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On April 26, 1875, two games into the season, the Brooklyn Atlantics peaked. They vaulted to fifth place in the National Association that day, thanks to John Cassidy’s 3-2 win over the Elm Citys of New Haven. Entering play exactly a month later, May 26, the Atlantics had nothing to show but 10 additional losses, […]

“It was a dark and stormy” day. It was the kind of day that might have inspired Edward Bulwer-Lytton to open his 1830 novel, Paul Clifford, with the now cliché “It was a dark and stormy night.”1 It was the kind of day the fictional Snoopy, in myriad Peanuts cartoons, would start with those same […]

The Philadelphia Phillies had hoped to play their 1970 season at the new Veterans Stadium, but delays in construction meant the 1970 season would at least begin at Connie Mack Stadium. Built in 1909 and originally called Shibe Park, Connie Mack Stadium was the home of the Philadelphia Athletics until 1954 and the Phillies beginning […]

After a regular season in which the Negro American League’s Cleveland Buckeyes and Negro National League’s New York Cubans dominated their respective competition, they met in a Negro League World Series that proved to be the next to last postseason series in league history. When former Negro League star Jackie Robinson made his groundbreaking major-league […]

Eddie Plank won 326 games in the major leagues – and a game in which he pitched 16 scoreless innings wasn’t one of them. That stretch of shutout pitching came in a game that went 19 innings and lasted more than four hours before the Athletics’ Hall of Fame lefty lost to another Hall of […]

The Philadelphia Athletics were on Cloud Nine as they pulled out a come-from-behind victory in 11 innings over the New York Giants in Game Three of the 1911 World Series and led the Series two games to one. As they took the field on October 24, they had been soaring for an entire week, thanks […]

As Earl Moore dominated the Class B Interstate League in 1900, it became clear that the Ohio native would not remain with the Dayton Veterans for very long. Moore’s pitches zipped and zagged past overmatched minor-league hitters. He looked like a major leaguer, but with a finite number of roster spots available in the eight-team […]

St. Louis Cardinals fans saw one of their favorite sons reach a milestone on June 4, 1982. Right-handed pitcher Bob Forsch, in his ninth season in St. Louis, won the 100th game of his major-league career as the high-flying Cardinals defeated the defending World Series champion – but now flailing – Los Angeles Dodgers, 5-2, […]

Less than one calendar year since winning the National League pennant, the 1894 Boston Beaneaters had been dealing with a couple of issues. The team was playing well through the beginning of June, almost exactly as well as they had been playing at that point in the prior season, but things were slightly different this […]

Although the Beaneaters’ May 7 game at the Polo Grounds against the New York Giants came early in the 1894 season, it would have been hard to find a more attractive matchup that year. Not only was the weather “ideal,” the starting pitchers were two of the game’s best, Charles “Kid” Nichols for Boston and […]

When one of the nicknames for a stadium is the “Homerdome,” it might have a reputation for being a hitter-friendly ballpark. The Metrodome in Minneapolis, an enclosed air-supported structure with a white fabric roof that exists now only in memories, hosted its share of slugfests between its debut in 1982 and its farewell in 2009. […]

Avoiding stalemate proved difficult for the Boston Americans during a three-day stretch in mid-September 1904, as damp, gloomy weather stalked the Northeast and left late-season American League contests unresolved. Out of five games – two doubleheaders and a single contest – the Americans played three that ended in ties: one on September 13, one on […]

Minnesota Twins slugger Harmon Killebrew was in an unusual home-run slump and appeared to leverage a late-season exhibition game and related home-run derby to get back on track. In dramatic fashion on the next day against the Baltimore Orioles, he slammed his 500th and 501st home runs to join an elite group of nine players […]

“Out of a clear blue sky, six runs came tumbling into (Bill Terry’s) lap”1 “Of course, it was ghastly. But it’s one in the old bankeroo – so wot tha heck.”2   As the temperature soared on a sultry midsummer day, the fans in Philadelphia’s Baker Bowl sat in their seats to watch the concluding […]

With the best pitching in the National League taking on the league’s best offense on July 11, 2003, at Coors Field, the outcome of the game rested on a confrontation between a backup third baseman and a well-traveled set-up reliever. The 2003 season had been very good to the Dodgers pitching staff, which had given […]

High and Inside The Newsletter of the BioProject Committee Society for American Baseball Research (SABR) May 2023 Past newsletters Editor: Andrea Long From the Co-Directors SABR 51 The BioProject on Social Media Update on BioProject Submissions From the Editor Project Team From Co-Directors, Rory Costello and Gregory H. Wolf, and head of the fact-checking team, […]

Even a cursory glance at Homer Smoot’s entry in baseball encyclopedias may register the fact that there was something very unusual about his career. A closer inspection reveals what is so odd: in each of Smoot’s five major league campaigns, he collected at least 500 at bats. The brief list of players who had at […]

Jack Perrin’s major-league playing career lasted just two days, but he got four games in. Perrin played right field for the Boston Red Sox, debuting on July 11, 1921 and finished his playing time on July 12 – appearing in both halves of back-to-back doubleheaders. He was 3-for-13 at the plate, all singles, and never […]

The man Frank Graham called “the greatest third baseman ever to wear a Giant uniform” and Grantland Rice’s third baseman on his all-time Giants team, Art Devlin was born October 16, 1879, in Washington, D.C., one of several children of Edward Devlin, an Irish immigrant who made his living in Washington as a harness maker […]

Bringing Cliff Garrison on board was an experiment which didn’t work out all that well. The 1928 Red Sox weren’t in too much of a position to be highly selective, though. They’d finished in eighth place — last place — for five of the prior six years, and were seventh the one year they weren’t […]

A catcher who always seemed to be trying to win a starting spot, Barry Lyons showed occasional signs of power and a solid presence behind the plate. Described once by reporters as “quiet, conservative and even contemplative in appearance,” Lyons often found himself overlooked but still had a major-league career that spanned seven years between […]

A slick-fielding middle infielder and consummate team player, George Knothe joined his younger brother Fritz as a rare set of siblings to break into the major leagues in the same year.1 In April 1932, George served as a utility second baseman for the Philadelphia Phillies while Fritz was the starting third baseman of the Boston […]

With his brothers and sisters, Al Van Camp could almost have fielded two baseball teams. Edward Victor Van Camp, born in Lille, France, in 1871, came to America in 1884. There he met Alice Rose Van DePutte from Altre, Belgium. The two married in Moline, Illinois, in August 1892. And became a quite productive couple; […]

Marty Griffin made a name for himself pitching in the Pacific Coast League, but fell short in his one chance in the major leagues. He was a native of San Francisco, and his first five seasons in professional baseball were spent with his hometown San Francisco Seals, though most of 1927 was in Nebraska with […]