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Joe DiMaggio – a 56-game hitting streak. It’s a statistic engraved in the minds of almost anyone who has followed baseball. Ted Williams had a record streak of his own, an equally impressive one. In 1949 he reached base safely in 84 consecutive games. DiMaggio’s celebrated 1941 hitting streak ended when he failed to get […]

“The [Chicago] Cubs, who haven’t won a world championship since 1908, have had only one winning season since 1972,” wrote Sports Illustrated’s Steve Wulf in his assessment of the National League East prior to the start of the 1989 season. “You can be certain this will not be their second.”1 Wulf was not alone. Several […]

In the mid-1960s, noted artist Norman Rockwell lived and painted in the Berkshires region of Western Massachusetts.1 The baseball-related events that took place there on Thursday, May 13, 1965, seem perfectly suited to his brush—wholesome, all-American, small-townish, and, to a twenty-first-century eye, vanishingly obsolete. Schools in the small city of North Adams let out at […]

The second game of the August 3, 1909, ladies day doubleheader between the Boston Red Sox and Detroit Tigers was marked by an increased police presence, as a “riot call” went out between the games.2 Two ambulances and additional police squads from almost every station in Boston arrived on the scene to contain the record […]

Hideo Nomo threw two no-hitters (one with the Dodgers) and struck out 17 in April 1996 against the Marlins. (Copyright Jerry Coli /dreamstime.com.)   It was a busy night for sports in the Los Angeles area on Saturday, April 13, 1996. The Dodgers had a home game with Japanese sensation Hideo Nomo starting, which usually […]

For the New York Giants and Christy Mathewson, things could not get much better than they were in 1905. Coming off a National League championship the year before, by mid-June the Giants were comfortably in first place with a winning percentage of .725 and a sizable lead over the second-place Philadelphia Phillies. Mathewson was the […]

Elyria, Ohio, 23 miles southwest of Cleveland, was a growing town of about 13,000 in 1907. Factories there produced steel, pipe, and automobiles, including the luxurious Studebaker-Garford touring cars. Elyria was proud of its semipro baseball team. Competing against local opponents, the team won three consecutive pennants in the Cleveland and Southwestern Trolley League from […]

It was a Tuesday afternoon at Ted Williams’s favorite homer haven – Briggs Stadium in Detroit. His first nine home runs of 1950 had all come at home, at Boston’s Fenway Park. This game became something of a “Ted and Junior” show. Williams hit two home runs in the game and so did Vern “Junior” […]

Each team in the Class A South Atlantic League, aka the Sally League, was affiliated with a major-league club in 1949. For the Greenville (South Carolina) Spinners, it was the Brooklyn Dodgers. For the Macon (Georgia) Peaches, it was the Chicago Cubs. After getting drafted by the Dodgers organization from the Philadelphia Phillies’ organization in […]

This Friday afternoon game in Cincinnati was the one and only major-league win for Boston Braves right-hander Al Yeargin. Young Yeargin had appeared in the Braves’ last game of the season in 1922 and lost, despite having been hit for only one earned run in seven innings. The Braves were shut out that day by […]

On a mercilessly hot, mid-afternoon day at Busch Stadium, the St. Louis Cardinals, behind the prodigious power of star first baseman Albert Pujols, defeated the Minnesota Twins 5-3 on June 27, 2009. Pujols’ two home runs accounted for four of the five Cardinals runs and put reliever Josh Kinney, recently recalled from Triple-A Memphis, in […]

It had been a terrible week for the Philadelphia Phillies. On Sunday, September 20, after beating the Dodgers in Los Angeles, 3-2, the Phillies had a 6½-game lead over their closest pursuers for the National League pennant, the Cincinnati Reds and the St. Louis Cardinals. After that win, the Phillies returned to Philadelphia and Connie […]

After a season spent at or near the top of the league and the ultimate prize within sight, the exhausted Athletics arrived in St. Louis on September 20 with a 2-½ game lead over the Browns. As fans back in Philadelphia anxiously awaited news and planned a victory parade, the Athletics and Browns split the […]

Baseball wasn’t the only thing on the minds of Bostonians on September 1, 1897. That was the day that the first subway system in the United States began operations. Motorman James Reed drove the first car, bearing about 150 people and departing Park Street station at 6:02 A.M. Conductor Gilman Trufent collected the 5-cent fares. […]

Charlton Jimerson was named the Most Outstanding Player of the 2001 College World Series for the champion Miami Hurricanes. He also had nine major-league at-bats. At 6-feet-3-inches tall with a playing weight of 210 pounds, Jimerson was a combination of speed and power. Charlton Maxwell Jimerson was born on September 22, 1979, in San Leandro, […]

The Cleveland Indians paid Pat Donahue $200 for a tip that led to the signing of Bob Feller in 1935. They later gave him another $200 to forestall him from making any claims for additional compensation. Donahue saw Rapid Robert while umpiring a semipro game in Des Moines. Before he moved on to umpiring, and […]

It was said of Edgar Smith that he perhaps “lost more one-run games than any pitcher who ever played the game.”1 Hard luck seemed to follow him. He once started the season 0-10, and yet was named to the American League All-Star team. Eddie Smith, a switch-hitting southpaw, pitched 10 years in the big leagues […]

There are many Moonlight Grahams. One is a quasi-relative of mine who signed a contract with the Cleveland Indians and made their roster but never got into a major-league game. Carter Hamilton was from a small town in Iowa. He was a pitching star at the University of Iowa and was signed to an Indians […]

With his trademark dark glasses and red socks, Bob Addie, the son of a New York City butcher, was a respected and popular fixture on the Washington sports and social scene for almost 40 years. A columnist and Senators beat writer for the Washington Times-Herald and the Washington Post, Addie served as president of the […]

There have been a number of horribly inauspicious rookie debuts over the century and a half of major-league baseball. In 1901 Pete Loos threw 18 consecutive balls to start his only game. In 1945 Joe Cleary surrendered seven runs while recording only one out for a 189.00 ERA. On September 21, 1922, Doc Hamann arguably […]

Charlie Hartman was the first “cup of coffee” player – a one-game wonder – for the Boston Red Sox, playing in just one big-league game, on June 24, 1908. Hartman is enough of a mystery that before this author began researching him for Red Sox Threads, most standard sources didn’t indicate whether he batted left […]

Although most current reference works assign Oliver Hazard Perry Caylor the nickname of Ollie and omit Hazard as one of his middle names, Caylor made it known that his full name included Hazard and he loathed the nickname Ollie, preferring to sign his correspondence either Opie or O.P. Caylor, depending on his spirits at the […]

Samuel Lambeth “Sam” White, who played one game at catcher for the 1919 Boston Braves, was born in Greater Preston, Yorkshire, England, on August 23, 1893. White was the last English-born major leaguer born in the nineteenth century. His parents were James and Hannah (Lambeth) White. Little is known about Sam White’s time in England, […]

The term “nova” is a good metaphor for describing the story of SkyDome. The stadium burst on the scene in 1989 and shone brightly as a state-of-the-art multi-use stadium. It was the first stadium with a fully retractable roof, the first that helped attract 4 million fans in a season for baseball and the first […]