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During the 2017 baseball season, the Chicago Cubs surpassed 8,000 regular-season games played at Wrigley Field. The season included the raising of the team’s first World Series championship gained while calling Wrigley Field home. A century earlier, the Cubs played their first game at Wrigley (then called Weeghman Park), to a packed Chicago crowd that […]

Despite suffering through a miserable 55-107 campaign the prior year, the 1977 Montreal Expos approached the coming season with a new sense of optimism. Most significantly, the team was finally slated to move into its new ballpark, the massive Olympic Stadium, after spending the first eight years of their existence in tiny Jarry Park, capacity […]

On Tuesday, June 15, 1965, majestic Tiger Stadium held 9,624 spectators who witnessed one of the most historic pitching accomplishments in Detroit Tigers history. The pitching matchup pitted Dave Wickersham (1-4) of the Tigers against Earl Wilson (4-4) of the Boston Red Sox. Wickersham, a 19-game winner in 1964, took the hill to start the […]

Fresh off a second-place finish in 1979, the Milwaukee Brewers arrived in training camp in Sun City, Arizona, in 1980 with dreams of a division title. But talk of games and pennants was shunted aside when, on March 6, Brewers manager George Bamberger was hospitalized with chest pains. Bamberger had suffered a mild heart attack. […]

The Boston Red Sox hosted a Friday afternoon game against the St. Louis Browns on September 14, 1951. The Red Sox were still in the hunt for the American League pennant. They were just 3½ games out of first place, and had won a walkoff game against the Browns the day before when Johnny Pesky […]

Pink Hawley’s pitching and Bones Ely’s bases-loaded home run led Pittsburgh1 to a 9-1 win over Cincinnati, capping a three-game sweep in the Pirates’ first homestand of 1897. As 1897 opened, Emerson “Pink” Hawley and Frederick “Bones” Ely were Pirates mainstays. Hawley arrived in a trade with the St. Louis Browns before the 1895 season […]

The Federal League Kansas City Packers and Chicago Chi-Feds played the first game ever at Weeghman Park on April 23, 1914, to an overflow crowd of 21,000, much fanfare, and chilly weather. “Chicago took the Federal League to its bosom yesterday,” wrote Sam Weller in the Chicago Tribune, “and claimed it as a mother would […]

Game Two of the NLCS was another extra-inning nail-biter, with the Pirates again prevailing in extra innings by a narrow margin. Only for drama, this game outdid its predecessor on several counts. Clutch hitting, controversy, terrible baserunning, heroics: it had it all. Chuck Tanner selected Jim Bibby, a strapping, intimidating right-hander, as his starter. The […]

Skipper Miller Huggins’s Yankees had rolled over competition all season long and were cruising to their third straight pennant. Owners of the best record in baseball (81-43), the Yankees were 13 games ahead of the second-place Cleveland Indians and shut down opponents with a staff that eventually led the league in team ERA (3.62). Blessed […]

The Philadelphia Athletics and Boston Red Sox were heading in different directions as September arrived. The 90-45 Athletics were leading the American League by 6½ games, while the Red Sox were struggling in the basement with a 44-86 record. The Athletics had won the 1929 AL pennant by a whopping 18 games over the New […]

1870 New York Mutuals. Back row: Candy Nelson, Phonney Martin, Marty Swandell, Dave Eggler. Front row: Everett Mills, John Hatfield, Charlie Mills, Rynie Wolters, Tom Patterson.   Given the powerhouse teams that represented the Windy City in the 1870s and ’80s, one might assume that the quaint jargon signifying that a team had been “Chicagoed” […]

“THIRD DAY OF RECORD HEAT KILLS 37 IN NEW ENGLAND,” the front page of the Boston Globe boomed on the morning of July 5, 1911. Across Eastern Massachusetts, the searing heat was blamed for twisting freight rails, warping sidewalks, canceling some Fourth of July ceremonies, and causing a trolley crash that injured 33 people after […]

This was a bizarre game on Labor Day weekend in 1990 in which the visiting New York Yankees lost their left fielder and then their right fielder in the same inning, both of them hurt by running into the wall in their respective areas of the Fenway Park outfield. It was also the game in […]

Would May 3, 1917, be another extraordinary day at Chicago’s Weeghman Park like the day before? A few thousand fans were willing to brave the frigid weather to find out. And later that day, after the last out was recorded to secure a 10-3 win for the home team, the fans who had attended, as […]

Standing only 5-feet-9 and weighing about 165 pounds, Cincinnati Reds hurler Red Lucas might not have given the impression that he was one of the most durable pitchers of his generation. The Nashville Narcissus, so called because of his vanity, belied his physical stature to complete almost 79 percent of his starts (151 of 191) […]

Ron Kline is one of a number of professional athletes who entered politics after their professional athletic careers came to a close. The most notable baseball player turned politician is Jim Bunning, US Senator from Kentucky (1999-2011), though others (Vinegar Bend Mizell and Fred Brown, for instance) also served in political office.1 Ron Kline became […]

A Marist College star, starting shortstop candidate for the 1914 Philadelphia Phillies, and 1919 Atlanta Crackers swatting savior, future Army lieutenant Milt Reed was a fellow Peach State Ty Cobb look-alike from the 1910s. Milton D. Reed Jr. was born on July 4, 1890, in Atlanta to Milton Reed Sr., a railroad depot clerk and […]

Albert Spalding’s life story could have been written by Horatio Alger. He had three careers – as a baseball pitcher, a club owner, and a sporting-goods tycoon – and was very successful at all of them. A fourth career, in politics, was just getting under way when he died. And despite an initial setback, ultimately […]

It had been over 28 years – from May 1983 to until September 2011 – since a man from the Bahamas had played in the major leagues. When the Atlanta Braves called up Antoan Richardson, it brought another Bahamian outfielder back into the news. Wil Culmer’s name remains prominent at home, but in the United […]

Eddie Lopat rightly earned the nickname the Junkman. The All-Star hurler may not have appeared pretty when getting the job done but, as 166 wins over a 12-year career testified, he found a measure of success. After the southpaw retired, he worked as the pitching coach for the Washington Senators and, following the franchise move […]

Since major-league baseball began, no player has ever enjoyed a debut to match Ted Cox’s. In every one of his first six at-bats, he got a base hit. Other players have made a hit in their first time at bat. Some of the greatest hitters of all time took a long time to get established. […]

June 19, June 20, and July 3, 1928 – during a 15-day span, shortstop Freddie Moncewicz, fresh out of college, played out his entire major-league career with the Boston Red Sox on these three dates. He also played briefly in the minor leagues in 1929. Moncewicz may not have had a lengthy baseball career, but […]

His childhood is obscured by the mists of time. His death was not mentioned in the sports pages of his home town, where he had started and ended his professional career. No obituaries of him can be found. The casual fan of today knows little about him. Nevertheless, for nearly two decades Charley “Pop” Snyder […]

A standout in three sports, he was considered one of the greatest athletes in the history of his college. Yet in his career as a professional baseball player, he failed to achieve stardom. Jimmy Stewart was seemingly a substitute with no position to call his own, but he carved out a 10-year career in the […]