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Billy Hitchcock spent over forty years in professional baseball as a player, manager, scout, coach, and minor league executive. For nine seasons between 1942 and 1953, he was a utility infielder with five major league clubs. He had stints as manager of Detroit, Baltimore and Atlanta in the 1960s. During the decade of the1970s he […]

His childhood is obscured by the mists of time. His death was not mentioned in the sports pages of his home town, where he had started and ended his professional career. No obituaries of him can be found. The casual fan of today knows little about him. Nevertheless, for nearly two decades Charley “Pop” Snyder […]

After starting their 1967 season with a loss, just as they had for the previous six years, the New York Mets sent their newest young star, Tom Seaver, to the mound for the second game of their season-opening series against the Pittsburgh Pirates.1 An audience of 5,005 “polar bears,” among them movie director Alfred Hitchcock, […]

The Chicago Cubs swept all seven games against the New York Mets during the 2015 season but were swept by the Mets, four wins to none, in the National League Championship series. A season later, on June 30, 2016, the Cubs and Mets began their first series of the season, a four-game set at Citi […]

It was hardly a marquee matchup. The Seattle Mariners were seven games below .500, which wasn’t a surprise considering that they had posted a winning record only twice in their 17-year history, and never had they won more than 83 games in a season. The doom and gloom surrounding the Mariners in those days was […]

The Atlanta Braves recorded a major-league-best 925 victories during the 1990s, none so convincingly as their final regular-season game of the decade. The World Series-bound Braves pummeled the hapless Florida Marlins, 18-0, at Turner Field in Atlanta on October 3, 1999, rapping out 21 hits by 15 different players.1 The game tied a 114-year-old team […]

The New York Mets took sole possession of first place in the National League East Division on April 24, 1986, by defeating the St. Louis Cardinals 5-4 in 10 innings, for the sixth win of what turned out to be an 11-game winning streak.1 They built up a six-game lead over the rest of the […]

At 2:30 P.M. on Sunday, June 25, 1972, the police chief, fire chief, and elected officials in Auburn, New York, assembled for an emergency meeting. A state-owned dam on an outlet of Owasco Lake, just south of the city, showed dangerous signs of weakening after the torrential rains of recently departed Hurricane Agnes. If the […]

Mike Piazza had an affinity for Veterans Stadium long before he garnered more votes than any other National League player and was elected as the senior circuit’s starting catcher for the 1996 All-Star Game in Philadelphia. 1 Not only had the Los Angeles Dodgers superstar recorded a hit in 15 of his 16 career games […]

In 1940 baseball was truly America’s national game. But it was played at the major-league level by 16 teams in only 11 cities, none west of St. Louis or south of Cincinnati.1 Minor-league baseball proliferated over the rest of the country, with 39 leagues in six classifications, designated Class AA through Class D. For a […]

Coming into 2001, prognosticators predicted good years for the St. Louis Cardinals and Arizona Diamondbacks. The 2000 National League Central champion Cardinals were nearly everyone’s darling. The Sporting News projected them as the best team in the National League.1 New York Times baseball writers unanimously predicted they’d win the NL Central Division; two of the […]

Sportswriters toppled over themselves on April 23, 1921, to describe the feats of minor-league pitcher Harry Biemiller the day before. The Buffalo (New York) Morning Express reported that Biemiller “succeeded in establishing his name in baseball hall of fame” [sic,1 while the Buffalo Enquirer told readers he had “stepped in the baseball hall of fame.”2 […]

A well-known ancient proverb, attributed to Lao Tzu, asserts that “a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.” For Ed Kranepool, an 18-season baseball journey spanning 2,009 appearances began with a single game. That game took place in Buffalo, New York, on July 6, 1962, when Frank Verdi1 — manager of the […]

It was a beautiful Sunday afternoon in Washington, DC. Many families were at the park during the Labor Day holiday weekend, including those staying for the postgame “Kids Run the Bases” opportunity. Patrick Corbin (10-6, 3.15 ERA) hoped to pitch the Nationals (76-58) to a three-game sweep of the Marlins (48-87). The odds were good: […]

The same two cities squared off in the 1915 World Series as had in 1914, but the teams were different. In 1914 Boston’s National League team — the Braves (the so-called “Miracle Braves”) — had swept the Series in four games from the Philadelphia Athletics of the American League.1 In 1915 the Boston Red Sox […]

Naturally, the Rockies were glad to return home to Denver, even though the Red Sox led the 2007 World Series two games to none. They’d won five games in a row at Coors Field, including two postseason games, and 10 of their last 11. They had a home record of 51-31 during the regular season. […]

The Cincinnati Reds’ Fred Toney was a big, 6-foot-2, rugged 200-pound pitcher, but even he didn’t expect to take the mound twice on a hot summer day in the Queen City. The Reds were in the midst of a grueling stretch of games when they prepared for a Sunday- afternoon twin bill with the Pittsburgh […]

Washington Nationals manager Jim Riggleman had resigned the day before in a contract dispute. He had given an ultimatum to general manager Mike Rizzo: “Exercise my 2012 option or I’ll resign.” Rizzo had told Riggleman, “We will not discuss your option during the season.” Rizzo ignored the ultimatum, Riggleman resigned, and Rizzo appointed bench coach […]

Every once in a while, a marathon — 26.2 grueling miles of running — will come down to the final 400 yards or so, with the top two competitors sprinting head to head for the tape with every bit of energy they have left.1 And every so often, a baseball season — “a marathon, not […]

In 1910 attendance at the South End Grounds, home of the Boston Doves, was the lowest in the National League. By all accounts, only 985 fans showed up to see “the first game of the last series of 1910 on the local grounds,”1 a contest between Boston and the Philadelphia Phillies. The spectators witnessed the […]

Before the 2020 baseball season got underway, the national pastime was rocked by scandal. An investigation by Major League Baseball revealed that both the Houston Astros and Boston Red Sox, World Series winners in 2017 and 2018, respectively, were involved in using technology to steal opponents’ signs and gain an illegal advantage. As a result, […]

It looked like the best-of-five National League Championship Series was going to be a short one. The Montreal Expos had outhit Los Angeles in Game One, but they couldn’t get the big hit when they needed it. The frustrating loss was their 10th in a row at Dodger Stadium and the 19th in their last […]

The Expos and Phillies, sporting identical 89-70 records, went head-to-head in a three-game series at Olympic Stadium on the final weekend of the 1980 season to determine the champions of the NL East. After defeating Montreal 2-1 on Friday night on a pair of RBIs from Mike Schmidt, Philadelphia clinched the division on Schmidt’s dramatic […]

Editor’s note: This article was originally published in the June 2018 edition of the SABR Black Sox Scandal Research Committee Newsletter.   The Black Sox trial jury included, front row from left: Paul Luebke, Stephen Shuben, Harry Willis, William Barry (foreman), Joseph Vesely, bailiff H. Poppie; back row: bailiff James Gaul, John Schoenhofer, Edward Linman, […]