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Right-handed pitcher Bill Pertica was a prospect who showed promise early in his career, had one prime season with the Cardinals, and ultimately faded into obscurity. He was born in Santa Barbara, California, on August 17, 1898, and made the big leagues (albeit about as briefly as possible) in his first year of pro ball. […]
Bill Lee was one of those rare ballplayers whose off-field persona overshadowed his significant on-field performance. In baseball parlance, Lee is known as a “flake,” a term that includes anyone who doesn’t give pat answers to pat questions or dares to admit to reading a book without pictures. He was an original in a sport […]
Eddie Mathews, the only man to play for the Braves in Boston, Milwaukee, and Atlanta, burst into stardom in 1953, the team’s first season in Milwaukee, when he belted 47 home runs at the age of 21. He hit 370 homers before his 30th birthday, and many believed that if anyone could top Babe Ruth […]
After an All-American career as a DH and pitcher at the University of Arkansas, Tim Lollar broke in to the big leagues as a reliever with the New York Yankees in 1980. Traded to the San Diego Padres the following season, Lollar emerged as one of the senior circuit’s most promising starters, winning 16 games […]
In the early 1990s, no major-league pitcher’s nickname fit better than Steve Avery’s — The Kid. Unfortunately for Steve and the teams he played with, the trials, tribulations, and disappointments that sometimes come with adulthood came much too fast. Steven Thomas Avery was born in Trenton, Michigan, on April 14, 1970 to Kenneth W. and […]
Sparkplug shortstop Freddy Parent, the “Flying Frenchman,” led the Boston Americans with MVP-type seasons to the first modern World Series championship in 1903 and the American League pennant in 1904. An early American League star, Parent (along with teammate Buck Freeman) was its first ironman, playing in 413 consecutive games from the April 26, 1901, […]
Baseball was part of the long and varied life of John W. Dickins for only a few years, and it seems to have played no role at all after the 1869 advent of open professionalism. Nevertheless, he made important contributions to the post-Civil War spread of the game in the South, a development that lent credence […]
A tall (6-foot-2), brown-haired, blue-eyed, Christy Mathewson look-alike, Walt Smallwood finished two September games on the mound for the sixth-place New York Yankees in 1917 before heading off to Siberia and France as an army sergeant during the Great War. The Maryland native played in six more games with the Yanks in 1919, toiled in […]
Lanky and lightning fast, Amos Strunk was one of the best defensive center fielders of the Deadball Era and a major offensive contributor to Connie Mack‘s powerhouse Philadelphia Athletics teams which appeared in four World Series from 1910 to 1914. A patient hitter, the left-handed Strunk placed in the top 10 in the American League […]
One of only 21 Montanans to make it to the major leagues, Herbert Eugene Plews was born in Helena on Flag Day, June 14, 1928, the only child of Herbert and Marie Plews. Father and son had different middle names. Had things worked out otherwise, he might well have been born in Australia. His grandfather […]
By the time he was 25 years old, St. Louis Cardinals outfielder Austin McHenry was considered one of baseball’s best outfielders and hitters, especially after enjoying a 1921 season that saw him finish with a .350 batting average, second only to teammate and future Hall of Famer Rogers Hornsby. McHenry also finished second to Hornsby in […]
Jim Leyland spent more than two decades in professional baseball as a minor-league catcher and manager and major-league third-base coach before getting his first big-league managing job with the Pittsburgh Pirates in 1986. In the third game of a career that spanned 22 seasons and resulted in his 2024 selection for the National Baseball Hall […]
The Boston Red Sox had just closed out the home-field portion of the 2004 season at Fenway Park with back-to-back wins over the New York Yankees. They finished the schedule with a seven-game road trip, beginning on Monday, September 27, with the opener of a three-game series against the Tampa Bay Devil Rays at Tropicana […]
The Red Sox had played a pair of games against the Yankees at the Polo Grounds in New York on April 17 and 20. They lost both games, 4-0 and 8-4. The first game saw former Red Sox pitcher Carl Mays throw a four-hit shutout, beating Sam Jones. The second saw Boston’s Allen Russell give […]
Future Hall of Famer Chick Hafey went 5-for-5 with two home runs, a double, and eight RBIs in the St. Louis Cardinals’ 16-1 win over the Boston Braves on August 23, 1931. It was the first game of a doubleheader that had to be scheduled because of a rainout on May 15. It was also […]
The San Diego Padres hosted the Cincinnati Reds in a National League West Division game two weeks before the 1993 All-Star Break. Geoff Hobson of the Cincinnati Enquirer characterized the contest with, “Jose Rijo can’t catch a break, Barry Larkin can’t catch a ball out of his time zone, and the Reds still can’t catch […]
Perennial contenders during the New York Giants’ four-year National League reign of the early 1920s, the Pittsburgh Pirates began 1925 by getting outclassed by the Chicago Cubs and Cincinnati Reds on the road. Championship qualities finally surfaced in the Pirates’ home opener on April 22, when a crowd of 31,000 saw Johnny Morrison limit the […]
The annual Patriots Day game in Boston started just after 11:00 A.M. on Monday, April 19. The Red Sox had taken two of the previous three games from the visiting New York Yankees.1 Boston made it three of four with a comeback 5-4 win, aided by contributions from some of the less-celebrated Red Sox players. […]
For much of the 2005 season, the White Sox cruised in the American League Central Division race. Even with slugger Frank Thomas missing almost all of the season because of an injured left ankle, the team dominated the division with strong pitching, steady hitting, and strong defense. The White Sox had a 15-game lead over […]
The 1971 World Series pitted the best teams from each league, the NL’s Pittsburgh Pirates (97-65) against the AL’s Baltimore Orioles (101-57). The first game of the fall classic provided excitement for the 53,229 fans who packed Baltimore’s Memorial Stadium. This was “the third-largest [crowd] to ever see a baseball game at the Stadium.”1 In […]
The 1958 Chicago Cubs started spring training with relatively low expectations following their 62-92 record for the 1957 campaign, which tied them with the Pittsburgh Pirates for a last-place National League finish. The Cubs’ spring-training roster consisted of 33 players, seven below the major-league roster limit of 40 players. An unidentified source commented that “the […]
The Kansas City Athletics donned their uniforms and white shoes (those same shoes that caused such a controversy at the season’s beginning) for the last time — or at least with the name Kansas City behind it. What started as a season of optimism ended like so many others, in last place, only this time […]
As a founding franchise of the American League, at least in its major-league incarnation, the Boston club has had its share of colorful and fascinating owners. Though the club enjoyed considerable on-field success at the beginning of each century, it is perhaps most famous for its 86-year championship drought, a period dominated by its most […]
The St. Louis Cardinals won a World Series championship in 2006, their first season at the new Busch Stadium. (Kevin Ward/Flickr.com. Used by permission: CC BY-SA 2.0.) Introduction The St. Louis Cardinals have achieved a level of success in Major League Baseball that has been outdone only by the New York Yankees. Through the […]