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In the Who Gave It Up? category of baseball trivia, ballplayers are known for certain batting accomplishments, but the opposing pitchers who served up those opportunities are sometimes not remembered. Milwaukee Brewers fans can probably remember Robin Yount’s 3,000th career hit, but can they recall who gave up the hit? Many baseball trivia buffs know […]

Left-hander Herb Thormahlen won 29 games in the major leagues and 159 in the minors, pitching from 1916 through 1933. (Baseball databases list Thormahlen as Hank, but in the several thousand news stories scoured in the preparation of this biography, never once was he described as Hank.) He hailed from Jersey City, New Jersey, born […]

It was a long slog to the major leagues for Jack Merson. He broke into Organized Baseball in 1940, signed as a teenager by the Washington Senators and assigned to play second base for the Newport (Tennessee) Canners in the Class D Appalachian League. He made the majors near the end of the 1951 season, […]

The southpaw from Wasseralfingen? The German suburb is now part of the city of Aalen, in the Swabian Mountains, today about an hour’s drive from Baden-Württemberg’s state capital, Stuttgart. That’s where one of the pitchers for the 1902 Boston Americans was born on October 10, 1877. He pitched in only two games, and not that effectively. […]

Hugh Miller was a quiet man with a penchant for strife. His life was a constant seesaw ride—minor-league phenom, big-league flop, decorated war hero, hobbled veteran. His lows were lengthy and commonplace, his highs brief and extraordinary. Miller, born in St. Louis on December 22, 1886, was the second of four sons of John and […]

The 1991 Atlanta Braves were a team on the rise. Despite, or perhaps as a result of, their moribund performance in the late 1980s, when the team won no more than 72 games in a season and finished no higher than fifth place in the National League West Division, owner Ted Turner overhauled the club’s […]

Baseball fans know that scouting is an inexact science. The Detroit Tigers’ scout who signed Frank Naleway out of Class D in 1923 said, “What do I think of Naleway? He’s a great little fielder. He handles himself well in the field, stands properly at the plate, shows a knowledge of baseball – in fact […]

Right-hander Wild Bill Piercy did walk more than twice as many as he struck out over the course of his six seasons and 116 games in major-league baseball. He won 27 games and lost 43 with a career 4.26 earned run average, which might have seemed worse if one did not consider that in 82 […]

Kory DeHaan played professional baseball for seven years, including 2000 with the San Diego Padres as a Rule 5 draftee, and has coached in minor-league baseball since 2010. Korwin Jay (Kory) DeHaan was born on July 16, 1976, in Pella, Iowa and has two younger sisters, Kara and Kami. His father, Guy, taught German at […]

A 21-year age difference was not the only thing that separated Frank Foutz from his older brother Dave. There was also a vast disparity in their abilities. Pitcher-first baseman-outfielder Dave Foutz was among the late 19th century’s most accomplished baseball players. Four years after Dave’s untimely death in early 1897, young Frank Foutz became a […]

During the Major League Baseball Players Association strike of 1994-95, Los Angeles Dodgers minor-leaguer Mike Busch accepted the club’s invitation to come to 1995 spring training as a replacement player. The strike ended in early April before the regular season began. Busch returned to the minors and in late August he was the second replacement […]

Ted Williams called him “the toughest southpaw I ever batted against.”1 But wildness was a problem that persisted throughout Ken Chase’s career. Kendall Fay Chase was born in Oneonta, New York, on October 6, 1913. His parents were Fay Chase, a New York native dairy farmer who had a couple of dozen cows, and Lydia […]

Described by Sporting Life as “an all-around athlete of more than ordinary ability”i at age 20, Buck Washer nonetheless had an inflated sense of his value as a prospective professional baseball player. At 5’10” and a stout 175 pounds, the right-handed hurler played only four games in the high minors in addition to his sip-of-coffee […]

Garrabrant Ryerson Alyea IV, a free-swinging right-handed batter and just the ninth player to hit a home run on the first pitch he saw in the major leagues, was born on December 8, 1940, in Passaic, New Jersey to a family of Dutch heritage that had been in the northern New Jersey area since the […]

Were the Boston Red Sox the last major-league team to sign a black player? Or were they one of the first? Did the Red Sox actually have a black ballplayer long before Pumpsie Green and 22 years before Jackie Robinson debuted with the Dodgers? Havana’s Ramon “Mike” Herrera totaled 276 at-bats in 1925 and 1926 […]

Known as “Smokey Joe,” possibly after Boston’s accomplished pitcher Smoky Joe Wood due to his fast ball, stocky right-hander Joe Lotz also gained the title of “Iron Man Pitcher.” The latter moniker resulted from his fortitude and consistency on the field for some 30 years commencing at the age of 15. First recognized for his […]

“Ripley’s Believe It or Not” featured Charley Gelbert in 1941, noting that he “played 239 major league games with a broken leg.” Shortstop Gelbert put in four full seasons with the St. Louis Cardinals and played in back-to-back World Series, losing one and then winning one. And then an offseason hunting accident nearly ended his […]

Literally a son of Fate, Bert Edgar Chapman changed his name to Ed Chaplin because he got caught cheating in 1919, the same year that the Chicago “Black Sox” consorted with gamblers during the World Series. He was player-manager for the Sanford Celery Feds in the Florida State League. (Sanford was known at the time […]

If the New York Yankees broadcaster Mel Allen were calling the action on May 20, 1922, he might have queried his listening audience with his signature line, “How about that?” Yes, the first matchup of the visiting St Louis Browns and the Yankees was certainly one that was not to be believed. But it also […]

Right-hander Dennis Tankersley took the mound at Miller Park in Milwaukee on May 26, 2002, in search of his first major-league victory. It was a cool 69 degrees and the wind was whipping at 14 mph. The 6-foot-2 right-hander had started three previous games for the San Diego Padres, getting three no-decisions. But on this […]

On the last day of the 1955 regular season, 18-year-old Roger Marquis played one inning in right field and batted once for the seventh-place Baltimore Orioles. That was his only major league appearance, and he was out of professional baseball altogether by age 21. Roger Julian Marquis was born on April 5, 1937, in Holyoke, […]

Right-handed pitcher Bill Evans had a very brief major-league career, with a total of one decision (sadly, for him, a loss) in the 13 games he pitched over two seasons of big-league baseball. He worked in four games in 1949 for the White Sox, and in nine games in 1951 for the Red Sox. He […]

In mid-June 2015, the Boston Red Sox were trying to end a seven-game skid. In last place in the American League East Division, they had been swept in back-to-back series by two of their divisional foes, the Baltimore Orioles and Toronto Blue Jays. Four consecutive interleague games against the Atlanta Braves were next. The first […]

On June 15, 2016, the Cleveland Indians were tied for first place in the American League’s Central Division with the Kansas City Royals. By July 2, Cleveland had a franchise-record 14-game winning streak and a seven-game lead over the Royals.1 The streak had begun at home, with sweeps of the Chicago White Sox and Tampa […]