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Jim Perry debuted with the Cleveland Indians in 1959, became a Minnesota Twin in 1963, and moved to the Detroit Tigers in 1973. His younger brother, Gaylord Perry, spent the first 10 years of his career in the National League before being traded to Cleveland in December 1971. Through June 1973, Jim Perry had started […]

Willie Mays hit 20 home runs and won NL Rookie of the Year honors in 1951. Promoted May 24, he batted .274 with 68 RBIs for New York. (1951 Bowman card, courtesy of Topps)   If you begin your National League career going hitless in three road games, you may as well go for broke and […]

Don Lock was a strong defensive center fielder who twice placed in the top 10 in homers in the American League. He played in 921 major-league games from 1962 to 1969. Lock was originally signed in March 1958 by New York Yankees scout Tom Greenwade, the same scout who signed Mickey Mantle. Greenwade signed Lock […]

Ovid Nicholson’s chief baseball skills were bunting and speedy base running. In 1912, he stole 111 bases in 123 games, vaulting from Class-D ball to a six-game stint in the majors. A contributor to the SABR/Baseball-Reference Encyclopedia quite reasonably posed the question as to what else Nicholson could have done to win a job with […]

In 13 years as a professional baseball player, outfielder Dallas Williams appeared in 20 big-league games for the 1981 Orioles (two games) and 1983 Reds (18 games). The former first-round draft pick starred for three American Association championship teams in Triple-A before commencing a long coaching career, including four seasons in the majors with the […]

Casey Stengel is best remembered for his managerial accomplishments with the juggernaut New York Yankees of the 1950s and the bumbling, beloved New York Mets of the early ’60s, but decades earlier he was a hard-hitting outfielder who compiled a .284 batting average over 14 seasons in the National League. Planting his right foot closer […]

The 6-foot tall, 210-pound catcher for the Jersey City Jerseys looked like a giant to the boy. It was Camera Day at Jersey City’s Roosevelt Stadium in 1960. The Jerseys were the Cincinnati Reds’ Triple-A club. The catcher was Dutch Dotterer, a charming and intellectual athlete. Years later, Santa Ana High School’s Athletic Director, Frank Alvarado, would […]

On his 18th birthday, righty Chris Haughey appeared in his only major-league game, pitching for the Brooklyn Dodgers on October 3, 1943. He appears to be one of only three players in big-league history whose lone appearance came on his birthday.1 It was a Sunday afternoon game in Cincinnati, the last game of the season. […]

In 1945, The Sporting News reckoned Eddie Mayo as “an excellent example of the Salvation Army adage, ‘A man may be down, but he is never out.’”1 Acquired by the Detroit Tigers a year earlier after he had failed in several attempts to stick in the big leagues, the 34-year-old infielder helped pace the club […]

This infielder was the original “Sugar Bear” — several years ahead of Floyd Rayford, who bore the same nickname in the 1980s. With their pleasant, sleepy-eyed expressions, both men resembled the easygoing cartoon character in the ads for Post Super Sugar Crisp cereal. Yet contrary to popular belief, that is not how Blanks got his […]

Fausto Miranda was the dean of Cuban sportswriters. Miranda’s writing showed just how elegant the Spanish language can be. Yale University professor Roberto González Echevarría, author of the Cuban baseball history The Pride of Havana, said, “He was a journalist who wrote with vigor, grace and agility.”1 Baseball, as Cuba’s national sport, naturally accounted for […]

A flashy dresser and world-class trash talker, Benny Kauff was the Deion Sanders of the Deadball Era. “I’ll make them all forget that a guy named Ty Cobb ever pulled on a baseball shoe,” the brash 26-year-old told reporters on his arrival with the New York Giants in 1916. Kauff’s boastfulness was not without some […]

Puerto Rico has long been a baseball hotbed. The sport has also thrived in Hawaii, thanks largely to Americans and Japanese. Yet unless one is very familiar with Hawaiian culture, one might not realize that Puerto Rican immigrants embraced the game there too. John Matias, who played 58 games for the Chicago White Sox in […]

Over the past 10 years, baseball fans in Minnesota have been given the gift of watching this beloved sport in two new, spectacular ballparks — Target Field and CHS Field. While those in the stands relax on a beautiful summer evening at the Twins game in Minneapolis or the Saints game in St. Paul, there […]

The New York Yankees dynasty began with Jacob Ruppert Jr. When Ruppert purchased the franchise in January 1915 with his partner, the improbably named Tillinghast L’Hommedieu Huston, it was one of the American League’s most hapless teams. The previous owners, a gambler and a shady ex-police chief with Tammany Hall connections, had run a shoestring […]

Bobby Maier would have been forgiven for harboring some bitterness toward manager Steve O’Neill and the Detroit Tigers. For most of 1945, the 29-year-old rookie had started at third base for the Tigers, doing a consistent if unspectacular job at the plate while proving perhaps less reliable with the glove. But as Detroit entered the […]

Steve Bilko was a heavy hitter. Baseball encyclopedias list him at 6-foot-1 and 230 pounds, the greatest tonnage that baseball allowed in print in the 1950s until the mammoth Frank Howard came along. When anyone asked Bilko how much he weighed, as so many did, he’d say between 200 and 300. Years later he told […]

Serving as the pitching coach for the Big Red Machine is a bit like being the drummer in Billy Joel’s band. Even if you’re an integral part of an exceptional team, only the most devoted and hard-core observers will ever know your name as opposed to the headline-grabbing main attraction. While the Reds’ offense and […]

It is fitting that Bill Sayles started his big league career in Boston. The Sayles family had come full circle. He may not have realized it, but he was not the first of his family to ply his trade in Massachusetts. His ancestors landed on Boston’s shore before Boston was Boston. The Sayles family can […]

Steve Balboni played for the New York Yankees and the Kansas City Royals before he bookended brief stints with the Seattle Mariners and the Texas Rangers around a second tour with the Yankees. He owns four World Series rings, one as a player with the Royals and three as an advance scout with the San […]

Frank M. Schulte was the slugging right fielder for the great Chicago Cubs teams of 1906-10. After his first start on September 21, 1904, “Wildfire” remained with the Windy City club until 1916, and outlasted the likes of Mordecai Brown, Frank Chance, Johnny Evers, and Joe Tinker, who by the end of Schulte’s days in […]

Though a renowned power hitter in 12 seasons in the Pacific Coast League and a bit player in a handful of films at midcentury, Frankie Kelleher’s top billing as a slugger and a star is perhaps dubiously enshrined in a one-night performance he sparked on a hot Los Angeles Sunday afternoon in 1953, a scene […]

When Ron Theobald had finally had enough, when six years in the minors had led to nothing, a faltering wig business saved his hopes of a big-league career. Theobald told the story to a Wisconsin State Journal writer in June 1971, by which time he was a 27-year-old Milwaukee Brewers rookie. Less than two years […]

Although the home grounds of the Baltimore Orioles of the nineteenth century occupied several locations, the team found a permanent setting at Union Park between 1891 and 1899. Baseball in Baltimore began around 1855. In 1882, as a charter member of the American Association, they were known as the Lord Baltimores. They won only 19 […]