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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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
Harvey Haddix attained no-hit fame the hard way. On May 26, 1959, the Pittsburgh Pirates left-hander, fighting a cold, pitched 12 perfect innings against the Milwaukee Braves before surrendering a 13th-inning hit to Joe Adcock and losing the game, 1-0.1 His little brother Fred had it easier, albeit against lesser competition. On May 17, 1957, […]
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. […]
On May 12, 1939, the St. Louis Browns hosted the Detroit Tigers for the first of a four-game series but lost 1-0. After the Browns won the second game of the series, 5-3, on May 13, the two teams participated in a 10-man trade, sending players to the opposing dugouts for a doubleheader on May […]
The Cleveland Indians had left Boston, and the Detroit Tigers arrived for a Tuesday night game with the Red Sox on June 21, 1955. Until the seventh-inning stretch, the game was a pitchers’ duel between right-handers Willard Nixon of the Red Sox and Ned Garver of the Tigers. Despite threatening weather, the game drew more […]
“The Boston Red Sox scored only 12 runs in the five games of the 1915 World Series, but they won three games in the ninth inning and won all four games by just one run.”1 In the first four games, the Red Sox scored seven runs. In Game Five, they scored five. And they did […]
The major-league record for hits in a season has a long, and interesting, history. The first player to exceed 200 hits was Canadian Tip O’Neill in 1887. O’Neill’s record of 225 hits with the St. Louis Browns stood for seven years before Hugh Duffy put up 237 hits for the Boston Beaneaters in 1894. Just […]
On the morning of July 4, 1940, the St. Paul Saints defeated the Minneapolis Millers, 3-2, in a taut pitchers’ duel. Many of the 5,869 fans in attendance walked the few blocks from St. Paul’s Lexington Park to Selby Avenue and paid 10 cents for an eight-mile streetcar ride to Nicollet Park to catch the […]
Game Four of the 1915 World Series was the second home game in the Series for the American League champion Boston Red Sox – but it was not played on their own home field. A year earlier, the National League-pennant-winning Boston Braves had “borrowed” Fenway Park from the Red Sox for the World Series because […]
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 […]
Chick Fraser spent his entire life in baseball as a pitcher, coach, scout, and minor-league manager, and though his playing career wasn’t especially successful it was certainly unique. He went 175-212 over 14 seasons, lost at least 20 games in a season five times, including three straight from 1904-1906, and ranks second all-time with 219 […]
Having lost no fewer than nine pitchers to the armed forces during World War II, the St. Louis Cardinals invited 28-year-old rookie Ken Burkhart to spring training in 1945. Owning a 91-64 record in seven minor-league seasons, Burkhart became one of the season’s big surprises, winning 18 games, third best in the senior circuit. But […]
To many, there can be no greater honor than to serve one’s country, but occasionally the call to duty comes at an inopportune time. Bill Landis expresses no regrets, but history should nonetheless note that he played the full 1967 season for the 1967 Boston Red Sox, perhaps the most beloved of all Red Sox […]
Charles Radbourn’s pitching achievements were hailed by contemporaries and sportswriters for decades as some of the greatest feats of nineteenth century baseball. Little known today, many considered an 18-inning game in 1882 as the finest athletic contest ever seen on a baseball diamond. That game was won, not by the pitcher Radbourn, but by the […]
Only one man has played on a team that won major league baseball’s World Series and also on a team that won the championship of the National Football League. That man is Hinkey Haines. Haines’ baseball career, though modest, included being part of several memorable moments. His football career led to a great deal of […]
Myles Thomas was the winning pitcher in seven of the New York Yankees’ 110 victories in 1927. He also has the distinction of owning the fifth-highest batting average (.333) on a team known as Murderers’ Row. But there’s more. In real life, Myles Thomas was a Pennsylvania farmer’s son, a baseball star for Penn State, […]
Red Shannon is one of the 53 players who played for both the Boston Braves and the Boston Red Sox. His career embraced five consecutive years in the American League, bookended by two disconnected years in the National, first for the Braves and later with the Cubs. Shannon’s debut was with the Braves, in the […]
Traded for Ted Williams. That’s the sort of distinction one could well dine out on for years. The trade occurred in December 1937. Al Niemiec’s major-league career was over at the time, though he was only 26 and naturally hoped to get back to the big leagues. He played five more years in the Pacific […]