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Amid the rain and slop, they hopped, slid, and swung their complimentary baseball bats through the air. They shouted; they laughed. They turned a famous ballfield into an untenable, unplayable muddy mess. Their shenanigans made the areas around first and second bases look like a pig’s pen – after the pig had tidied up a […]

While the Chicago Cubs were cruising to their second straight NL pennant in 1907, the Pittsburgh Pirates and New York Giants were battling for second place when they kicked off a six-game series at the Polo Grounds on August 22. Player-manager Fred Clarke’s squad from the Smoky City won the opener in a laugher, 20-5, […]

A divisional title turning on a dropped third strike with two outs in the ninth inning of the last game of the season sounds like a baseball fan’s dream. But as that drama unfolded in Pittsburgh on Wednesday night, October 2, 1974, it threatened to become a nightmare for the fans, the players, and the […]

Pitching on a staff with three established 30-something stars and sharing a dugout with the league’s best player, the Pittsburgh Pirates’ 22-year-old southpaw Lefty Leifield probably recognized that copy would be hard to find during the 1906 season, but not this difficult. After Leifield tossed a darkness-shortened six-inning no-hitter against the Philadelphia Phillies on September […]

After a tense pitchers’ duel that saw Red Ruffing of the Yankees defeat Cincinnati and Paul Derringer 2-1 in Game One of the 1939 World Series, the Reds turned to the second of their two aces, Bucky Walters, to try to even the Series against veteran Marcellus “Monte” Pearson. Reds manager Bill McKechnie professed to […]

It was a brutally cold day for a ballgame at Philadelphia’s Baker Bowl, but it didn’t seem to bother the Chicago Cubs, who thumped the last-place Phillies, 19-8, with a barrage of hits. The Cubs had an all-out effort from practically the entire batting order, led by Dave Robertson’s two doubles and six runs batted […]

The St. Louis Cardinals’ dismal start to the 1921 season – one win in their first 10 games – seemed to augur yet another disappointing campaign for Branch Rickey’s team. The Cardinals’ losing record wasn’t that unusual, since they had been mostly a second-division club throughout their history. The franchise had never been in serious […]

During the sophomore season of the Houston Colt .45s in 1963, there were a few bright spots for the Colt Stadium community suffering humidity, mosquitoes, and a ninth-place baseball team. Left fielder Al Spangler hit .281; right-hander Don Nottebart threw a no-hitter; rookie outfielder Rusty Staub showed flashes of promise; and Johnny Temple offered solace, […]

The Chicago Chi-Feds went into Buffalo looking to get back into first place. With his team trailing league-leading Indianapolis by just one game, Chicago player-manager Joe Tinker was confident in its ability to get back on top, saying, “We have several games to play yet … and I think my club will top the ladder […]

The outlook was not good for the Texas Rangers when they squared off against the Baltimore Orioles in the finale of an early-season three-game series at Arlington Stadium. Not only was Texas winless in four home games to start the season, the Rangers had yet to even have a lead while allowing first-inning runs in […]

The Wednesday afternoon matinee between the Brooklyn Tip-Tops and St. Louis Terriers was an epic 18-inning battle. It was both the longest game ever played at Washington Park and the longest game in the short history of the Federal League.1 The game lasted 4 hours and 1 minute and was contested under a wide range […]

Refreshed from a day off, the Indianapolis Hoosiers of the Federal League hosted the Brooklyn team, owned by brothers Robert and George Ward. Robert had ascribed the team its name after the Ward Bakery Company’s best-selling product, Tip-Top Bread. The Indianapolis club was owned by Harry Sinclair, a millionaire by age 30, at the time […]

A contest pitting age versus youth produced a “scintillating pitching duel,” gushed Motor City sportswriter Brian Bragg.1 The Milwaukee Brewers’ 37-year-old, 254-game winner, Don Sutton, recently acquired as a postseason insurance policy, and 23-year-old Detroit Tigers emerging star Dan Petry, with 40 career wins to his credit, tossed zeros for seven innings until Harvey’s Wallbangers […]

Emerging as one of the American League’s top young pitching talents in his first full major-league season, 20-year-old Boston Red Sox left-hander George Herman “Babe” Ruth matched up against one of the greatest pitchers in baseball, Walter “The Big Train” Johnson of the Washington Senators, for the first time in August 1915. Ruth, who had […]

“With Rube] Waddell hurling the game of his life, the Browns never had a chance to win,” opined the St. Louis Republic about the Philadelphia Athletics pitcher’s overpowering five-inning no-hitter in rainy conditions.1 Waddell was “wound up to perform all sorts of stunts,” gushed the Philadelphia Inquirer; however, the paper noted that the Browns’ only […]

A crowd of 4,135 fans turned out to watch the New York Highlanders take on the Americans at Boston’s Huntington Avenue Baseball Grounds.1 The two teams had been battling each other for six games already. (They had played four in New York and then came to Boston to play four more.) The first-place Americans had […]

Babe Ruth was hammering the final stamp onto one of baseball’s most remarkable seasons but hardly anyone was paying attention. The newspaper headlines on September 29, 1920, trumpeted the indictment of eight Chicago White Sox players on charges of conspiring to fix the 1919 World Series. Even in the New York Times the scandal was […]

With Babe Ruth’s 50th home run of the year in the record books, newspaper accounts of the game celebrated the accomplishment in a manner that suggested it might be a once-in-a-lifetime event. The Chicago Tribune wrote, “Such batting as Babe Ruth has done this season never before has been accomplished. Perhaps it never will be […]

As they made their way down I-94 to Comiskey Park for this Monday night game, the 12-0 Milwaukee Brewers and their fans were in a celebratory mood after their dramatic win on Sunday against the Texas Rangers at Milwaukee County Stadium. Yes, they were still one game shy of tying the major-league record set by […]

The Chicago White Sox right-hander Big Ed Walsh “slobber-balled along,” gushed Windy City sportswriter Henry David, “his flow of expectoration kept up round after round.”1 Beat reporter I.E. Sanborn of the Tribune was equally excited about the hurler’s wet ones, declaring that Walsh pitched “steadily, deliberately, and carefully with his spitball breaking wonderfully.”2 Big Ed […]

In a three-year big-league career, Chicago White Sox rookie right fielder Hank Steinbacher amassed a grand total of 170 hits. He got 3.5 percent of them (five singles and a double) one afternoon in 1938. That June 22 in front of just 500 fans at Comiskey Park, Steinbacher’s record-tying six hits in six at-bats saw […]

To fans who followed major-league baseball in the 1970s and 1980s, the name Kent Tekulve often summons very specific images. They think of a lanky pitcher with a string-bean build, a professorial bespectacled appearance, and a distinctive submarine delivery. And they generally picture him in a closing or short-relief role. The latter memory is supported […]

Pitcher Troy Herriage’s big-league career was notable for both its duration and its difficulty. The Kansas City Athletics, who selected Herriage in the Rule 5 minor-league draft in November 1955, were required to either keep him on their roster for the entire 1956 season or return him to his old club.1 They not only kept […]

As the sun rose over San Diego on July 19, 1982, San Diego Padres fans were excited that the Tony Gwynn era was about to begin. The sports stations were announcing all day that the Padres had brought up Gwynn, their third-round pick from 14 months earlier, from Triple-A Hawaii. The day before, Hawaii manager […]