Search Results

When the Red Sox season ended on September 28, 1975, Andy Merchant trotted off the field and the Red Sox had only their third American League postseason berth since 1918. The Red Sox had clinched the division title the day before, thanks to the New York Yankees, who had swept a doubleheader from the second-place […]

On October 27, 2005, less than four weeks after his final appearance of the 2005 baseball season, St. Louis Cardinal pitcher Cal Eldred announced his retirement. The disclosure was somewhat surprising in that Eldred was coming off a season in which he posted a 2.19 earned run average (ERA) over thirty-seven innings. His workload, without question, was […]

For Stan Palys playing baseball wasn’t just a career, it was an odyssey. An odyssey that began in Carbondale, Pennsylvania, in 1950 and — with MLB stops in Philadelphia and Cincinnati in between — took him to Schenectady, Syracuse and Terre Haute; to Charleston, Birmingham and Nashville; to Corpus Christi, Puerto Rico and Panama; to […]

Being able to hear the sounds of the game is important to a baseball player, particularly to an outfielder. Hearing the distinctive sound of bat meeting ball enables the fielder to be off at the crack of the bat, getting a jump on the ball, and racing to the spot where he can catch the […]

Lenny Levy’s career defies conventional logic. A washout in one year of minor-league D-level baseball (years later, Baseball Digest called him “hardly more than a semipro player”), he fashioned a professional career with the Pittsburgh Pirates that began in 1934 and ended in 1964 with only a break for World War II. He was a […]

With superb control and a rising fastball, left-hander Reb Russell rose to stardom with one of the best rookie pitching performances of the Deadball Era, notching 22 victories and tossing eight shutouts for the Chicago White Sox in 1913. A typical Russell start featured few walks, few strikeouts, few runs, and many balls hit in […]

“Can you suggest a single reason why all the baseball umpires should not be women? Of course you can’t. I mean just what I say, seriously, that all the official baseball umpires of the country should be women.”1 A statement that the baseball world has long disagreed with but was stated in 1906 by a […]

Crank: a baseball fan in the late 19th century. “The real, simon-pure baseball crank … thinks baseball, talks baseball, dreams baseball and, does all but play it. It is generally a fact that the real baseball crank cannot play right-field in even a ‘scrub nine.’” — Milwaukee Sentinel, October 12, 1884   They were there […]

A crafty hitter and disputatious competitor, Jesse Burkett won three National League batting titles from 1895 to 1901 before finishing his 16-year-career in the American League with a lifetime .338 batting average. Twice a .400 hitter, Burkett stands larger in the record books than he did in real life. Upon his election to the Hall […]

Harry Luff was amenable to manning every position on the diamond except catcher. That afforded him brief tours of duty in four different 19th-century major leagues: the National Association (1875); National League (1882); American Association (1882-1883), and Union Association (1884). He also played in various minor leagues during an 11-season professional career that ended in […]

Any number of the marginal talents listed in the major-league record book owe their entries to either of the two momentous roster-shaping events of the late-Deadball Era: the two-season run of the renegade Federal League of 1914-1915 or American entry into World War I in April 1917. Whether pitcher Bill Upham falls into the first […]

Major-league ball was an every-other-year thing for Howard Fitzgerald. The outfielder and pinch hitter played in the big leagues in 1922, 1924, and 1926, and then never again. He was a native of Eagle Lake, Texas – born there on May 16, 1902, at Shaw’s Bend. Eagle Lake is about 70 miles almost due west […]

Bill Baker immersed himself in baseball as a player, coach, umpire, and youth program leader. His playing skills were just adequate–good enough to hold a roster spot over seven seasons on three clubs, including a World Series champion, but with enough deficiencies that he rarely started. And when he finally reached the majors as a […]

Gordon McLendon made it all up. He made up his radio persona, “the Old Scotchman,” an 83-year-old expert on American baseball. He made up the games he was describing, sitting in a studio hundreds of miles away from ballparks he had never seen. When major-league owners denied him permission to broadcast, he went on the […]

Bill Cooney was part of an extended family of professional ballplayers. He was related to Jimmy Cooney, who played major-league baseball in the 1890s and was the father of major leaguers Jimmy and Johnny Cooney as well as having two other sons who played minor-league baseball.1 William Ambrose (or as he was known at various […]

When it came to baseball, left-handed outfielder Charlie Eden was born a century too soon. An able batsman but atrocious in the field, Eden might well have had an extended major league career as a designated hitter if his playing days had begun in the 1970s. As it was, his offensive prowess—plus some pitching—ability afforded […]

“Pitchers by the name of Fitzgerald are becoming confusingly numerous,” grumbled Sporting Life in late July 1891.1 Occasioning the baseball weekly’s consternation was likely the recent acquisition of pitcher John Fitzgerald by the Boston Reds of the major league American Association. Simultaneously pitching elsewhere in major or high minor league baseball were Fitzgeralds named Warren […]

“Pretty as the first flush of a June morn and as shapely as a peachblow vase filled with violets and many-hued pansies.” That’s how the Chicago Tribune described a tall, blond, and strikingly handsome 21-year-old Harley Parker in his 1893 debut for the Chicago Colts.1 Thirteen years later, when the right arm of the less […]

According to his obituary in 1891, Bill Crowley was “at one time, one of the best ball players that donned a uniform.”1 A 5-foot-7, 159-pound right-handed outfielder, Crowley often played bigger than his size, and was considered one of the heaviest and hardest hitters of his time.2 Crowley was known primarily for his defensive prowess, […]

Right-hander Bill Yerrick pitched in a total of five games for the late nineteenth-century Boston Beaneaters. He was 1-0 for the team in 1895 but didn’t see his surname in a newspaper story or box score because he earned his first and only major league win as an “experimental pitcher” playing under the pseudonym “Banks.” […]

Late-19th century American life could be grisly. Annually, from 1880 to 1900, some 35,000 workers died and another 500,000 were injured.1 Away from the workplace, the deadly and maiming effects of fires, explosions, and railroads took up volumes of newsprint. Medical and public health advances that would add decades to American lifespans lay mostly on […]

The last baseball game ever played at the Polo Grounds was the one and only Latin American major league players’ game. The charity benefit match wasn’t close — the National League defeated the American League 5-2, and the AL scored only in the ninth inning. Nor did it have any official status. Nonetheless, it gained […]

The Kansas City Athletics donned their uniforms and white shoes (those same shoes that caused such a controversy at the season’s beginning) for the last time — or at least with the name Kansas City behind it. What started as a season of optimism ended like so many others, in last place, only this time […]