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This rare left-handed catcher had a cup of coffee in the major leagues in the fall of 1888. In his two games, though, he managed to get a hit off a Hall of Famer, Hank O’Day (later inducted as an umpire). As an outfielder, he threw another one, Connie Mack, out at the plate. In the minors, he […]

Frank O’Rourke played professional baseball from the age of (perhaps) 18 to age 45, or even 47. A little more than half of his 1,131 major-league games were as a third baseman (598); he also played 289 games at shortstop and 220 at second. He was a career .254 batter, with 430 RBIs and 547 […]

Orel Hershiser set a major-league record by pitching 59 consecutive scoreless innings in 1988, but he was well behind the mark established by Oliver “Rube” Faulkner, who pitched 78 consecutive scoreless innings in 1903 for the Wilmington (Delaware) Athletics.1 Faulkner was an enigma. A right-hander blessed with talent, he declined opportunities to pitch in the […]

For 20 years, from 1902 to 1921, Jerome Kelly1 served as the groundskeeper for the Boston ballclub in the American League, maintaining the playing field during an era when the team won six American League championships. Jerome Kelly was born on August 8, 1858, in Charlestown, Massachusetts, a town bordering Boston to the north.2 He […]

In the late 19th century, Mike Mattimore emerged from small-town Pennsylvania to play four seasons in the major leagues. On the 1888 Philadelphia Athletics, he showed promise as a pitcher and hitter with a 15-10 record and .268 batting average. But his performance declined, and he was out of baseball by 1892. Michael Joseph Mattimore […]

Racial discrimination did not miraculously disappear in 1863 with the Emancipation Proclamation, nor did it cease with Civil War’s end in 1865. However, even as race relations remain a topic in 2011, the process for dealing with race faced an evolution. Speaking to this evolution, Jerry Malloy, in his Introduction to Sol White’s History of […]

Southpaw submariner Ike Van Zandt was a rarity at the turn of the twentieth century. The motion was deceptive to batters simply because it was uncommon. Van Zandt, variously known as Isaac, Ike or Izzy, played in organized baseball for a decade beginning in 1898. Despite his unique pitching motion, he mainly played in the […]

Just five months before Cleveland’s Ray Chapman was hit on the head and killed by a pitch, Chick Fewster had his own brush with death. It was during spring training, in March of 1920. He was in his fourth season with the New York Yankees, still hoping to become a regular but coming off a […]

A right-handed pitcher with a side-arm, almost underhanded delivery, Earl Caldwell, born on April 9, 1907 in Sparks, Texas, spent most of his lengthy professional baseball career in the minor leagues, winning 323 games, beginning with Temple/Mexia of the Texas Association in 1926 and ending with Harlingen of the Big State League in 1954. Caldwell […]

Jesse “Bill” Williams was one of the premier defensive infielders in the Negro Leagues during his career. “He could field anything that came his way at short and throw batters out from deep in the hole,” one writer said in describing his skills.1 He is also known as the Kansas City Monarchs player who switched […]

It was only after a stint in the United States Air Force that right-hander Dave Hillman entered professional baseball. Named (indirectly or otherwise) after Darius the Great, king of Persia from 550-486 BC, Darius Dutton Hillman was born on September 14, 1927, in the small southwestern Virginia town of Dungannon. The population of Dungannon at […]

If you spend much time at the Hall of Fame perusing the files of obscure players, it will not be long before you find a note written by Joe Simenic. In particular, if you think you’ve found a promising new lead on one of the approximately 250 mystery major leaguers whose death information is unknown, […]

While Fred Cone didn’t have much of a career at the plate with a mere 20 hits in his only season, he banged out one-quarter of those hits in one memorable game for the 1871 Boston Red Stockings. In the team’s July 12 game against the Fort Wayne Kekiongas, Cone collected five hits in a […]

When baseball’s stars convened in Pittsburgh for the 1994 All-Star Game, emerging pennant races and milestone quests shared headlines with labor-management discord. A strike shuttered the majors a month later, relegating the unfinished campaign to an ignominious place in the game’s history, but the National League’s 8-7 win over the American League in 10 innings […]

Matt Kilroy was just 19 years old when he made his major-league debut for the American Association’s Baltimore Orioles on April 17, 1886. It wasn’t any ol’ debut, either; the young left-hander was the Orioles’ Opening Day pitcher. There was “already a buzz”1 in the Oriole Park crowd of approximately 6,000 spectators, as Kilroy had […]

Willie Mays hit 20 home runs and won NL Rookie of the Year honors in 1951. Promoted May 24, he batted .274 with 68 RBIs for New York. (1951 Bowman card, courtesy of Topps)   If you begin your National League career going hitless in three road games, you may as well go for broke and […]

The Chicago White Stockings built a dynasty in the first decade of major-league baseball. A charter member of the National League, they captured the pennant in 1876 and every season from 1880 through 1882. After a second-place finish in 1883, they dropped to fourth in 1884 (tied with the New Yorks).  As the 1885 season […]

After winning the American League Most Valuable Player Award with the Chicago White Sox in 1972, Dick Allen needed some rest. “Toward the end of the season, I was completely exhausted, a nervous wreck,” he admitted. “I’d been carrying the team for months. … I didn’t think I could play anymore.”1 The newly adopted designated-hitter […]

The newly-minted American League was barely a month old on May 23, 1901, when the Cleveland Blues rallied for one of the greatest ninth-inning comebacks in baseball history. Cleveland’s previous major-league team, the National League Spiders, had achieved ignominy two years earlier, in 1899, when they infamously lost 134 games, a record that may never […]

Gene Baker was not, as is sometimes reported, the first Black manager in minor-league baseball. But it was still a significant step forward when the 36-year-old took the reins of the Batavia (New York) Pirates of the Class D New York-Penn League on the night of June 19, 1961. There’s no firm record of a […]

“Dependable Al is Brooklyn’s second line of defense behind the plate. He’s as smart a backstop as you’ll find in baseball and handles pitchers expertly.” – 1957 Topps Al “Rube” Walker card (#147)1   As their battle with the Phillies for the 1950 National League pennant came down to the last day of the season, […]

“From the depths of 17 consecutive second-division finishes,” the Chicago Cubs overpowered the Pittsburgh Pirates in their season opener at Forbes Field.1 In the extra-inning slugfest, Cubs right-hander Larry Jackson, who earned the win with Chicago’s four-run 10th, was kept afloat by his “brash, under-rated” offense.2 While the Pirates’ bats displayed their own power, the […]

In the summer of 1944, the third season of wartime baseball, the Cardinals and Browns were leading their respective leagues on the way to the first-and-only “Meet Me in St. Louis” World Series.1 Down the rungs of the National League standings, the Boston Braves were just trying to stay out of the cellar. The sixth-place […]

Editor’s note: This article was originally published in 2021 as part of the SABR Century 1921 Project. Babe Ruth, Frank Baker, and Bob Meusel were the Yankees’ first version of Murderers’ Row, leading the franchise to its first American League pennant in 1921. (SABR-RUCKER ARCHIVE)   In 1914 Frank “Home Run” Baker, the legendary Deadball […]