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There are few players in the history of professional baseball who have made as strong an impact in their debut season as did Pat Zachry. Through the 2012 campaign, Zachry remains one of only three pitchers to secure Rookie of the Year honors while helping lead his team to a World Championship. Establishing other remarkable […]

A switch-hitter who was adept at getting on base, Wally Schang was considered by many of his contemporaries to be the best catcher of his time. Behind the plate, the 5-foot-10, 180-pounder was one of the most athletic catchers of his day, so agile and alert that he occasionally played third base or in the […]

When Lou Boudreau became manager of the Boston Red Sox in 1952, he fostered a “youth movement.” The Red Sox had recently signed several young players who came to the majors with little or no experience, and it was Boudreau’s responsibility to get these players into the lineup. Accordingly, in the season opener he started […]

The 1970 All-Star Game, at Riverfront Stadium in Cincinnati, was tied at 4-4 with two out in the bottom of the 12th inning. For the National League, Pete Rose was on second base and Billy Grabarkewitz on first. When Jim Hickman lined pitcher Clyde Wright’s offering to center field, hometown hero Rose broke from second […]

Norris O’Neill, one of three nineteenth-century baseball figures nicknamed Tip, made a name for himself on the West Coast, where he captained the Oakland squad for several years. He played and/or managed in the minors from 1885 to 1899. In his youth, O’Neill was an acclaimed catcher, but after turning pro he tired of the […]

When Jeff Montgomery took the mound for the Cincinnati Reds on August 1, 1987, he was living out the storybook baseball tale. A three-sport athlete from small Wellston, Ohio, Montgomery grew up a couple of hours down the road from Riverfront Stadium in the era of the Big Red Machine. His idol, Reds manager Pete […]

Pinky Pittenger was a backup infielder who played for three major-league clubs during the decade of the 1920s. He picked up the name Pinky from a comic-strip character of the day. It was perhaps better than Clarke Alonzo Pittenger. That’s the name he was born with, son to William J. and Anna (Gray) Pittenger, born […]

Dominican righty Josías Manzanillo pitched professionally from 1983 through the winter of 2005-06. He made 41 stops in the professional ranks, with many return trips as he shuttled back and forth between the minors and majors and was traded on numerous occasions. Manzanillo played for eight major league franchises (Mets, Pirates, Red Sox, Reds, Mariners, […]

Known for his big wad of chewing tobacco, Red Munger was a hard-throwing Texan with a mean fastball and a knee-buckling curveball. After paying his dues for six years in the St. Cardinals’ deep farm system, Red debuted in 1943 for the world champions. Before entering the US Army in mid-1944, he was arguably the […]

Fred Caligiuri’s career as a major league pitcher was brief, just seven starts and 11 other mound appearances over a little more than a calendar year. But for a day, at the end of the 1941 American League season, he was center-stage as events left baseball with one of its most enduring statistics: .406. And […]

“Van Dyke VS Keating” the Boston Globe article headline read on September 25, 1912. A heavyweight title fight, perhaps? No. The paper was anticipating the last regular-season contest at brand-new Fenway Park. In bookend fashion, the World Series-bound Red Sox were facing the last-place New York Highlanders, who, accommodatingly, were the losers in the inaugural […]

It’s not unusual for a player who has a cup of coffee in the majors to be unknown to fans; not every player can gain the notoriety of Moonlight Graham. Malachi Hogan could certainly claim to be more obscure than any of the others. He played a single game in August 1901, but his true […]

Lefty Tyler was the third of the Miracle Braves’ Big Three, and the only one who didn’t win a 1914 World Series game (though the Braves won his only start). During the astonishing run from last to first, Tyler was, according to sportswriter Tom Meany, “untouchable when he had to be, which was most of […]

The man who hit the first home run at Fenway Park was a native of North Grafton, Massachusetts: Hugh Frederick Bradley. Bradley’s parents were Joseph A. Bradley and Sarah Nutting Bradley and they celebrated his birth on May 23, 1885. Hugh had one brother, John E. Bradley, 11 years his junior. The first time we […]

Baseball history buffs would love to hop on a time machine and head to Cincinnati’s Crosley Field for the Redlegs’ July 31, 1958, incredible comeback against the San Francisco Giants.1 If H.G. Wells’s imaginary invention were a reality, the lucky time travelers would have seen an exciting game that included several famous footnote players who […]

Charles “Doc” Kanupp was a minor-league fixture who came to a tragic end. Late on the night of June 5, 1970, the 53-year-old was driving home on Interstate 85 near Greenville, South Carolina, after umpiring a game in the Class A Western Carolinas League. Kanupp apparently lost control of his car, which left the highway; […]

“It was the kind of game that made you talk to yourself,” wrote Lou Smith of the Cincinnati Enquirer.1 Lou Chapman of the Milwaukee Sentinel suggested that the game made fans, players, and the coaching staff “ready for the psychiatrist’s couch.”2 Somehow the Braves were held hitless for 9⅔ innings, yet won the game. Coming […]

Blowout games take on many different forms. There are blowouts when one team consistently bludgeons the other into submission by scoring early and consistently adding on to the score over the course of the game. Two in the first, three in the second, and so on. And, then there are blowouts that are the result […]

The Philadelphia Phillies won the National League pennant in 1915, finished in second place in 1916 and 1917, and then plummeted to sixth place in 1918 and to last place in 1919, 47½ games behind the first-place Cincinnati Reds. “We’re not a last-place club,” asserted Phillies manager Gavvy Cravath in the spring of 1920.1 Yet […]

Hugh Duffy strode to home plate in the bottom of the ninth inning. His Bostons trailed 12-11 but Bobby Lowe stood on third and Herman Long was on second after his clutch double. It was another roller-coaster thrill ride for the 2,100 fans in attendance but this was special, as it would be the last […]

Longtime Chicago Tribune writer Irving Vaughan left no doubt in his readers’ minds as to who won the May 5, 1938, rubber-match contest between the Cubs and Phillies: “Albert Paul Epperly, the Iowa farm boy, was introduced yesterday in his maiden start as a big leaguer and his Cub mates turned the event into a […]

His team losers of seven straight between June 17 and June 24, New York Mets manager Terry Collins had a problem. With the Mets scoring only nine runs in those losses, it was obvious what that problem was: “We are not hitting, end of story that’s pretty much it. We’ve got to start hitting.”1 Missing […]

This article was originally published in The 1939 Baltimore Elite Giants (SABR, 2024), edited by Frederick C. Bush, Thomas Kern, and Bill Nowlin.   In 1938 the Baltimore Elite Giants had taken part in the Negro National League II playoffs and were looking forward to the 1939 season under a new manager. George Scales had […]

This article was originally published in the December 2020 edition of the SABR Black Sox Scandal Committee Newsletter.   Eddie Cicotte expressed remorse later in life for his role in the 1919 World Series fix, but his words and actions at the time may indicate he was more of an instigator in the Black Sox […]