circuit’s most promising starters, winning 16 games […]

Nick Young’s baseball career illustrated important aspects of the game’s early development. He was a cricketer who took up baseball during Civil War service; afterward he joined a club of amateurs that grew increasingly competitive and came to include paid players. This evolved into helping organize the National Association of Professional Base Ball Players, which […]

Jeff Gray1 pitched four years for collegiate baseball power Florida State University, followed by eight years of professional baseball, including parts of one season with the Cincinnati Reds and two with the Boston Red Sox. Gray’s admirable playing career was cruelly shortened at age 29 in 1991, when he suffered a stroke-like brain injury. Despite […]

Despite frequent citations over the years, it is not common knowledge that the Braves got their nickname and first Indian-head logo under James E. Gaffney. Then again, nearly a century and two franchise moves have gone by since the owner of yesteryear (December 1911 to January 1916) rechristened his team. The change celebrated his ties […]

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. […]

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 […]