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The 1998 season was baseball’s first with a full slate of regular-season games played in March.1 The New York Mets opened against their National League East Division rival Philadelphia Phillies on March 31. New York had improved in 1997, manager Bobby Valentine’s first full season at the helm, finishing above .500 for the first time […]

“That’s ridiculous,” exclaimed Mets slugger Dave Kingman. “Do you have to hit it out of the stadium to be ruled a home run?”1 Kingman had good reason to be annoyed after the June 1, 1977, game at Montreal’s Olympic Stadium.2 He had just become the first player to hit a ball off the concrete service […]

National League hitting and scoring declined during the early 1890s, with pitchers like Cy Young of the Cleveland Spiders on the rise. To boost offense, the NL adjusted its rules in 1893, most prominently by increasing the distance between batter and pitcher to 60 feet 6 inches. In their first game at the new distance, […]

On a chilly Saturday afternoon at Veterans Stadium in Philadelphia,1 a crowd of 40,222 was on hand to see what would be the second of three consecutive season openers for each team in which future Hall of Famers Tom Seaver of the Mets and Steve Carlton of the Phillies (or “Tom Terrific” and “Super Steve,” as they were called in […]

Between May 5, 1969, and July 22, 1973, Freddie Velázquez went 0-for-4 as a major leaguer. Not hitless for four at-bats, but hitless for four years. A big-league debutant at 31, Velázquez collected two hits in six appearances for the Seattle Pilots in the early weeks of the 1969 season.1 He then returned to the […]

On Sunday, August 21, 2005, as the New York Yankees (67-54) took the field to play the White Sox (74-46), they were in second place, three games behind the Boston Red Sox in the AL East Division while the White Sox were in first place in the AL Central, 8½ games up on the Cleveland […]

For a while, it looked as though the Red Sox were simply going to win this in a breeze. It didn’t work out that way. The Red Sox had won the first two games in the best-of-five series, taking both games in Anaheim. They scored first in this one, with two runs in the bottom […]

The Red Sox had won the first game of the 2004 World Series in something of a free-swinging affair, 11-9. The Cardinals had never led but they had twice come back from significant deficits to tie it. In the first game, Boston had jumped out to a 4-0 lead in the first inning. In Game […]

On the eve of the 1952 season, 26-year-old Bobby Shantz was already the Philadelphia Athletics’ southpaw ace. In 1951, his second full season in the major-league rotation, he had won 18 games, including 10 of his last 12, and had made the American League All-Star team. With an assortment of breaking balls, including a new […]

“How good was Stan Musial? He was good enough to take your breath away.” — Vin Scully, on-air radio broadcast (1989)1   Early in the 1957 season, the St. Louis Cardinals were off to a sluggish start. But their star first baseman, Stan Musial, at 36 years old and playing in his 16th season, was […]

Sandwiched between home doubleheaders on July 2 and Independence Day for the Boston Red Sox in 1940 was a Wednesday afternoon game against the Philadelphia Athletics. The 37-28 Red Sox were in third place in the American League but only three games behind the league-leading Detroit Tigers. Philadelphia (26-39) was in seventh place, already far […]

The Boston Red Sox and Washington Nationals were jockeying for fifth place in the 1954 American League standings. Washington was 29 games behind the first-place Cleveland Indians. Boston was 30 games behind. The two teams played two at Fenway Park on Wednesday, August 11, a day game and a night game, the second game being […]

Sandy Koufax dominated the Astros for 10 innings, then singled in the 11th inning to start the Dodgers’ game-winning rally. (SABR-Rucker Archive)   It’s difficult to find the right words to describe the 10⅓ innings Sandy Koufax pitched against the Houston Astros on May 17, 1965, allowing three runs. But this game, astounding on its […]

One year after his selection in the June 1969 amateur draft, 19-year-old pitcher Bert Blyleven was recalled from the minor leagues to start for the Minnesota Twins. When he took the mound at RFK Stadium in Washington on June 5, 1970, he became the youngest player in the major leagues and the first major leaguer […]

After falling nine games off the pace on May 8 and treading water during the month of August, the Los Angeles Dodgers battled back to finish the 2018 season with a record of 91-71, tied for first in the National League West Division with the Colorado Rockies. The Rockies won nine of their final 10 […]

Tommy Davis. (SABR-Rucker Archive)   In late September 1963, the pennant races were winding down and it seemed likely that the Los Angeles Dodgers would meet the New York Yankees in the World Series. Only some individual honors were yet to be determined on the final day of the season – including whether Tommy Davis […]

Dave Matranga progressed through the Houston Astros farm system for five years. His patience and perseverance eventually paid off. Early in 2003 Matranga, who was in his sixth season in the Houston Astros organization, was called up from Triple-A New Orleans. After a one-day stay, he was returned to New Orleans without appearing in a […]

When the Houston Astros and the Arizona Diamondbacks took to the field on August 28, 2009, both teams were playing for little more than pride. With playoff dreams just distant memories, the remaining month of the season instead offered both clubs a chance to audition new talent and assess the needs of their rosters. Indeed, […]

Minnesota is known for town-team baseball, and one of its cities, New Ulm in the southern part of the state, stands out. Two pitchers born in New Ulm were the first from the city to make the majors, Elmer “Doc” Hamann in 1922 and Fred Bruckbauer in 1961.1 Both share a distinction: Neither retired a […]

Don Rose always seemed to keep good company. The right-handed pitcher was the first selection of the New York Mets in the 11th round of the June 1968 amateur draft, and was followed later in that round by Chris Speier, Milt May, Al Bumbry, and Ben Oglivie. Yet while those four future solid major leaguers […]

The Philadelphia Phillies team that assembled in Clearwater, Florida, for spring training in February 2007 was primed to win the National League East Division title and reach the postseason for the first time since the team’s pennant in 1993. In the wake of finishing second three straight seasons, Philadelphia was determined to take the next […]

There were 27 hits in this game, 10 bases on balls, and 10 pitchers used, but the score was only 1-1 after the first four innings. It turned into a slugfest in the fifth. The Boston Red Sox entered their Wednesday afternoon game against the Cleveland Indians at Fenway Park on September 21 riding an […]

Brian Barkley’s career path has taken him from pitching major-league baseball to becoming a practicing pediatrician. When he began in pro ball, there had been the possibility of confusion with another pitcher of a nearly identical name. In the summer of 1995, the Boston Red Sox gave brief duty (2 1/3 innings over three games) […]

His first name, translated from Spanish, means “welcome.” But Bienvenido Rodríguez was not welcome in the big leagues. Although Jackie Robinson and Larry Doby integrated Organized Baseball in 1947, no dark-skinned man ever caught in major league ball (as it was then defined) from 1884, when Moses Fleetwood Walker debuted for the Toledo Blue Stockings, […]