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Seated at a table in a lower box seat among 33,535 fans at Ebbets Field,1 Red Barber was ready to make history. Television was one of the exhibits at the 1939 World’s Fair in New York City, so NBC wanted the opportunity to broadcast a baseball game. A reader might wonder why the Brooklyn Dodgers? […]

A game-winning home run can come in the first inning, as when Ted Williams hit a two-run homer a little over a year before this one – on August 2, 1947, beating the Detroit Tigers, 2-1. In this day’s game against the visiting St. Louis Browns, Williams also hit a game-winning homer in the first […]

For years, the major-league baseball season began in mid-April. The leagues expanded to a 162-game schedule beginning in 1961, but it wasn’t until 1984 that the Boston Red Sox started the season before April 5. They opened that year on April 2 in Anaheim against the California Angels. You win some; you lose some. So […]

Throughout his career, Curt Schilling was known as a big-game starting pitcher who performed well in high-pressure situations. Appearing in four World Series with three teams—winning three titles—he compiled a postseason record of 11-21 with a 2.23 ERA, including a mark of 4-0 with a 1.37 ERA in five games when his team faced elimination. […]

Making his seventh major-league appearance and only his second career start, Craig Minetto was summoned to start for the Oakland Athletics against the defending World Series champion New York Yankees after scheduled starter Rick Langford was injured. After the game Minetto told sportswriters that he had said to himself, “So it’s the Yankees. It could […]

“You see, it’s like this. You get the guy out a couple of times and the law of averages is bound to catch up with you.”  – White Sox starter Billy Pierce.1   Left-hander Billy Pierce led both leagues with a 1.97 earned-run average in 1955. His 20 wins led the American League two years […]

Charles Lindbergh’s nonstop solo flight across the Atlantic in May of 1927 brought him overnight worldwide acclaim. No more than a thousand well-wishers saw the former stunt pilot take off from Roosevelt Field on Long Island, New York, but as many as 150,000 were on hand when his Spirit of St. Louis touched down in […]

The Cincinnati Reds and the city of Cincinnati were looking forward to the arrival of the defending National League champion Boston Beaneaters for a holiday doubleheader. A newspaper headline said: “Big Bostons. They will be here To-Day. The Two Fourth of July Battles. Can the Reds Give the Leaders Two Falls?”1 In the middle of […]

As July 1973 drew to a close, the Milwaukee Brewers were struggling to stay alive in the American League East. An incredibly hot stretch that began on June 1 (in which they went 15-1, mostly on the road) had propelled them into first place for about a week in the middle of June. But their […]

Once described by Baseball Digest as the “Rodney Dangerfield of baseball,” Cecil Cooper was a great player who didn’t get the respect he deserved.1 An introverted Texan, Cecil Cooper remained in the shadows for much of his 17-year playing career. The left-handed first baseman spent his major-league years with Boston and Milwaukee from 1971 to […]

“Savidge has mastered the ‘finger nail curve.’ He believes it is an improvement on the ‘fade-away,’ the ‘boomerang,’ the ‘spitter,’ or ‘knuckle curve,’ and Manager Babb and veteran first baseman George ‘Scoops’ Carey, who have seen all sorts of new wrinkles from modern and ancient slab men, agree with Savidge. “The ‘finger nail’ curve is […]

Fred Schulte played center field for the pennant-winning 1933 Washington Senators. His three-run homer in Game Five of the World Series against the Giants pulled the Senators even. But New York won on a 10th-inning homer by Mel Ott that tipped off Schulte’s glove. The victory gave the Giants the championship. In his 11-year big-league […]

“He’s either the poorest great third baseman or the greatest poor third baseman.”1 In perhaps one of the best non-Yogi-Berra quotes in baseball history, this was Branch Rickey’s assessment of Frenchy Bordagaray, a colorful outfielder/third baseman who played for several teams in the 1930s and 1940s. He was free-spirited enough to fit in with both […]

As a 22-year-old Bill DeLancey caught every inning of the 1934 World Series for the St. Louis Cardinals as the club won its third championship. Later, he was named by Branch Rickey as one of the best three catchers he had ever seen, alongside Roy Campanella and Mickey Cochrane. However, DeLancey accumulated only 686 plate […]

From manager Don Heffner’s perspective, hurler John Tsitouris drew favorable comparisons to Hall of Famer Red Ruffing because “when you sent him out to the mound, you knew he was going to give you a good job.”1 Splendid likeness for a pitcher with a lifetime 34-38 record. Tsitouris’s tantalizing ability caused teams to continually try […]

Born in Cincinnati on October 5, 1858, John Good Reilly would spend most of his life and nearly all of his baseball career in his native city. He passed his earliest years at his family’s home in the city’s East End, within walking distance of the Ohio River. The family’s circumstances were probably fairly comfortable, […]

Branch Rickey was “a man of strange complexities, not to mention downright contradictions,” wrote the New York Times’ John Drebinger. The great decision to break baseball’s policy of excluding blacks, for which he is justly praised, has, in recent decades, tended to overwhelm the highly negative image he had earned before that decision. He went […]

In three different seasons — 1939, 1941, and 1944 — Frank McCormick hit home runs more often than he struck out. In his entire 13-year career, encompassing 5,723 at-bats and more than 6,200 plate appearances, the slugging first baseman had just 189 strikeouts — 10 fewer whiffs than Ryan Howard achieved in only 529 at-bats […]

John Bradley Clontz was born on April 25, 1971, in Stuart, Virginia (population 1,400), five miles north of the state’s border with North Carolina. Outside of Clontz, Stuart’s best-known native son is Leonard Wood, who formed in 1950 with his four brothers what became a successful auto-racing empire, perhaps what southwestern Virginia is best known […]

Tommy Lasorda. You could almost say he needs no introduction. Famous and familiar for his nearly 20 years as manager of the Los Angeles Dodgers, Lasorda was the personification of the Dodgers and baseball’s best-known ambassador. Profane or charming, pugnacious or proud, outrageous or simply outspoken, Lasorda could be all these and more. Lasorda’s major-league […]

John Drebinger once wrote of Eddie Brannick, “He has legions of friends, remembers the birthdays of many of them, yet once couldn’t recall the date of his own. A gourmet of rare taste, he knows how and where to dine and will order a meal of excellence only to touch scarcely any of it because […]

Each year, Bakersfield, California, honors its star high-school athletes with the Jim Tyack Award. Although the grandparents of most of the recent recipients were born long after Tyack excelled in baseball, football, basketball, and track at Bakersfield High School and Bakersfield Junior College, the award is a lasting testament to the legendary records and achievement […]

Alan Nathan never played in a big-league baseball game. Or in the minor leagues. Or at the collegiate level. He last grabbed a mitt and ran out on the field as a Maine high school freshman before deciding his exceptional foot speed was better suited for the track team. This lifelong Boston Red Sox and […]

Described as the “possessor of a magnificent physique and a splendid right arm,”1 Ed Murphy was one of three 1903 St. Louis Cardinals employed as both pitcher and fielder. The trio of Jack Dunleavy, Jim Hackett, and Murphy took the mound in 36 games, 31 of them as the starter. They combined for 11 victories. […]