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The Texas Rangers hosted the Chicago White Sox on October 1, 1972, three days before the end of the strike-shortened season.1 Last-place Texas had lost 15 consecutive games, dating back to September 13, and only three times in that span did the Rangers score more than three runs. They came into this game with a record […]

Home fans at Forbes Field booed Roberto Clemente on the first Sunday of the 1969 season, the 15th of his legendary career with the Pittsburgh Pirates, following inflammatory local press coverage of a spring-training injury, three comeback-stalling double plays in two games, and an error in right field. Clemente acknowledged the crowd graciously, tipping his […]

The Northern Independent League, formerly known as the Northern New York League, was expected to go from four to six teams in 1906 by expanding into two Canadian cities, Montreal and Ottawa.1 But when Montreal’s application was “turned down with a thud,” the league made a curious decision.2 It admitted Ottawa and began the season […]

“People don’t know how good the Pacific Coast League is,” a onetime miner named H.V. “Hardrock Bill” Lane said in 1935. “There’s Oakland, or San Francisco.”1 A year later he moved the then-Double-A Hollywood Stars to San Diego, renamed them Padres for a nearby mission, opened single-tier 9,100-seat Lane Field, and began to fill a […]

The Southern Tier Expressway does not lend itself to reflection or nostalgia. The six-lane divided highway breaks off from Interstate 81 in Binghamton, New York, and heads west, offering drivers — when construction allows — the fastest possible route to Elmira, Corning, the Finger Lakes, and other destinations in the Empire State’s southern and western […]

Over its first five decades, the Kansas City Royals have had only three ownership regimes. Pharmaceutical entrepreneur Ewing Kauffman landed the Royals expansion franchise for the 1969 season and believed that the team could and should be competitive in a previously unprecedented time frame. He was willing to innovate and spend to boost the Royals […]

Editor’s note: This article was originally published in 2021 as part of the SABR Century 1921 Project. Two players from the Waseda University baseball team from Japan, catcher J. Nagano and second baseman J. Kuji, pose for a photo in 1921. (LIBRARY OF CONGRESS)   In 1921 baseball grew in popularity in Japan. More amateur […]

Twenty-two people, including a couple of new faces, attended the July 16, 2012, Bob Broeg SABR Chapter meeting at The Original Crusoe’s in South St. Louis. Chapter president Norm Richards encouraged those present to keep their SABR membership current. Chapters recently received lists of current and former members. While the Bob Broeg Chapter doesn’t make […]

When the president of the United States is in your golf foursome because you led your university to a baseball championship a quarter of a century earlier, things are going your way. That sums up a highpoint in the life of Al Hubbard,1 who played in just two major-league games two days apart toward the […]

The Negro Leagues featured many of baseball’s greatest two-way players: Leon Day, Martín Dihigo, Ted “Double Duty” Radcliffe, and Bullet Rogan. Yet before these leagues began in 1920, many Black players alternated between pitching and position play. Few in this era excelled in multiple roles as did Harry Buckner. From 1896 to 1914, the righthander […]

For an obscure two-season pitcher, mid-1880s left-hander Cyclone Miller had a disproportionate effect on the major league record book. For example, without Miller and his contribution to the troubles of the 1884 Providence Grays, it is improbable that teammate Hoss Radbourn would have won 60 games that year, the all-time major league single-season record. Nor […]

Overcoming the physical obstacle of often being his team’s smallest ballplayer, Paul Radford played in 1,361 games for nine different teams during a 12-year major-league career that spanned 1883 to 1894. A biography written at the end of his career summarized how that the 5-foot-6, 150-pound Radford was able to survive so long in the […]

“Buck Ewing was simply terrific.” — George Lippe1 William “Buck” Ewing had the good fortune of being in the right place at the right time at least twice during his otherwise itinerant Negro League career. He found himself on the Chicago American Giants in 1920 at the outset of his career as Rube Foster’s franchise […]

Steve McCatty, a big right-hander who pitched for the Oakland A’s from 1977-1985, was known for his fun-loving nature. Sports Illustrated said he was “the leading prankster on . . . a team of practical jokers.”1 Philadelphia infielder John Vukovich called him “a bona fide nut.”2 And A’s beat writer Glenn Schwarz described him as […]

Few if any baseball men have worked harder for longer than Mel Didier. He pitched just two years in Class D, but he spent more than 60 years in professional baseball as a scout and executive. As former Los Angeles Dodgers GM Fred Claire said, “I don’t know of anyone who has been in more […]

It must have been difficult living in the shadows of two older brothers: Harry, hailed as “The Father of Professional Baseball,” and George, a baseball legend, top cricket player, successful sporting goods businessman, and a pioneer who helped bring golf and tennis to the United States. It is not surprising that what we know of […]

Floyd (“Jack”) Farmer, baseball and football star at Cumberland University (Lebanon, Tennessee), was the only player in the first 135 years of the major leagues to hail from that institution.1 Farmer enjoyed a solid debut as a second-half starter for the sixth-place 1916 Pittsburgh Pirates, and as an occasional double-play partner of 42-year-old Honus Wagner.2 […]

Tall left-hander Frank Scanlan was a top-flight prospect who reached the 1909 Philadelphia Phillies while still a teenager. Prior to that, he had been an underage pitching standout at the University of Notre Dame. In addition to a talented arm, the Phillies phenom also had impressive ballplayer bloodlines, having three brothers in the professional ranks. […]

With a major-league career that comprised only 39 games, Herbert Harrison Hunter still managed to play in baseball’s four biggest markets: New York, Chicago, Boston, and St. Louis. After 1920, in which he played in four games for the Boston Red Sox, Hunter became a baseball tour impresario of sorts, leading a group of major […]

Like the hotel wallpaper, Ashley Lloyd was little noticed at the National League meetings that he regularly attended as a front-office executive and minority-interest baseball club owner. Now a century later, Lloyd is virtually forgotten, with his name mentioned only in passing, if at all, in most histories of the Cincinnati Reds and New York […]

A sturdy right-handed pitcher from Puerto Rico, Eduardo Rodríguez Reyes is not to be confused with Venezuelan lefty Eduardo Rodriguez Hernández. Rodríguez Reyes spent seven years in the major leagues (1973-79) and compiled a 42-36 record with a 3.89 ERA. His sterling yet limited batting line (one plate appearance, one triple) carries historical relevance: it […]

Harold Baines played 22 years in the majors (1980-2001), mostly with the Chicago White Sox. In 2019, following years of brisk and at times vociferous debate, Baines was enshrined in the National Baseball Hall of Fame. Though he led the league just once in any offensive category, he was a major threat at the plate. […]

Years after Ken Szotkiewicz played in his final major-league game, his name still surfaces in baseball trivia. It is not often due to his on-field exploits; rather, it tends to appear on lists of big leaguers born in Delaware (of whom there are relatively few), or on lists of big leaguers with the most peculiar […]

“Wish we had him. He is not colored.”1 Those were the words that Frank Bancroft, the Cincinnati Reds’ business manager, wrote to team president and National Commission Chairman Garry Herrmann in 1911 about Rafael Almeida. The Reds were in the midst of acquiring Almeida and fellow Cuban player Armando Marsans, and, as the first two […]