Search Results

Less than four months after his 19th birthday, Del Crandall became the youngest starting catcher in baseball history when he supplanted 32-year-old Bill Salkeld of the Boston Braves in 1949. Returning to the Milwaukee Braves in 1953 after a two-year tour in the military, Crandall was named to eight All-Star teams during the Braves’ first […]

Hall of Fame pitcher Red Ruffing surrendered 254 home runs in his 22-year career, but one stood out in his mind more than the rest – a ferocious clout at Yankee Stadium on May 8, 1936, by a big right-handed hitter, George “Pooch” Puccinelli of the Philadelphia Athletics. “There was a detonation when the bat […]

A few guys populate Baseball’s Hall of Fame who deserve the title of “hard luck hero.” Addie Joss comes to mind, a superb right-handed pitcher from the first decade of the 20th century who died of tuberculosis at the age of 31 after nine seasons, 160 wins, a perfect game, a no-hitter, seven one-hitters, and […]

If the Detroit Tigers had only won their final game of the 1967 season, Lee Stange would have started the most important game in nearly 20 years for the Boston Red Sox. After the Red Sox beat the Minnesota Twins on the last day of the magical season, manager Dick Williams told Stange to take […]

After his playing days, Cecil Cole watched a lot of baseball games in his hometown of Connellsville, Pennsylvania, with local sportswriter Jim Kriek. “A brief chat with him could make the day brighter,” Kriek recalled. “We had a lot of good conversations and laughs, not only about baseball, but everything in general.” Kriek was well […]

Right-hander Wild Bill Piercy did walk more than twice as many as he struck out over the course of his six seasons and 116 games in major-league baseball. He won 27 games and lost 43 with a career 4.26 earned run average, which might have seemed worse if one did not consider that in 82 […]

A fleet-footed slap hitter who perennially topped the .300-mark, Patsy Donovan entered the Deadball Era having already established himself as one of the game’s most consistent stars. Though his days as a regular player were winding down, Donovan went on to leave an indelible mark on the new century as a much-traveled manager and longtime […]

Woody Rich, all too briefly, was a pitching phenom. He entered his first major-league training camp, in 1939, barely noticed amid all the attention given to fellow rookie Ted Williams. By the end of March he was being compared to the great Pete Alexander, and reliable witnesses were predicting he would win 20 games. He roomed with Ted […]

He made his big-league debut on a day when Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. addressed thousands of civil rights marchers on the Boston Common, and flourished as a pitcher during the Summer of Love. As he struggled with injuries, Americans grappled with the strain of assassinations, racial riots, and the escalating Vietnam War. Jim Lonborg’s […]

During an eastern road trip in the middle of the 1912 season, Chicago White Sox owner Charles Comiskey made two moves to strengthen his thin pitching staff. One was the purchase of Eddie Cicotte from the Boston Red Sox. The other was the acquisition of a hard-throwing youngster from the Burlington, Iowa club of the […]

The 1949 season was the year both the Boston Red Sox and New York Yankees were tied at 96 wins, 57 losses, and 1 tie after 154 games through the next to last day of the regular-season schedule, October 1. Each had played one tie game. The Red Sox played theirs, against the Detroit Tigers, […]

According to the way baseball statistics are recorded, Jimmie Foxx played this entire game between his Boston Red Sox and the St. Louis Browns – and scored a couple of runs, including the winning run – but never had even one at-bat in the game. Six-time American League walks leader Eddie Yost picked up the […]

The Pirates’ 1976 season and Danny Murtaugh’s managerial career concluded with a doubleheader against the St. Louis Cardinals on October 3, 1976. Both teams disappointed that year, the Cardinals dropping from 82-80 in 1975 to 72-88 beginning the season’s final Sunday. For Pittsburgh, although it had won only two fewer games than in its Eastern […]

“We just got slaughtered,” muttered St. Louis Cardinals skipper Johnny Keane following his team’s 19-0 drubbing by the Pittsburgh Pirates.1 Not only did the Bucs hand the Redbirds their worst whitewashing in franchise history, they tied a 55-year-old NL record (since broken) for the most lopsided shutout in league history. The Pirates and Cardinals were […]

The Clemente Bridge leading from PNC Park into the downtown was delirious. Revelers perched themselves atop the parapets, shouting chants, blowing horns, brandishing flags, and high-fiving random strangers. One man found himself so caught up in the moment that he stripped to his drawers and took a celebratory plunge 40 feet below into the Allegheny […]

Christian Vázquez’s home run into the Green Monster seats atop Fenway Park’s left-field wall on October 10, 2021, off Luis Patiño of the Tampa Bay Rays, was the sixth walk-off home run in Boston Red Sox playoff history.1 That it came in the bottom of the 13th inning made it the latest-ever Red Sox walk-off […]

When Chicago White Sox pitcher Jack Harshman shut out the Detroit Tigers on August 13, 1954, it was the second time in less than three weeks that the number 16 would be significant for him. Harshman outdueled the Tigers’ Al “Lefty” Aber in an historic 16-inning contest that ended in a White Sox 1-0 victory. […]

Boston Red Sox knuckleballer Steven Wright made his first big-league start at Houston’s Minute Maid Park on August 6, 2013, and lasted only an inning. It was about as bizarre a start as one could imagine, in what turned out to be one of the wildest wins of the Red Sox’ 2013 World Series championship […]

Detroit’s Bennett Park hosted a four-game series between the Senators and Tigers in mid-July 1909. Detroit won the first three games of the set, with the finale set for Friday, July 16. The Tigers began that day atop the American League, with a 50-28 record. Washington lay in last place, at 23-52. Detroit was pursuing […]

Willie Mays is arguably the greatest baseball player of all time.1 He was the quintessential five-tool player. He could hit for power (660 career home runs), hit for average (.301 career batting average), run quickly (338 stolen bases), play great defense (“The Catch” in the 1954 World Series), and had a tremendous arm. He was […]

In the 1880s, the Educational Home for Boys in Philadelphia was a boarding school housing about 100 Native Americans from the Chippewa, Mohawk, and Sioux tribes.1 They learned to read, write, and speak English; obtained skills needed in farming and carpentry; and received religious and music education. “For after taking away the lands and hunting-grounds […]

The Cardinals entered the 2 P.M. doubleheader with the Brooklyn Robins far off the pace in the National League race. Winners of only 50 of their 118 games to this point in the season, the disappointing club was sixth in the National League, ahead of only the Philadelphia Phillies and Boston Braves. The third-place Robins, […]

The New York Mets and the Cincinnati Reds finished the 1999 regular season with identical records of 96-66, forcing a one-game tiebreaker in Cincinnati to see who would earn the wild-card spot in the National League.1 New York had struggled several times during the season. The Mets fired three coaches – pitching coach Bob Apodaca, […]

With the 2013 season winding down and the first-place Boston Red Sox enjoying a 7½-game lead over the Tampa Bay Rays in the American League East Division, the Red Sox took a 4-0 lead over the visiting New York Yankees in the first inning, let the lead get away from them, scored another four runs, […]