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The San Diego Padres and Colorado Rockies launched their 2005 seasons with vastly differing sets of expectations. The Padres were coming off of an 87-75 record during the previous season and had aspirations of winning the National League West championship and advancing to the playoffs for the first time since 1998. The Rockies, on the […]

The New York Yankees were runaway winners of the American League East Division in 2009. Entering the final weekend of regular-season play, they had won seven of their last eight games, giving them 102 victories for the season. New York was hoping to build on its momentum for the playoffs in a three-game series against […]

You could understand if the self-assured New York Mets felt more than certain that they would complete a three-game sweep of the upstart San Francisco Giants when the teams squared off on May 22, 1986, at Candlestick Park. The Mets had beaten the Giants in the first two games, 2-1 and 7-4, boosting their record […]

The series was billed as a clash between the “recognized strongest clubs in the two big leagues.”1 However, it was not the World Series, pitting the American League and National League pennant winners; rather, it was the Negro National League St. Louis Giants squaring off against the St. Louis Cardinals barnstormers in a scheduled six-game […]

It was Smoky Joe Wood vs. Jeff Tesreau once more in Game Four of the 1912 World Series, and once more Wood came out on top. Tesreau got off to a shaky start in the top of the first, when Harry Hooper singled through the box and catcher Chief Meyers pounced on Steve Yerkes’ bunt […]

When the Boston Red Sox hosted the Arizona Diamondbacks on June 25, 2008, the pitching matchup featured two starters who had been getting out major-league hitters for a combined 37 seasons … in vastly different ways. Standing 6-feet-10 and throwing from the left-hand side, Randy Johnson was an intimidating presence, and he often overpowered batters […]

Jacob DeGrom was on his way to becoming the ace of the New York Mets pitching staff in 2015, just his second year in the majors. His 2.54 ERA and 205 strikeouts were the best on the team. DeGrom also played a key role in the postseason as he went 3-1 during the Mets’ march […]

With a little more than a month left in the 1921 regular season, the Pittsburgh Pirates “were determined to break the sustained slump which has threatened their possession of first place.”1 Before a three-game series with the Brooklyn Robins, the Pirates had lost six straight games and had seen their lead over the New York […]

There were plenty of storylines entering this intrastate battle on October 5, 2001. The season was on the line for the San Francisco Giants: a loss meant elimination from playoff contention. For the major leagues, this game was part of a larger picture. Initially scheduled for September 14, it was rescheduled after the September 11 […]

The Red Sox were still hopeful, even in the final days of August 1955. They were in fourth place, but the standings were tightly bunched and they were only five games behind the first-place New York Yankees. Before this day’s game, the Indians and White Sox were one and 1½ games back of New York, […]

“Playing like real pennant chasers, the St. Louis Browns swamped the White Sox,” gushed the St. Louis Globe-Democrat.1 The Browns’ 28th victory in their last 40 games moved them into third place, a position the franchise had not experienced so late in the season since 1908, when they engaged in a tight four-team pennant-race. Though […]

On July 26, 1921, when the Robins began their second long Western trip of the season, Brooklyn had a .500 record and was barely in the first division, just two games ahead of fifth-place St. Louis. According to the Standard Union (Brooklyn), the 15 straight road games would determine “whether or not [the Robins] are […]

The teams that met at Chicago’s Comiskey Park on August 21, 1921, seemed to be heading in opposite directions. The Washington Senators were on the rise, enjoying a winning season and responding well to a new ownership group headed by majority owners Clark Griffith and William Richardson and a new manager, George McBride. The Chicago […]

The Boston Red Sox had finished in last place in the American League East in 2012 with a record of 69-93. They were 26 games out of first place. But 2013 was another year. Through the end of July, they had already won almost as many games as in all of 2012; they were 65-44 […]

The Red Sox were not having a good year. They had won their Opening Day game 13-2 but followed with two four-game losing streaks within the season’s first two weeks, leaving them at 6-12, last in the AL East. The visiting Tampa Bay Rays, on the other hand, were 11-8, just 1½ games back of […]

The aim in baseball is to win by scoring more than your opponent. Winning doesn’t have to be pretty. Sometimes it can be weird. On June 10, 1921, the Detroit Tigers played the Washington Senators in a game that John Dugan of the Washington Post described this way: “Weird is hardly a fitting description of […]

The 18,398 fans who braved the 97-degree Texas heat to see their last-place team play the next-to-last place team could at least leave with bragging rights. The game included a play that hadn’t occurred since 1912. To say that the scheduled pitchers for the August 16, 2018, game were young and inexperienced states the obvious. […]

The San Diego Padres (7-18) and the defending National League champion Philadelphia Phillies (10-14) were both in last place in their divisions less than a month into the 1994 season when San Diego arrived in Philadelphia to open a three-game series on the first Monday in May. There may have been some lingering bad blood […]

Does the higher altitude at Denver’s Coors Field translate to more home runs? In the 2018 regular season, the Colorado Rockies played 81 games there, and fans saw a total of 212 balls go over the walls (from both the visiting and home teams), second only to Cincinnati’s Great American Ball Park (218).1 On September […]

On September 30, 1982, a recovering alcoholic and former Red Sox reliever was working at his bar on Beacon Street when a Boston University graduate student came in for a drink with her fiancé—and boss. Much to the student’s surprise, her fiancé decided to leave the bar and return to his ex-wife. Now unemployed, she […]

Hall of Famer Jim Bottomley was nicknamed Sunny Jim for his happy disposition, and he had a lot to smile about on September 16, 1924. Bottomley went 6-for-6 and drove in 12 runs that day for the St. Louis Cardinals in their 17-3 win over the Brooklyn Robins, setting the major-league record for RBIs in […]

Pud Galvin stood 5-feet-8 and weighed 190 pounds. Despite that stocky frame, Galvin won 365 major-league games, including a no-hitter for the National League’s Buffalo Bisons against the Detroit Wolverines on August 4, 1884. Buffalo and Detroit played five games in Detroit from August 2 to 8 and Galvin started four of them. He pitched […]

The St. Louis Browns ran off to a fast start to the 1929 season, winning 19 of their first 30 games. On May 23 the second-place Browns began a 25-game road trip with a doubleheader against the fifth-place Cleveland Indians. In fact, the first six games of the road trip were played at Cleveland’s League […]

Momentum in the 2020 World Series had swung back and forth through the first three games. Tampa Bay tied the Series in the second game but lost to the Dodgers in Game Three to fall behind again. Now they were looking to swing the pendulum back in their favor in the fourth game. Tampa was […]