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As the 2012 season opened, Philadelphia Phillies ace Roy Halladay rode the crest of a decade of dominance. But he had injured his back seriously during the 2011 postseason; it would soon end his celebrated career and lead to painkiller addiction and tragic death. Any signs of concern were scarce on Opening Day, however, as […]

It would have been a wonder had the New York Giants not felt dismal the morning of August 11, 1951. They had just lost three straight to Brooklyn at Ebbets Field and were a distant 12½ games out of first place. Now they had to face Philadelphia’s Robin Roberts who, at 15-8, was tied with […]

The Boston Red Sox hosted a Friday afternoon game against the St. Louis Browns on September 14, 1951. The Red Sox were still in the hunt for the American League pennant. They were just 3½ games out of first place, and had won a walkoff game against the Browns the day before when Johnny Pesky […]

In 1997 and 1998, Fernando Tatis played in 210 games for the Texas Rangers and St. Louis Cardinals, hitting .266 with 19 homers and 87 RBIs. The Dominican native grabbed national attention in 1999 when he made baseball history by hitting two grand slams against Chan Ho Park in one inning on April 23. He […]

Harold C. Burr gave a tepid review of the Dodgers pitching staff that headed into the 1952 World Series. “Some are pitchers with good arms, some with sore arms, some with tired arms, and some with no arms at all,” he wrote. “But it’s by this motley corps that the Dodgers must rise or fall […]

The 1981 season marked Eddie Miller’s first extended stay in the major leagues. The 24-year-old Atlanta Braves outfielder was finally getting an opportunity to secure a position on the team, after a brief trial with Texas and three seasons of shuffling between Atlanta and the minors. With Claudell Washington and Dale Murphy manning right field […]

In the strike-torn season of 1981, the story of the Kansas City Royals’ Mike Jones could have been an uplifting underdog tale. With his team down one game to none in the American League Division Series, Royals manager Dick Howser tapped 22-year-old left-hander Jones to start Game Two against the Oakland A’s. Jones had been […]

As the baseball players’ strike got under way in June 1981, one touchy and undefined subject involved the prospect of minor-league teams playing games in vacant major-league ballparks. The Charleston Charlies and Tidewater Tides of the Triple-A International League drew national attention when players on both teams voted to reject a proposal by the Charlies’ […]

Early in the 2006 season, the Baltimore Orioles were no strangers to blowouts, having beaten the Tampa Bay Devil Rays 16-6 in their second game of the season on April 5 before losing 14-8 to the Boston Red Sox on April 7. They ran off a string of one-run victories against the Devil Rays and […]

It was an explosive night in Pittsburgh: St. Louis Cardinals hitters finally broke out of a grueling slump and Bob Gibson avenged a loss in one of his most commanding performances in a dominant season. Pirates rookie Freddie Patek called Gibson “the hardest throwing pitcher I’ve seen,” while All-Star Gene Alley could only shake his […]

A combination of fine weather, a state holiday,1 the largest recorded crowd at the South End Grounds to date, and serious Boston batting made the Beaneaters’ 1896 home opener an event to be remembered for some time, although not for the quality of the baseball. In 1896 the South End Grounds in its third iteration […]

It was a beautiful day for baseball, with the temperature in the mid-60s. Sunshine would have made it perfect, but despite the clouds and overcast, a great crowd of 52,168 showed up at Tiger Stadium on the afternoon of Friday, October 5, 1984, for Game Three of the American League Championship Series. Fans in Detroit […]

On April 15, 2013, Mike Napoli’s bat and Dustin Pedroia’s hustle gave the Boston Red Sox a 3-2 win in their traditional late-morning home game on Patriots Day and Marathon Monday, the Red Sox’ second walk-off in three days over the Tampa Bay Rays. Just minutes after this game ended, the day’s significance was forever […]

By 1914, New York Giants executives had accepted that inconsistent performances had become the norm for Rube Marquard, but they could not have predicted that he was about to make a decision that could have left him exiled to life as a baseball pariah and “certain to be hard ridden by the rooters” in the […]

The dreary weather for the San Francisco Giants’ 1985 finale matched the gloom that engulfed the downtrodden franchise. Some 14,537 fans showed up on a Sunday afternoon – a large crowd by Giants’ standards of the day1 – potentially to witness unwanted history and possibly to see their team play in San Francisco for the […]

Charles G. “Charlie” Fisher played just 11 games in the majors, and that’s based on the status of the Union Association of 1884 as a top-level circuit. Yet the infielder still has a unique distinction. Alaska is known as the “Last Frontier” for good reasons. With an abundance of unsettled land and a sparse human […]

The game of baseball attracts all types of personalities, from the angry to the stoic to the eccentric to the comedic and everything in between. William M. “Big Bill” Brown, who played in the majors from 1887 through 1894, definitely falls into the comedic category, though he was also quite serious about the game. Though […]

The Cleveland Indians’ pitching staff for the 1957 season reads like a Who’s Who: Early Wynn, Mike Garcia, Don Mossi, Bob Lemon, Ray Narleski, Cal McLish and Herb Score. Then there was Stan Pitula, one of the Indians’ top pitching prospects, who spent the 1957 season with Cleveland. He made 5 starts and 18 relief […]

A teenage shooting incident, fueled by jealousy, could have ended Van Dorn Tappan’s baseball career before it started. But the young man beat a charge of second-degree murder, freeing him to pursue a journey that included a brief stint as a slick-fielding, light-hitting infielder with the 1914 Kansas City Packers of the Federal League. After […]

Left-handed reliever Craig Skok pitched for three major-league ballclubs — the Red Sox, the Rangers, and the Braves — during the 1970s, throwing 150 innings in 107 games. He might have had some baseball in his blood. Craig’s father Joe was mistakenly reported at one point as having been a player in the Red Sox […]

“He’s too young to throw a no-hitter!”1 With the words of Cincinnati Redlegs manager Birdie Tebbetts still ringing in his ears, 17-year-old southpaw Dave Skaugstad took the mound on September 29, 1957 at Milwaukee’s County Stadium. Appearing in his second major-league game, he relieved 20-year-old rookie Jay Hook, who’d held the National League pennant-winning Milwaukee […]

Archibald “Moonlight” Graham played in only one major league game in his life, and never got a chance to bat. In the movie Field of Dreams, the fictional Moonlight Graham gets a second chance on the mythical Field of Dreams, pinch-hitting and knocking in a run with a sacrifice fly. But for Jack Feller and […]

He won 31 games as a 20-year-old minor-leaguer and became one of the top young pitching prospects in the country. One publication described Kid Camp as follows: “He is a wonder. Quick and agile as a cat with muscles of iron, he is a representative of the highest type of ball players.”1 Another predicted that […]

“You Called That a What . . . ?”The Newsletter of the Official Scoring Committee Society for American Baseball Research (SABR) January 2017, Volume 2, Number 1 Past newsletters   Editor: Stew Thornley Howdy Conundrum of the Month (or Quarter or Whatever) Scoring the Shift Interview with Ben Trittipoe Guest Column: Alan Cohen Obstruction: Error […]