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Catcher Harry Ostdiek had two brief looks at major-league baseball. He played in seven September games for the 1904 Cleveland Naps and in one game for the 1908 Boston Red Sox. Ostdiek did play in 851 minor-league games over 11 seasons from 1903 to 1913, beginning his career in Indiana with the Fort Wayne Railroaders […]

“Yes sir, it’s great to be a Yankee,” Fred Sanford said.1 Making it even greater, he was traded from the nearly bankrupt St. Louis Browns to the pinstriped promised land. Presented with the opportunity of a lifetime, Sanford flopped. After the right-hander had lost 21 games for the Browns in 1948, the Yankees paid $100,000 […]

With the last name of Roenicke, you’d think he’d be a “baseball first” kind of guy. Righty pitcher Josh Roenicke’s father, Gary Roenicke, was a major-league outfielder, as was his uncle, Ron Roenicke. So, it seems strange that Josh was a “recruited walk-on”1 at UCLA as a quarterback but walked on to the baseball team […]

When Jake Beckley gained election to the National Baseball Hall of Fame in 1971, 53 years after his death, most baseball fans had no idea who he was or why he should be honored with a plaque in Cooperstown. Beckley’s reputation suffered because he never played on a pennant winner, and only one team he […]

Alabaman Leo “Lefty” Townsend is not the same Leo Townsend who was once a Hollywood screenwriter and alleged Communist sympathizer in the 1950s.1 Nor is he the same Townsend as Ira “Texas” Townsend, a right-hander who pitched for the Boston Braves in 1920 and 1921. This Leo Townsend pitched in seven games in September 1920 […]

Although Jack Dittmer may not have achieved the level of major league stardom many predicted for him, he was an outstanding athlete who was liked and admired for both his performances on the field and his cheerful, outgoing personality. He was a nationally recognized athlete in high school and college who played football, baseball, and […]

Guy Morrison was a four-sport athlete with plenty of energy and drive. He excelled in college and on the pitching mound in the 1920s for minor-league teams, mostly in the Midwest in the Three-I League. After years of minor-league mound dominance, which he accomplished while coaching high-school and college sports on the side, Morrison finally […]

In major-league baseball when a team dominates its opponents for several years, it’s usually because it has a solid nucleus of players. For instance, in the early 1970s in the American League the Oakland Athletics captured three successive World Series. In the National League the Cincinnati Reds were a powerhouse. Both clubs had a strong […]

At the end of the 2019 baseball season, 25 former major-league baseball players who had seen military service in World War II survived. One of them was Massachusetts native George Edward Yankowski, who served in the United States Army and saw combat with General George S. Patton’s Third Army. At age 96, this ex-catcher said […]

Editor’s note: This article was originally published in 2022 as part of SABR’s Baseball and the Supreme Court Project. Curt Flood first appeared on a baseball card in the 1958 set produced by Topps. At this point, Flood had appeared in just eight games across 1956 and 1957 for the Cincinnati Reds and his lone […]

Once again, a “7” figured in an American League Championship Series game in 2007. The Boston Red Sox had won Game One by a seven-run margin, 10-3. In Game Two, the Cleveland Indians won by seven, thanks to seven runs scored in the top of the 11th inning. In Game Four, the decisive inning was […]

Losses in May and June count as much as those in September; just ask any second-place team. Ivers Whitney Adams’s assembled dream team of Boston Red Stockings was designed to have an exciting and superior baseball season in 1871. But after winning their very first two games on the road, their initial home appearance at […]

When Cincinnati Reds pitcher Dr. Harley “Doc” Parker stepped onto the mound at Brooklyn’s Washington Park on June 21, 1901, it’d been five years since he last pitched in a National League game. Opportunities created by the American League’s transformation to major-league status paved the way for Parker’s return. Unfortunately for him, it was one […]

The Cincinnati Reds arrived in New York for a three-game series on June 1, 1904, with a 26-12 record, only percentage points behind the Giants, who stood atop the National League at 25-11. The Reds kicked away the opener 2-1 the next day, with a couple of errors in the eighth. In the second game, […]

You know the old cliché: Some fans claim they’ve seen it all. Yet only a crowd of 35,759 at Citi Field can state that they have witnessed in person perhaps one of the greatest comebacks in the history of New York Mets baseball. In a “win that defied all logic,”1 Asdrubal Cabrera led the New […]

Through the 2024 season, the Boston Red Sox have shut out the New York Yankees 61 times in Boston, dating to 1904 when the teams were known as the Boston Americans and the New York Highlanders. The scores of the 61 games ranged from 1-0 to 13-0.1 Three were extra-inning games – all 1-0 final […]

In spite of the previous night’s 5-3 loss in 10 innings, the Houston Astros were confident of victory as they prepared to face the Philadelphia Phillies on October 12 in the “winner-take-all” Game Five of the 1980 NLCS. In addition to being a battle-tested team that had already survived a one-game playoff with the Los […]

Winning 20 games in a season was once a hallmark of excellence for major-league pitchers. Jim Bouton wrote in Ball Four that if he could, he would take five years off his life for a pill that would guarantee him a 20-win season.1 Four pitchers since 1901 – Christy Mathewson, Warren Spahn, Walter Johnson, and […]

Getting a base hit in 56 consecutive games is such an impressive feat that no one has matched it since Joe DiMaggio did it in 1941. The closest anyone has come in the years since was Pete Rose, with 44 in 1978. Since 1900, only one other player has topped 40 – George Sisler, with […]

In their final home game of the 1951 season, the Cincinnati Reds took advantage of bases on balls and long balls to defeat the St. Louis Cardinals in a 14-inning thriller. According to the Cincinnati Enquirer, “Big John Pramesa’s first major league grand slam enabled the Reds to ring down the curtain on the 1951 […]

On a sweltering summer afternoon on July 1, 1910, the ballpark that would one day be known as Comiskey Park hosted its first official game. At the time, the ballpark was known as White Sox Park. The Chicago White Sox would play 6,247 major-league games there before it closed on September 30, 1990. Charles Comiskey, […]

Yankee Stadium was the natural choice to hold the All-Star Game in 1939. The game originated in Chicago in 1933, as an activity adjacent to the city’s Century of Progress World’s Fair. Six years later, New York was home to another World’s Fair, touting “The World of Tomorrow.” Companies like Westinghouse and National Cash Register […]

The American Association was already two weeks into its 1887 schedule when the St. Louis Browns and Cleveland Blues met at St. Louis’s Sportsman’s Park on April 30. (In the National League, by contrast, the 1887 season had not begun until April 28.) The two-time defending league champion Browns (6-3) – winners of the “World […]

The 1882 Providence Grays. Back: Paul Hines, Jerry Denny, Hoss Radbourn, Jack Farrell. Middle: Tom York, Joe Start, Harry Wright, George Wright, John Ward. Front: Charlie Reilley, Sandy Nava, Barney Gilligan. (NATIONAL BASEBALL HALL OF FAME LIBRARY, COOPERSTOWN, N.Y.)   Competing in the National League from 1878 to 1885, the Providence ballclub won the championship […]