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Pitcher Scott Service had a long and workmanlike professional career. He appeared in 338 major-league games from his debut on September 5, 1988, until his final game on September 26, 2004. With his minor-league games included, Service’s professional career spanned 905 games over 19 seasons from ages 19 through 37 (1986-2004), including the one game […]

In the locker room celebration after the New York Mets won the 1969 National League pennant, he was quoted by the New York Daily News as saying, “I’ll walk down the street in New York now and people will say, ‘There’s Art Shamsky of the Mets.’ People used to laugh. They won’t anymore.’”1 Indeed, after his performance […]

Without the benefit of hindsight, we can imagine that John Weldon Wyckoff thought himself lucky. Fresh from college at Bucknell and with a year of seasoning in the Tri-State League, he was called up to the big leagues in 1913, to the powerhouse Philadelphia Athletics no less, for which he pitched on two pennant winners. […]

Paul Snyder was the indispensable man behind the scenes of the Atlanta Braves’ success. If anyone has said a bad word about him, it has not been recorded in the hothouse world of baseball. A baseball lifer since he started his career as a Braves minor-league outfielder-first baseman in 1958, Snyder is a rarity in […]

Phil Morrison’s baseball career is indelibly connected to that of his older brother Johnny, known as Jughandle because of his quick-dropping curveball. Johnny’s glowing recommendation led directly to the professional baseball career of Phil, who was three years younger. Just as Johnny started out with the Pittsburgh Pirates in 1920, Phil began pitching for his […]

“It was the worst trade I ever made,” said Washington Senators manager Bucky Harris about the straight swap of shortstops. He sent Buddy Myer to the Boston Red Sox for Topper Rigney on May 2, 1927. Rigney was 30 and had five years of big-league experience. Myer, 23, had one. But two seasons later, the […]

A slap hitter and exceptional bunter who specialized in fouling off pitches and drawing walks, Roy Thomas was an exemplary practitioner of “inside baseball,” but his skill package would have been useful to teams of any era. Playing mostly center field for his hometown Philadelphia Phillies, the left-handed hitter and thrower was nearly the equal […]

A school teacher, a football player, a Penn State graduate, a professional ball player, and finally, a bank cashier, Birdie Cree spent his major league career with only one team, while witnessing the rise and fall of managers Kid Elberfeld, George Stallings, Hal Chase, Harry Wolverton, Frank Chance, and Roger Peckinpaugh. Batting and throwing right […]

The Brooklyn Dodgers take batting practice in an empty Ebbets Field. The Dodgers led or co-led the NL in home runs in every season from 1949 through 1955. (Photo: SABR-Rucker Archive)   The Brooklyn Dodgers were as hot as the steamy weather that had ruled New York City boroughs for five days.1 The talented first-place […]

It was Saturday, May 7, 1921, the opening day of the Negro National League season in Detroit, with the Detroit Stars hosting the Bacharach Giants at Mack Park. Built in 1914, Mack Park was “a ramshackle ballpark made of wood and tin sheeting.”1 The single-deck structure could seat about 6,000. The day’s attendance was not […]

Eddie Plank had 287 major-league victories to his credit when he took the mound for the opening game of a doubleheader between the host St. Louis Terriers and the Brooklyn Tip-Tops on May 29, 1915. A native of Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, Plank had spent his previous 14 seasons with the Philadelphia Athletics, posting seven 20-win seasons […]

It was quite a 10-month stretch for left-hander Jon Lester in 2007 and 2008. He had been diagnosed with anaplastic large cell lymphoma in 2006, during his first major-league season with the Boston Red Sox. Near the end of July 2007, he returned to baseball after an absence of 11 months for cancer treatment. He […]

From the birth of the National Football League, in 1922, it took three years for Boston to host a professional football game. At the time, collegiate football reigned supreme, and with Boston area universities like Harvard, Boston College, Tufts, and Holy Cross all fielding powerful amateur teams, the professional variety held little allure for Beantown’s […]

Babe Ruth opened the New York Yankees’ 1921 season by hitting safely in every at-bat. In five turns at the plate, Ruth came away with two doubles and three singles, leading the Yankees to an 11-1 victory over the Philadelphia Athletics before 37,000 fans at the Polo Grounds. According to the New York Herald, this […]

In December 1957 the Chicago White Sox and the Cleveland Indians got together for a headline-making trade. Popular Cuban-born outfielder Minnie Minoso was sent packing to the Tribe, along with utility infielder Fred Hatfield. For Minoso, a five-time All-Star who had turned 32 just days before the deal, it was a homecoming of sorts; he […]

The Philadelphia Athletics were on Cloud Nine as they pulled out a come-from-behind victory in 11 innings over the New York Giants in Game Three of the 1911 World Series and led the Series two games to one. As they took the field on October 24, they had been soaring for an entire week, thanks […]

Chicago White Sox owner Charles Comiskey seemed determined to make 1910 a season to remember for baseball fans on the city’s South Side. In preparation for the opening of White Sox Park (later known as Comiskey Park) that July, the trailblazing owner used his “army of scouts”1 to scour minor leagues across the country for […]

The second night game ever played at Wrigley Field was a Red Cross “Thank You” program exhibition between the Milwaukee Chicks and the South Bend Blue Sox of the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League. This was the first contest of a doubleheader held on Tuesday evening, July 18, 1944, serving as a break between the […]

When the visiting Texas Rangers lost a rain-shortened and much-delayed game to the Boston Red Sox on July 15, 1973, they might have had the Detroit Tigers to blame – even though the Detroit team was nowhere near Fenway Park.1 The officially cited reason for playing the Sunday afternoon game in sloppy conditions, after a […]

Remember the name: Walker Cooper. Granted, the All-Star catcher is typically not placed in the same conversation with the likes of Roush, Lombardi, Robinson, Perez, Votto, and other great Reds sluggers. But for one shining moment on a blistering July afternoon — the hottest July 6 ever recorded in Cincinnati history1 — the Atherton, Missouri, […]

Manager Casey Stengel was back at the helm for the fourth consecutive season as the American League took on the National League in the 1953 All-Star Game at Cincinnati’s Crosley Field. Stengel’s Yankees had won their fourth consecutive World Series the prior October, and his star young center fielder, Mickey Mantle, was elected by the […]

A crowd of 4,135 fans turned out to watch the New York Highlanders take on the Americans at Boston’s Huntington Avenue Baseball Grounds.1 The two teams had been battling each other for six games already. (They had played four in New York and then came to Boston to play four more.) The first-place Americans had […]

Fans arriving at Montreal’s Olympic Stadium on Friday, May 16, 1997, likely never suspected that they were about to witness the largest comeback victory in the Expos’ history to date. Although they faced a nine-run deficit after 2½ innings, the Expos never gave up. Behind a light-hitting catcher who would spend most of his career […]

This material was gathered and re-typed from the original newspaper stories by Bill Nowlin, in 2016, to accompany publication of the SABR book Boston’s First Nine: The 1871-75 Boston Red Stockings.   Some Newspaper Coverage of the 1874 European Tour of the Red Stockings and Athletics The bulk of the material presented here is comprised […]