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Through the 2021 season, there were 334 cycles hit in major-league baseball games.1 The first one was hit by Curry Foley of the Buffalo Bisons on May 25, 1882. The second was hit by Lon Knight, the right fielder and manager of the Philadelphia Athletics, on July 30, 1883. Knight, who was a native of […]

On June 1, 1941, Joe DiMaggio hit a ball sharply toward third base. The ball hit the edge of the glove of Cleveland Indians third baseman Ken Keltner and bounced away. It was scored as a single, but Keltner reprimanded himself for not making the play. He made a mental note: He had to play […]

The misery that was the 1986 National League East pennant race for every team except the New York Mets was just about over. There was just a week left in the season; the Mets had already won 102 games. They led the second-place Phillies by 20 games and were in Pittsburgh on Sunday, September 28, […]

When Game Seven of the American League Championship Series began, the temperature at Exhibition Stadium in Toronto was 44 degrees and rapidly dropping as a brisk wind blew across the outfield from left to right. The fading Blue Jays, in the postseason for the first time ever, handed the ball to ace Dave Stieb, the […]

Rodney Dangerfield is credited with saying, “I went to a fight the other night, and a hockey game broke out.”1 If we replace hockey with baseball, we could get an idea of what happened in Cincinnati on July 22, 1986. In what he termed “the strangest game I’ve ever been in,”2 New York Mets manager […]

The Chicago Cubs and New York Mets traveled halfway around the world to start the 2000 season — for the first-ever major-league games to take place outside of North America. The Mets had blazed trails four seasons earlier; their August 1996 series against the San Diego Padres in Monterrey, Mexico, was the first time for […]

Forty-one minor leagues operated in the United States in 1939. No fewer than 22 of them did business at Class D, the lowest rung. These first stops for future stars and never-weres dotted the American landscape from North Dakota (the Northern League) to New Mexico (the West Texas-New Mexico League) to Louisiana (the evocatively named […]

With the start of the 1954 season, beer magnate August A. Busch Jr. finally had the full attention of baseball fans in St. Louis. Having purchased the National League’s Cardinals as well as its ballpark in the past year, Busch no longer had to deal with the previous landlords of Sportsman’s Park – the Browns […]

The Baltimore Orioles were playing some of their best baseball in years in May 2012. Coming into a four-game home series with the Rangers, they were tied with Tampa Bay for first place in the American League East. Their pitching staff had performed well, allowing just 23 runs in the last nine games. But disaster […]

The Sporting News cover for March 5, 1977, featured a picture that was worth a thousand words: Joe Rudi, Don Baylor, and Bobby Grich, all clad in their new California Angels uniforms, were posed reaching into a pair of leather saddlebags, a metaphor for team owner Gene Autry’s wallet. With the 1975 Messersmith decision having […]

Roberto Clemente on Opening Day of the 1960 season. (Courtesy of Dennis Morgan/Pittsburgh Courier Archives.)   An MVP, a Cy Young, two future Hall of Famers and a world championship, the Pittsburgh Pirates presaged all these honors by battering the Cincinnati Reds, 13-0, in their 1960 home opener. Pirates shortstop Dick Groat scored three runs […]

After decades of waiting, Denver would finally have a major-league Opening Day of its own. The expansion Colorado Rockies, along with the Florida Marlins, joined the National League for the 1993 season. Expectations for on-field success were appropriately tempered, but the excitement for big-league baseball was palpable. Five thousand spectators showed up at Mile High […]

Bob Gibson thought he was running out of time. At 35 years of age, the hard-throwing right-hander from Omaha had accomplished almost everything a pitcher could as the 1971 season commenced. The five-time 20-game winner twice tossed complete games to win Game Seven of the World Series (1964 and 1967), won the Cy Young Award […]

The 1970 Cincinnati Reds [102-60] ran away with the National League East by 14½ games before taking three straight from the Pittsburgh Pirates in the playoffs. Their opponents in the upcoming fall classic were the Baltimore Orioles who were attempting to rebound from a demoralizing World Series loss to the New York Mets the previous […]

With their A’s once again mired in the American League cellar, an above-season-average 10,268 fans nonetheless found their way to Philadelphia’s Shibe Park on the last day of the 1941 season.1 A Lefty Grove Day observance celebrating their once-dominating southpaw held a degree of interest as the old-timer returned with the Boston Red Sox. But […]

“I hadn’t even made up my mind Wednesday night. It came to me in the middle of the ball game yesterday just like that. … Robinson is coming to the Dodgers as just a ball player.” – Branch Rickey1 One baseball season and a spring as a Montreal Royal and Jackie Robinson was on the […]

From October 8 to 10, 1871, one of the most destructive fires in world history raged through Chicago, destroying an estimated 17,500 buildings, claiming 300 lives, and leaving 100,000 people – nearly a third of the city’s population – homeless.  Although more than 2,000 acres of the city were destroyed, many of Chicago’s largest industries […]

It was an unlikely time for the best game in Bill Monbouquette’s career. An emerging star and fan favorite, the Boston Red Sox’ 25-year-old right-handed local boy from Medford, Massachusetts, entered the 1962 campaign with a 38-36 career slate but hit a rough patch in July after earning his second All-Star berth. “I’ve been lousy […]

The first week of a new season is supposed to be a time for optimism. But even the most diehard fans of the 1994 Florida Marlins and San Diego Padres knew to temper their expectations. The Marlins were in their second year of existence and were not expected to seriously compete in any race except […]

1915 Holy Cross Baseball Team   Coming off a 16-2 victory over Mount St. Mary’s in Emmitsburg, Maryland, the College of the Holy Cross baseball team traveled to Annapolis, Maryland, to play St. John’s College for the first time on March 30, 1915, the second day of Holy Cross’s nine-game Southern Trip.1 This was likewise […]

From July 5, 2006, through June 6, 2008, Kevin Youkilis played 238 games at first base for the Boston Red Sox without committing an error. He handled a league record 2,002 consecutive error-free chances. The stretch included every one of his 135 games in 2007, also an American League record. He successfully handled 1,080 chances […]

Hank Aaron was batting just .242 when he enjoyed his breakout 5-for-6 game as a Braves rookie. (SABR-Rucker Archive)   It was less than two weeks into the 1954 season and 20-year-old Milwaukee Braves rookie Henry Aaron was in danger of being relegated to the bench. Aaron wasn’t even supposed to be on the Braves […]

Editor’s note: Click here to read the updated version of this article, “Baseball Demographics, 1947-2016”. Several years ago, I (Mark) performed a research project to numerically define the spread of integration in major league baseball in the years following Jackie Robinson’s 1947 debut. This research was presented at the 2007 SABR convention in St. Louis, […]

Over the team’s 50-year history the San Diego Padres have played a total of 7,976 regular-season games plus another 34 postseason games. That totals 8,010 games in which the result meant something. Bob Chandler has been at the microphone broadcasting either for radio or television for about 5,100 of those games. This figure does not […]