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For as long as baseball has kept official statistics, those statistics have been subject to change. Many of the more prominent recalculations involve records of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.1 Multiple revisions to the career win total of nineteenth-century workhorse Charles “Old Hoss” Radbourn have brought it back to 310, a number first cited […]

What do you give as a birthday present to a person who already has everything? Well, in Ken Griffey Jr.’s case on the occasion of his father’s 50th birthday on April 10, 2000, the 30-year-old Cincinnati Reds outfielder delivered his 400th career home run. Ken Griffey Sr. was a former major leaguer himself, a three-time All-Star who […]

Mike Corkins is one of many ballplayers with reason to dislike Jim Bouton’s Ball Four — not because it captured his personal indiscretions, but because it chronicled his professional failings. In his entry for September 8, 1969, Bouton summarized Corkins’ unfortunate major-league debut for San Diego against Houston, in which the rookie yielded two triples […]

Hank Aaron was tired and a bit on edge as he made his way to Crosley Field for the Atlanta Braves’ Sunday afternoon twin bill with the Cincinnati Reds to conclude a four-game series. He had fielded phone calls until 3 A.M. and had an upset stomach, too. “I didn’t eat much,” said Aaron. “I’m […]

Coming off the 2003 season, which saw the New York Yankees come from behind in Game Seven of the American League Championship Series and – once again – beat the Boston Red Sox, there were more than a few people in Boston who hoped that someday, somehow, the Red Sox might come out on top. […]

Though the crowd for the joyous May 7, 1918, Braves Field record 16-0 blowout was rather sparse in comparison, just two days earlier the Wigwam was filled to capacity for what in previous years would have been an illegal Sunday ballgame. Connie Mack‘s former star shortstop Jack Barry and his Charlestown Navy Yard All Stars […]

Buoyed by a pregame band performance, Chicago Cubs center fielder Hack Wilson collected three home runs in a 16-2 blowout of the Philadelphia Phillies at the Baker Bowl on July 26, 1930. His accomplishment was noteworthy for two reasons. First, Wilson became the first Cubs player in the twentieth century with a three-homer game, a […]

On January 20, 1961, nearly a million people in Washington, D.C.,1 and countless more in front of television sets across the United States watched Cardinal Richard Cushing2 of Boston deliver a stentorian invocation at the inauguration of John F. Kennedy, the nation’s first Catholic president. About 5½ months later, those Americans who read sports pages […]

The Minnesota Twins were scheduled to open their 1962 home season on Friday, April 13. The date proved unlucky for a ballgame as six inches of snow blanketed the Twin Cities, forcing a postponement to the next day. It took a flamethrower, sprinklers, and a helicopter hovering over the outfield to melt the snow and […]

With four home runs, 11 extra-base hits, and an argument that delayed the game for 15 minutes, the June 3, 1955, matchup between the Class B York (Pennsylvania) White Roses and the Lynchburg (Virginia) Cardinals was packed with events to remember. The game’s real significance, though, didn’t become fully apparent until years later. In the […]

Contrary to popular belief, Frank Rooney wasn’t Irish-American. He was born on October 12, 1884, in Poděbrady, a town on the river Elbe about 25 miles east of Prague, which was at the time part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire.1 His surname at birth was Rovný, although he played baseball in the United States as Rooney, […]

The Boston Red Sox were nearing the end of a homestand in which they won 10 of 13 games, including three extra-inning games and three games in which Ted Williams hit game-winning home runs.1 Williams’s third-inning homer was the game-winner against the Chicago White Sox in the second game of the homestand on May 18. […]

On July 15, 1975, Milwaukee’s County Stadium hosted the All-Star Game for the second time, albeit for the first as an American League park. The midsummer classic had traveled to Milwaukee in 1955 as a guest of the then-Milwaukee Braves before returning to the Cream City in ’75 as a visitant of the Brewers. Fittingly […]

What is the best day of the year? If you were to ask this question of a Brewers fan, more often than not you would get an answer of “Opening Day!” along with a facial expression that speaks, “Was that rhetorical?” For many fans, Opening Day is a holiday; a guaranteed vacation day each year, […]

In one sense, Julius Solters began his life in darkness and ended it in darkness as well. He was born of Hungarian immigrant parents and at a very early age worked leading mules in a coal mine near his native Pittsburgh. He ended it without ever seeing his youngest son, Stevie, who had been born […]

“There are those who can, and there are those who will,” an old saying goes. James Paul David “Jim” Bunning was clearly one of the latter. He willed himself to become a great pitcher and then a successful politician through hard work and determination. Though he struggled for almost six seasons in the minor leagues, […]

Hall of Famer Red Ruffing’s career is a reminder that you can’t judge a pitcher by his wins and losses. The right-hander lost more than 20 games twice while pitching for the last-place Red Sox and won at least 20 for four straight years with the World Series champion Yankees. Charles Herbert Ruffing was born […]

More than 9,000 men played in the major leagues before Chuck Lindstrom, but he was the first to achieve an incredibly rare distinction. In fact, 15 more years passed before another player matched him. He is also among the few twentieth-century major leaguers whose fathers were Hall of Fame players, and though none of these […]

Jim Lindsey made a name for himself pitching for semipro teams in his native Louisiana. Signed first by the Cleveland Indians, he eventually landed with the Cardinals, and pitched for six seasons as a starter and reliever before being released midway through the 1934 season. James Kendrick Lindsey was born in Greensburg, Louisiana, on January […]

The list of major-league record-holders contains names familiar to all baseball fans — Hank Aaron, Babe Ruth, Nolan Ryan, Spike Owen … wait a minute! Spike Owen? Yep. While his name won’t roll as easily off the casual fan’s tongue as some others would, Spike Owen was indeed a record-setter during a steady 13-year career, […]

It would be hard to spend time studying the American League’s first decade without running into the brawny and brawling figure of left fielder Patsy Dougherty. A powerfully built (6’2″, 190 pounds, large for his day) second-generation Irish-American with a moon face and cleft chin, Dougherty was a major contributor to the first two AL […]

At the time of his death in 1969, Lee Allen had been the historian at the Hall of Fame’s National Baseball Library for ten years. He was widely celebrated for his encyclopedic recall of persons famous and obscure, events large and small. “I care very little for statistics as such,” he always said. “My concern […]

Twins broadcaster Cory Provus was the featured speaker at the Halsey Hall Chapter fall meeting on November 2. Cory grew up as a Cubs fan outside Chicago and attended the S. I. Newhouse School of Public Communications at Syracuse University. His first job after college was in Blacksburg, Virginia, doing play-by-play for Virgina Tech and […]

Note: This article was originally published at The National Pastime Museum on May 27, 2013, and is reprinted here by permission. By Jacob Pomrenke When Ban Johnson founded the American League in 1901, he strove to publicly distance his league from the rowdyism and lawlessness that had characterized the National League’s first quarter-century. The 1877 […]