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Boston Braves fans had few reasons to be hopeful as the 1952 season opened at Braves Field on Tuesday, April 15. Only three seasons after winning the 1948 National League pennant, the Braves were coming off a 76-78 record and a fourth-place finish. Also, the American League’s Red Sox were winning the battle of Boston […]

Lefty Grove was on the verge of reaching a major career milestone in July 1941. Grove was attempting to become the 12th pitcher in baseball history, and sixth hurler in the twentieth century, to record 300 career wins. The 41-year-old living legend, pitching in his 17th season, is considered by historians1 and was considered by […]

He “pitches with such intensity that he ought to be declared a fire hazard,” gushed sportswriter Mark Littwin after Bruce Kison’s dominant five-hit complete-game victory, while California Angels teammate Reggie Jackson described him “as so mentally tough, he’s a ball of fire.”1 Kison touted his coolness under pressure as a product of his postseason “experience” […]

The Philadelphia Athletics were just a half-game behind the Cleveland Indians in the American League after the two teams split their four-game series in mid-July. The Athletics and Indians along with the New York Yankees and Boston Red Sox had battled for first place most of the season. After being tied with the Indians on […]

On July 3, 1910, the reigning world champion Pittsburgh Pirates were visiting Cincinnati, completing the final contest of a five-game series with the Reds, the first games of which had been played in Pittsburgh. The third-place Pirates were just a half-game ahead of Cincinnati in the standings but, of more significance, trailed the Chicago Cubs […]

The charter Allegheny club of the fledgling American Association played its first four games of the circuit’s inaugural season of 1882 on the road against the Red Stockings in Cincinnati. The visitors from Pittsburgh won the opening match by 10-9, then lost two in a row to the home side by 7-3 and 19-10 before […]

This game may be remembered most for the miserable weather in which it was played. In his report for the Boston Globe, Peter Gammons wrote that the setting resembled “a Cambodian rice paddy in rainy season.”1 It took 4 hours and 10 minutes of elapsed time due in large part to rain delays of 33 […]

In one of the most thrilling games of a thrilling season, the Philadelphia Phillies rallied from a 5-0 deficit after five innings and a 7-5 deficit going into the bottom of the 18th to outlast the Cincinnati Reds 8-7 on a walk-off hit by Del Ennis that came just before curfew would have halted the […]

Things looked bleak for the Chicago Cubs in the top of the ninth inning against the Cincinnati Reds on May 5, 1919. They had made two Keystone Kops plays and they were down 6-0 and had only four hits. Ironically, a third Keystone Kops play by the Cubs in the ninth actually helped them tie […]

The Red Sox split a Sunday doubleheader with Connie Mack’s Athletics on the final day of the 1941 season — meaningless games, with the Sox in second place, 17½ games out, and Philadelphia 20 games behind them. But these were professionals. And there was something else at stake. From May 25 until they arrived in […]

A sellout crowd packed Fenway Park and then waited 20 minutes for the rain to subside. Not a long wait to honor a man who had spent 23 years donning a Red Sox uniform. When he started in 1961, Carl Yastrzemski was just a kid charged with the unenviable task of replacing Ted Williams in […]

The official list of no-hitters thrown in the Eastern League says simply that Evans Killeen and Don Williams1 combined to hurl a seven-inning no-no for the Albany (New York) Senators against the Allentown (Pennsylvania) Red Sox on July 9, 1958.2 That breakdown doesn’t do justice to the balance of labor between the pitchers, though. Starting […]

Johnny Vander Meer was enjoying a summer to remember. A spot starter for the last-place Reds in 1937, Vander Meer played a significant role as Cincinnati emerged into a first-division club in 1938. Achieving fame from pitching consecutive no-hitters in June, the 23-year-old Vander Meer sported a 10-3 record and 2.28 ERA as Crosley Field […]

In 1925 the American League experienced a rebirth at shortstop with four ripe players taking their first stabs at a major-league career. Among them was 27-year-old, pint-sized Jackie Tavener of the Detroit Tigers, who had been once deemed too small to play in the majors but battled back up the ranks to become a fixture […]

On June 4, 1911, the Cincinnati Reds were “running the circuit like the drivers in the big auto race,” in the words of Jack Ryder of the Cincinnati Enquirer. The inaugural Indianapolis 500 had just taken place five days before, so the roaring of the engines around the track was fresh in the minds of […]

As rain poured outside in Houston on June 15, 1976, forcing the first rainout in the Astrodome’s history, the Houston Astros served dinner to players and team employees on the field behind second base. (COURTESY OF THE HOUSTON ASTROS)   A rainout in the Astrodome? How is that possible? It’s domed, protected from the elements. […]

Sunday, July 20, 1947, was a sunny day in Detroit after a cool and rainy Saturday. The second-place Tigers were wrapping up a four-game set with the New York Yankees, whom they trailed by 11½ games. Good weather had been in short supply in Detroit. Tigers management was expecting a crowd of 40,000 for Friday’s […]

After Bobo Newsom shut the Reds out 8-0 in the fifth game of the 1940 World Series, giving the Tigers a lead of three games to two, Deacon Bill McKechnie was still confident of his team’s chances. After all, he had Bucky Walters and Paul Derringer ready for Games Six and Seven. Together they had […]

Dick Sisler, who hit the most famous home run in Phillies history, came from a baseball family. His older brother, George, played in the minors, later forging a distinguished career as a minor-league executive. Dick’s younger brother, Dave, pitched in the majors. Their father, George Harold Sisler, was a Hall of Famer whose playing accomplishments […]

Brooklyn boy John Franco grew up watching the New York Mets at old Shea Stadium, which became his home park for 14 of 21 seasons in the majors. There the pitcher entered games to the ringing chords of Chuck Berry’s “Johnny B. Goode.” Franco was good – he had to be, to play until the […]

Bill Gleason is the younger of the two Gleason brothers who played on the inaugural St. Louis Browns team (the forerunner of today’s St. Louis Cardinals) in the American Association in 1882. Known as “Brudder Bill,”1 he covered shortstop for the Browns from their first season through their third straight pennant-winning season in 1887 and […]

Doc Newton was a left-handed hurler with a reputation as a fast worker who kept “the ball going over the plate at a livelier clip than any other pitcher in the business.”1 He used a crossfire delivery and featured “good curves and wonderful speed” when at his peak.2 Plagued with control problems and an inability to adequately […]

In the 1940s radio drama The Diary of Fate, a character’s life would take an ominous turn as the result of a seemingly harmless event. In one episode for example, a sportswriter in need of money accidentally forgot his pipe in a telephone booth, and when he went back to retrieve it, he overheard a […]

For much of his post-baseball life, Max Flack’s 12-year major-league career was remembered for one thing: his playing for two major-league teams in the same day. In 2011, 35 years after his death, his major-league career faced a renewed interest in his performance in the 1918 World Series. Flack was born Conrad John Flach on […]