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Optimism was in short supply among Cincinnati Reds fans on the morning of Game Seven. Less than 24 hours earlier they were making plans for a victory parade as the Reds took an early lead in Game Six. As poorly as the Chicago White Sox were playing in the 1919 World Series, Cincinnati’s first championship […]

“It’s nice just because I’m helping the team out more than I did in 2012 and 2013. It’s not a good feeling to get your butt whupped. I vowed to myself I was going to get better.” — Dallas Keuchel1   Dallas Keuchel more than helped the Astros in 2015. The eventual American League Cy […]

Twenty-four-year-old pitcher Dave “Boo” Ferriss completed one of the most spectacular seasons in Boston Red Sox history when he won 25 games against only six losses in 1946. He was the beneficiary of a potent Red Sox offense that lost only 50 games during the regular season. They captured their first American League pennant since […]

After the 1965 season Bill Virdon retired from the Pirates. Virdon was a solid contributor with a career batting average of .267 and nearly 1,600 safeties, as well as an excellent center fielder. In order to plug this chasm, manager Harry “The Hat” Walker and general manager Joe L. Brown traded pitcher Ozzie Virgil to […]

It was a chilly spring evening at Coors Field. The Pirates were hoping to rebound from their 6-1 loss on the previous evening when their team leader, Andrew McCutchen, returned to the lineup. McCutchen had struggled on the Pirates’ Western road trip, getting only three hits in 23 at-bats before the team’s arrival in Denver. […]

“They looked more like a softball team than a baseball team, but that was okay. They were different. They were allowed to look different. They were always in last place,” opined sportswriter Joe Falls about the St. Louis Browns.1 But this year was different. The Browns, a ragtag bunch of 4Fs and misfits, were in […]

“For some time now large John has been in danger of being booted clear back to his Texas domicile,” declared sportswriter W. Vernon Tietjen in the St. Louis Star and Times about the Browns’ embattled pitcher John Whitehead.1 The AP noted that the robust right-handed hurler almost “ate his way out of the majors.”2 The […]

The citizens of St. Louis had seen a lot of baseball played in the ballpark that stood at the intersection of Dodier Street and Grand Avenue. They had never seen it like this, though. After a single season in the upstart American League, the Milwaukee Brewers franchise was relocated to the “Gateway to the West” […]

On the very last day of the 1975 season, the Oakland Athletics employed four pitchers to no-hit the California Angels. Before a home crowd of 22,131, Oakland’s manager Alvin Dark had a plan to have Vida Blue, his ace starter, go only five innings and then rest him for the playoffs. Relievers Glenn Abbott, Paul […]

David Wells positively reeks of New York Yankees history. During one game he wore a game-used Babe Ruth cap he had purchased for $35,000. He wore number 33 when he played in the Bronx as a tribute to the Babe’s iconic number 3, which was retired, and because they wouldn’t let him wear the number […]

On the evening of September 16, 1988, in Cincinnati, a relatively sparse crowd endured a rainy night, moving the evening’s game between the Dodgers and the Reds well into the night hours. The scheduled 7:35 P.M. start was washed out, and for the fans in the stands and the players in the clubhouse, a lengthy […]

Season-ending games rarely hold much fascination for many fans or players, and such was the case when the Texas Rangers hosted the California Angels in the finale of 1984. For Mike Witt, the circumstances of the visiting pitcher in his last start also served as the conclusion of a salary drive, and the lanky right-hander […]

The marathon 22-inning game of the preceding night left Houston Astros and Los Angeles Dodgers players mentally and physically exhausted. Nevertheless, the teams had one more game to the series left on June 4, 1989. The Astros trudged their way into the Astrodome around noon to prepare for Sunday’s game, but their pregame agenda on […]

Ageless wonder Nolan Ryan was in the midst of one of the strangest seasons a big-league pitcher had ever experienced. Neil Hohlfeld of the Houston Chronicle considered it “unreal in the negative sense.”1 From June 17 to July 29 Ryan had lost eight consecutive starts as the Astros provided him only eight runs of support […]

Losses in May and June count as much as those in September; just ask any second-place team. Ivers Whitney Adams’s assembled dream team of Boston Red Stockings was designed to have an exciting and superior baseball season in 1871. But after winning their very first two games on the road, their initial home appearance at […]

A crowd of 31,010 gathered at San Diego Stadium on September 6, 1976, for a Labor Day game between the Los Angeles Dodgers and the hometown Padres. Although the stakes were low, since neither team was playoff-bound, the pitching matchup between Don Sutton and the Padres’ Randy Jones promised to be a good one as […]

Game Four was the first day game of the 1979 World Series, but the 42-degree game-time temperature was no warmer than it had been for any of the previous games. The crowd of 50,883 cheered as the Pirates summoned up a bit of their glorious past in the person of former general manager Joe L. […]

As the day of Game Five dawned, tragedy struck the Bucs’ extended family. Manager Chuck Tanner, a native son who had been born and raised 50 miles northwest of Pittsburgh in the town of New Castle, called to check on his ailing mother and was told, “I’m sorry, Mr. Tanner. Your mother died at 7:40.”1 […]

As the Pittsburgh Pirates and Baltimore Orioles prepared to meet in the winner-take-all Game Seven of the 76th World Series, there arose a commotion over a column written by Baltimore Sun sports editor John Steadman. The Pittsburgh media provided the Pirates and their fans with the gist of Steadman’s opinion, which was that the Bucs […]

The Washington Nationals came into their game on August 30, 2017, looking for a sweep, having trounced the Miami Marlins, 11-2 and 8-3, the previous two nights. At 80-51, the division-leading Nationals were 14 games ahead of Miami (66-65), their nearest rival in the National League East Division. Instead of the usual sun for a […]

On an unseasonably chilly Tuesday night in early May, a small crowd gathered at Tiger Stadium to watch the Detroit Tigers take on the visiting Chicago White Sox. The 7,327 who braved the cold — there were chill warnings in effect for later that night — were in for a treat: arguably the greatest pitching […]

The 1940 World Series featured the National League champion Cincinnati Reds, who won 100 games and outpaced their nearest rival by 12 games, and the Detroit Tigers, who captured the AL flag by a mere one-game margin over Cleveland. The Bengals were in a dogfight until the very end as only eight games separated the […]

Joe Ross faced an uphill challenge in his third major-league start. True, he was coming off his first win (against the Brewers: 8 innings, giving up only 7 hits, 2 runs), but he was facing a hot Pittsburgh Pirates team on an eight-game winning streak. The Pirates started the day at 39-27, 4 games back […]

The first official cycle in the major leagues was accomplished by Charles Joseph Foley (also known as Curry Foley) of the Buffalo Bisons in a May 25, 1882, National League game against the Cleveland Blues.1 The two teams met at Riverside Grounds, the home ballpark of the Bisons. Because of cold weather, this rare achievement […]