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The Pittsburgh Pirates were eager to open the 1954 season following a disastrous 1953. That year the Pirates went 50-104, finishing 55 games behind the league-leading Brooklyn Dodgers. On the “brighter” side, their record was an improvement over the 42-112 record of 1952. Throughout the mid-1950s, the Pirates frequently joined the Chicago Cubs in the […]

Sandy Koufax won eight games for the Dodgers in September-October of 1965. (SABR-Rucker Archive.   By October, exhaustion was a standard part of every game for Sandy Koufax. But one out from clinching a World Series berth, the Los Angeles Dodgers ace reached new depths of fatigue. “I don’t remember ever being so tired in […]

Few Flatbushers made the effort to attend the game on a cloudy, warm afternoon.1 Just 3,874 – only 12 percent of Ebbets Field’s capacity in 1955 – bore witness to a record-breaking 10th straight win to start the season.2 Before the season, Dodgers President Walter O’Malley reminded Brooklyn that the Dodgers had won four pennants […]

The Syracuse Stars and Toledo Maumees both spent exactly one season in the major leagues – 1890. Manager Charlie Morton steered the Maumees1 – named after the river flowing into Toledo – to a 68-64 record, fourth-best in the American Association, while the Stars, guided by George Frazier, finished the season in seventh place with […]

jeter 20The Yankees were glad to have prevailed in Game One of the ALCS. While they had finished first in the AL East in 2004, with 101 wins, three games ahead of the wild-card Red Sox, the Red Sox had won 11 of 19 regular-season games. And after digging themselves into a very deep hole, […]

The Baltimore Orioles began 1966 questing to break into the upper echelon of the American League after two straight seasons of 90-plus wins and third-place finishes — two games behind the Yankees in 1964, and nine games behind the Twins in 1965. An extra-innings contest against an inferior Red Sox team — 62-100 record and […]

It was not that long ago when the Oakland Athletics were the kings of the American League. The A’s won three straight pennants from 1988 to 1990. Although they won only one world championship during this period, the A’s were hardly challenged. Like a bully flexing their muscles on a beach, Oakland kicked sand in […]

The cover of Sports Illustrated on July 21, 1974, was adorned with a picture of Lou Brock doing what he did best: running the basepaths. The headline on the cover trumpeted what everyone already knew: Brock was a “Thief at Work.” The speedster from El Dorado, Arkansas, was not particular. He committed his brand of […]

Midge: Any one of many small, delicate, long-legged flies of the Chironomus and allied genera which do not bite. Their larvae are usually aquatic.1    After Jacobs Field opened for business in 1994, baseball returned to Cleveland in a winning fashion. From 1995 to 1999, the Indians won five straight American League Central Division championships […]

April 5, 1993, was bound to be an emotional day for fans. It was the final Opening Day at Cleveland Stadium. After many decades of calling the mammoth stadium home, the Tribe was moving across downtown to the Gateway District. There, a new open-air stadium was awaiting them for the 1994 season. Many memories for […]

Glancing at the front page of Milwaukee’s major morning newspaper, the Milwaukee Sentinel, readers could learn the result of the team’s game the day before from the mood depicted by the cartooned image of a Beer Barrel man. If they won, he was shown jumping in glee. If they lost, his head was slumped over, […]

As Boston Herald sportswriter Burton Whitman saw the preseason matchup, “It was the first time in 18 years that Boston teams engaged in Civil War.” However, as Boston Globe sportswriter James C. O’Leary averred, “It will be the first time these two clubs have come together since the days of Old Cy Young and Young […]

The second-place St. Louis Cardinals arrived in Pittsburgh for a three-game series, August 5-7, 1901, against the first-place Pirates. At the beginning of the season, few thought that the Cardinals had any chance to contend. The team finished in fifth place in 1900 and then lost Cy Young and John McGraw to the American League. […]

Baseball was the game for the generation of young men growing up in the post-World War II United States. They played whenever and wherever they could and closely followed “their” major league team, one usually determined by geographic proximity and radio signal strength. Those with skills that stood out pictured themselves in a major league […]

The Detroit Tigers had been to the World Series four times in their 34-year history. Four times, they had suffered defeat. On October 7, 1935, the Tigers, along with the entire city of Detroit, were thirsty for victory, hoping that the fifth time would be a charm. As that Monday morning dawned, the team found […]

Editor’s note: This article first appeared in the Black Sox Scandal Committee’s April 2010 newsletter. Quietly nestled among the renowned sports names charged in the Black Sox Scandal is that of an obscure figure, one Rachael Brown.1 Based on surviving evidence, it appears that Brown was indicted by the Cook County grand jury almost entirely […]

Eddie Lopat rightly earned the nickname the Junkman. The All-Star hurler may not have appeared pretty when getting the job done but, as 166 wins over a 12-year career testified, he found a measure of success. After the southpaw retired, he worked as the pitching coach for the Washington Senators and, following the franchise move […]

Otey Clark pitched right in the middle of the ’40s in the heat of World War II. His major-league career may have lasted only one season but it was a productive season. His first win came against the Chicago White Sox when he pitched a complete game, giving up only two earned runs. For the […]

On September 28, 1903, the New York Highlanders auditioned a 21-year-old right-hander. The surname of this youngster had much in common with the duration of his tenure as a major leaguer — and indeed, his life. All were quick. More particularly, the entire big-league career of Eddie Quick consisted of one game appearance and 12 […]

“He’s that baseball dude who got banned for steroids or something, which makes him more than famous. He’s like infamous, and dangerous, and a kind of cool, a cross between Babe Ruth and Count Dracula.”1 – J.R. Moehringer, writing of Alex Rodríguez in 2015. What is fame? “I’m not too sure but I’ll know it […]

Contemporary observers considered Mike Mowrey one of the best third basemen in baseball. A lifetime .256 hitter with a reputation for being particularly dangerous in the pinches, Mowrey was best known for his unorthodox fielding style—instead of catching a hard smash in his glove, he would knock the ball to the ground and then pick […]

Despite his diminutive size, Charley “Red” Dooin was an outstanding defensive backstop who caught 1,124 games for the Phillies, a team record until Mike Lieberthal topped it in 2006. “This writer has watched catchers from the days of Charley Farrell and Connie Mack and none could go farther for fouls or block off a runner […]

Baseball scouts have historically thrived on anonymity.   They ply their trade in the game’s shadows, rarely drawing acclaim or notoriety.  George Huff was the exception that proves the rule.   As both coach and scout, Huff was intimately involved in baseball for some 30 years.  But in truth baseball was essentially a sideline.  Despite considerable success […]

George Carey, who skipped around professional baseball like a well-thrown rock across a pond, spent four seasons in the major leagues during his professional baseball tenure. Traversing the country from Minneapolis to Memphis in the minor leagues, Carey bracketed his career from 1892 to 1911 — the inauguration years for basketball and the Indianapolis 500, […]