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The New York Highlanders had come quickly, rushing into the American League Grounds without a chance to change into their home uniforms. They had been expected earlier that Friday but a train wreck near Terre Haute, Indiana, delayed their return from St. Louis and they did not arrive in New York until noon.1 They would […]

Boston right-hander Bill Dinneen shut out the Pirates, 3-0, allowing just three hits, in the second game of the World Series. Dinneen had been 21-13 with a 2.26 ERA during the regular season. He’d thrown complete-game three-hit shutouts twice before in 1903, on July 4 and August 5. They were two of his six shutouts […]

On the morning of September 8, 1972, Red Sox fans woke up to a reality unthinkable just a month and a half before – the Old Towne Team was in first place in the American League East. On that auspicious Friday morning, Boston Globe writer Ray Fitzgerald summed up the turn of events when he […]

Boston and Montreal — two cities tied together by one of the greatest rivalries in sports. The Boston Bruins and Montreal Canadiens of the National Hockey League have been longtime rivals and frequent postseason foes. The Canadiens are the most successful team in the history of the NHL, with an astounding 24 Stanley Cups won […]

The Cincinnati Reds are the oldest major-league franchise, dating back to 1869. The Philadelphia Phillies, the oldest same-named, same-city team in American sports history, have lost more games than any other franchise in major-league baseball: Their total at the end of 2019 was exactly 11,000. The Reds and Phillies share the unenviable distinction of both […]

As 6,000 faithful fans filed into Braves Field for a 2:30 P.M. game the day before the Fourth of July, they were, according to one Chicago baseball pundit, “downright giddy over their three game sweep over the Cards last weekend.” The fans would have fireworks a day early but not in the format they might […]

Frank Robinson’s solo home run in the first inning was all the offense Baltimore needed, but the Orioles scored a total of 17 runs on as many hits in the first five frames to secure a blowout victory over the Chicago White Sox on July 27, 1969. According to the Baltimore Sun, “The merry-go-round was […]

“You pitch a little bit to the score in a tight game, but in a game like this, you try to keep trudging along with what you’re doing and not let anything affect you. If you can perfect that craft, it pays dividends for you as the season goes along.” – Gerrit Cole1   The […]

As the Cleveland faithful filed into Dunn Field on a pleasant July Saturday afternoon, they had no clue the day would be one of the most auspicious in the history of Cleveland professional baseball. Hopes were running high. The Indians were vying for second place behind the New York Yankees, at the moment 12½ games […]

The New York Mets arrived in Philadelphia after a brief stop in Chicago where the teams could play only one game because of the weather. Gary Gentry pitched spectacularly in that May 13 game, throwing the fifth one-hitter in the team’s short history. The win left the Mets 1½ games behind the division-leading Chicago Cubs. […]

Official records will tell you that Tommy John made his first appearance for the Cleveland Indians — and the first of his 760 appearances in the major leagues — on September 6, 1963, working an inning of relief in a 7-2 loss to the Washington Senators in Washington. But more than two years earlier, 21,885 […]

When the New York Yankees took the field against the Cleveland Indians on June 8, 1921, Babe Ruth was not among them. He was not anywhere to be found in the Polo Grounds. He was instead nine miles downtown, at 300 Mulberry Street, formerly New York police headquarters but then home to the city’s traffic […]

It was time for Ted Williams to unload. He came into the Tuesday night game in Detroit hitless in his last six at-bats. He was facing Jim Bunning, against whom he had been 0-for-7 to this point in 1958. Nine days earlier, Bunning had no-hit the Red Sox at Fenway Park. Williams was 0-for-4 in […]

On Tuesday, June 16, 1914, the St. Louis Terriers welcomed the visiting Brooklyn Tip-Tops for the first of a four-game series. After 55 games, the Terriers sat in seventh place in the Federal League, a few percentage points ahead of cellar-dwelling Pittsburgh. The Tip-Tops occupied fifth place, three games under .500. The St. Louis nine […]

Greg Minton did everything for the San Francisco Giants during the 1982 season, including stealing the team bus. More about that later. The right-handed relief ace achieved a milestone when he recorded his 30th save of the season in the Giants’ come-from-behind 5-4 victory over the Los Angeles Dodgers on September 25 at Dodger Stadium. […]

Connie Johnson, at age 30, joined the Chicago White Sox in the spring of 1953. He was no stranger to Chicago’s Comiskey Park; he had pitched there in his days with the Kansas City Monarchs. His most recent appearance at Comiskey was the 1950 East-West Game, a Negro League All-Star Game featuring the best Black […]

It was only fitting that Tom Glavine was on the mound for the Atlanta Braves in Game Six of the 1995 World Series. After all, he was on the mound during the franchise’s leanest years, leading the National League in losses in 1988. He was on the mound for the Braves’ dramatic turnaround in 1991, […]

The St. Louis Cardinals evened things up, winning Game Two of the 2013 World Series, 4-2, and ending Boston’s five-game World Series winning streak over St. Louis, dating back to their sweep in 2004. One could well say that rookie right-hander Michael Wacha was the star of the game for St. Louis. After debuting with […]

The Chicago White Sox were headed to the playoffs! Needing either a win or a loss by the Kansas City Royals, Chicago was on the verge of playing for the American League crown. The mid-September game itself had somewhat symbolically been delayed, held up for 38 minutes because of a heavy rainstorm. Even after the […]

It was an epic pitchers’ duel between the Philadelphia Athletics’ Jack Coombs and the Chicago White Sox’ Big Ed Walsh. “Sixteen scoreless innings of desperate pastiming with dusk the winner,”1 declared the Philadelphia Inquirer, while the Chicago Tribune opined, “[N]either side had the shadow of a right to win against such pitching.”2 Windy City sportswriter […]

The Philadelphia Phillies and St. Louis entered the opening game of the three-game series, tied for the second-best record in the National League (40-28), 3½ games behind the NL Central-leading Chicago Cubs (43-24).1 The starting pitchers, Kyle Kendrick (Phillies) and Todd Wellemeyer (Cardinals), entered the game going in opposite directions.2 Phillies first baseman Ryan Howard […]

Depending on who you listened to, the New York Yankees were either shell-shocked or coolly determined as they approached the third game of the 1963 World Series. The venue had shifted across the continent to Los Angeles, but the pall of the Yankees’ losses to the Los Angeles Dodgers in the first two games of […]

June 19, June 20, and July 3, 1928 – during a 15-day span, shortstop Freddie Moncewicz, fresh out of college, played out his entire major-league career with the Boston Red Sox on these three dates. He also played briefly in the minor leagues in 1929. Moncewicz may not have had a lengthy baseball career, but […]

New York Giants manager John McGraw considered Bugs Raymond one of the greatest pitchers he ever managed—or tried to manage. “What a terrific spitball pitcher he was,” teammate Rube Marquard later reminisced. “Bugs drank a lot, you know, and sometimes it seemed the more he drank the better he pitched. They used to say he […]