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“In the ’80s we had a terrible cocaine problem. Did we have a policy? Did anything happen? No. We have a (steroid) policy.” — Commissioner Bud Selig, July 13, 2005, San Francisco Chronicle Lonnie Smith had batted leadoff in hundreds of major league games, but on September 5, 1985, he was at the top of […]

Beginning in 1921 the New York Yankees embarked upon one of the great stretches in American sports. Through 1964 the Yankees captured 29 pennants and 20 World Series championships. There are many ingredients that go into a winning team, but most obviously a team needs good players. Today a major-league front office has many avenues […]

It’s the top of the 10th inning, and there is one out in this hotly contested All-Star Game. A runner is on third by way of the triple, another on first via the intentional walk, but now the pitcher has this batter on the ropes with a 2–2 count. The crowd is evenly split between […]

Old Orioles’ Record for Triples Doubled Up The old Orioles of the 1890’s were one of baseball’s legendary teams. They played their home games in Union Park, Baltimore, one of the larger playing fields in the National League. As a result the Orioles did not hit too many home runs, but they got their share […]

Adam Ford and his wife, the former Jane Cruttenden, ca 1872. Seated center is Jane’s father Lauriston Cruttenden, one of the early settlers of St. Marys. Ford’s marriage into the respected and influential family provided an immediate boost to both his social standing and his political aspirations. (St. Marys Museum and R. Lorne Eedy Archives, […]

  For most of Babe Didrikson’s life, Major League Baseball was closed off to all but white men, but it was possible for African Americans and women to play professional baseball in other venues. Didrikson, technically the first woman to pitch for a major league team, even though she was unable to be signed, was […]

The San Francisco Giants – a party of more than 60, including players, management, and staff, plus embedded sportswriters – boarded their chartered Japan Airlines jet at Tokyo’s Haneda Airport on the damp gray morning of Tuesday, March 31, 1970. Among the players, the prevailing mood was one of relief that their two-week ordeal in […]

In their book The Brethren: Inside the Supreme Court, Bob Woodward and Scott Armstrong tell a small but striking story of the racial insensitivity of Justice Harry A. Blackmun.1 It happened during the drafting and circulation of opinions in Flood v. Kuhn, the 1972 baseball antitrust case.2 As the story goes, when Blackmun circulated the […]

In December 1958 one W. Reich from Sacramento wrote a letter to The Sporting News requesting clarification of the minimum playing time criteria for determining the ERA leader. Recently I was looking over the books I had acquired from The Sporting News, and I discovered that three pitchers were credited with winning the earned-run-average crown […]

The Baltimore Orioles have been the most successful team in baseball since the major leagues began divisional play in 1969. The Orioles have played at a near-.600 clip in the 16 years of regular-season play in the 1969-84 period and have never had a losing season in that span. The 0’s have won more divisional […]

Even though the value of stealing bases can be argued, there is no dispute about the impact on a game’s outcome when a runner steals home. And one player, more than any other, can be considered the “Master Thief”: Tyrus Raymond Cobb. His record-setting career 54 steals of home (SOH) is a mark that may […]

It has now been 86 years since John Gladstone “Jack” Graney first saw daylight in St. Thomas, Ontario, where he is still referred to as the finest baseball player in the city’s history. There he was known as “Glad” Graney, and during his days in the Big Leagues, whenever he heard a fan shout, “Hey, […]

The mission of the California Angels in 1973 was to find a way to wrest the American League West Division title from their in-state neighbors to the north, the World Series champion Oakland Athletics. The Angels were counting on improvements engineered by General Manager Harry Dalton after the 1972 season. Now in his second season […]

Organized professional baseball began in the 1870s with three independent entities. The first was the National Association, which operated from 1871 to 1875. This was followed in 1876 by the National League, which has operated continuously to the present day. The third was the International Association, so called because it initially included Canadian teams. It […]

A is for AARON—“Hammerin’ Hank” and Tommie, too— and young Steve AVERY and Felipe ALOU. B is for BEDROSIAN, BLAUSER, and BREAM— a reliever, a shortstop, and a slider supreme. C is for COX, a manager for the ages, and just as well known for his on-the-field rages. D is for Dale—MURPHY, I mean, a […]

When Animal, sometimes known as Brad Lesley, decided to go to Japan in 1986, he was apprehensive. “I don’t speak the language. I don’t know the food,” he thought. “Thank God baseball is baseball.” After two months, he concluded, “The food is great, the people are wonderful. It’s the baseball that’s ass backwards!” Many writers […]

Ottawa Rapidz center fielder Jared Lemieux watches the ball after a hit. (Courtesy of Jared Lemieux)   The word “rapids” refers to stretches of river that are fast-flowing, rocky, and turbulent. They’re a test of endurance, but some people enjoy them. “Rapidz” made a good name, then, for the Ottawa baseball team that lasted one […]

John Drebinger once wrote of Eddie Brannick, “He has legions of friends, remembers the birthdays of many of then, yet once couldn’t recall the date of his own. A gourmet of rare taste, he knows how and where to dine and will order a meal of excellence only to touch scarcely any of it because […]

For someone who always preferred the simple things in life, James Augustus Hunter was a complex man. To most of the world, he was Catfish, the big-game, big-money, right-handed ace who anchored an Oakland A’s pitching staff that won three straight World Series titles from 1972 to 1974. It was Catfish who in May 1968 […]

While the North’s Civil War victory and the 13th Amendment ended slavery in 1865, ensuring political and civil rights for blacks remained an unsettled question. During the war, a new generation of black leaders emerged to succeed old abolitionists such as Frederick Douglass and Harriet Tubman. Among them was Octavius Catto, a Renaissance man who […]

This ballpark in the far northern reaches of Manhattan stood for just around two decades, from the late 1910s until 1938. Along with baseball, it hosted various other sports. Though no major-league games ever took place at Dyckman Oval, plenty of big-leaguers played in semipro games there. Babe Ruth came at least twice, in 1920 […]