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“I just want to get hits.”1 With this sentiment, 21-year-old César Cedeño paced the Houston Astros to a 10-1 thumping of the first-place Cincinnati Reds on August 2, 1972, hitting for the cycle in front of an Astrodome crowd of 31,838. Cedeño was in his third big-league season. He had finished fourth in National League […]

During early August 1923, the Cleveland Indians attempted to gain ground on the American League-leading New York Yankees. Entering the August 7 contest against the Washington Nationals, Cleveland was mired in second place, 13½ games behind power-laden New York. The Indians started the season with a six-game winning streak and held first place throughout April, […]

Amid the stalemate over a new ballpark between Mayor Robert Wagner of New York City, Brooklyn Dodgers President Walter F. O’Malley, and New York Giants owner Horace Stoneham, during which The Sporting News reported that “Wagner had nothing to offer, and O’Malley and Stoneham had nothing to accept or reject,”1 the games continued at Ebbets […]

Who was the greatest pitcher in Massachusetts history? Some fans would nominate standout hurlers from Boston’s professional teams, like Cy Young, Warren Spahn, or Pedro Martinez. Others might offer the names of Tim Keefe, John Clarkson, and Tom Glavine, Bay State natives who earned Hall of Fame honors by winning more than 300 games apiece.1 […]

It was early in the 1964 season. The visiting Baltimore Orioles had a record of 5-4 and the Boston Red Sox were 4-6. They played a frigid Tuesday afternoon game at Fenway Park on April 28. It drew only 2,085 paying customers, leaving the park more than 93 percent empty, The year before, the New […]

In this present era of pitch counts, innings limits, and rare complete games, it is difficult to imagine two starting pitchers grinding it out over the course of a 16-inning contest. Yet such was the case on July 8, 1924, when Cincinnati Reds left-hander and future Hall of Famer Eppa Rixey prevailed over Philadelphia Phillies […]

Montreal Expos fans were stunned by the news.1 On April 5, 1972, the Expos traded the face of the franchise, 28-year-old superstar Rusty Staub, to the New York Mets for three promising young players: 24-year-old outfielder Ken Singleton, 23-year-old first baseman Mike Jorgensen, and 21-year-old shortstop Tim Foli. Although the ever-popular Staub helped the Mets […]

Some Boston Red Sox fans were allowing themselves to harbor hope. The team had been down three games to one to the Cleveland Indians in the 2007 American League Championship Series, but they won Game Five to bring the series back to Boston. The 86-year-old “curse” had been snapped in 2004; the Red Sox won […]

In 2011 the Cincinnati Enquirer published a list of the 100 greatest players in the 130-year history of the Cincinnati Reds.1 Hall of Fame second baseman Joe Morgan topped the rankings, which were brimming with the names of renowned ballplayers. But coming in at number 62 was Curt Walker, a long-forgotten right fielder who spent […]

Manager Fred Hutchinson of the St. Louis Cardinals had useful infield options as he set his team to open the 1958 season. Steady fourth-year man Don Blasingame was solid at second and sophomore Eddie Kasko and 23-year-old Dick Schofield figured in the mix for shortstop and third base with veteran Al Dark; Ken Boyer, in […]

This was a battle between two ballclubs that both played deep into the postseason in 2003. In June the Florida Marlins faced the Boston Red Sox for three interleague games. The Marlins were in fourth place in the NL East, already 12 games behind the Atlanta Braves. The Red Sox were second in the AL […]

When he died in 1979, Charlie Deal was the last surviving member of the 1914 Miracle Braves. A third baseman, he played in 89 games for the 1913 and 1914 squads, and jumped to the Federal League in 1915 after a salary dispute. It wasn’t the first time Deal and the baseball establishment clashed over […]

Pitching in a pennant race must have seemed tame to Skinny Brown; when he was 19 years old, he jumped out of a shot-up bomber into the cold waters of the English Channel. Brown took the game seriously, but not himself. He said, “It takes a lot of guts to walk out there with the […]

The career of turn-of-the-20th-century pitcher Red Donahue presents a study in contrasts. Toiling for the woeful National League St. Louis Browns in his early years, the auburn-haired right-hander posted dismal numbers. Indeed, in 1897 Donahue set a still-standing major league record for single-season losses from the modern pitching distance of 60 feet, six inches: 35. […]

Four years before Bobby Bonner and Cal Ripken, Jr. appeared on their first Topps baseball card together — a 1982 Orioles Future Stars issue — they stood side by side at shortstop in Bluefield, West Virginia, after signing with the Baltimore organization on the same day. “I took ground balls with him and watched him […]

From 1960 to 1971, outfielder Tony González enjoyed a fine major-league career, He was never an All-Star – no insult, considering that Willie Mays, Hank Aaron, and Roberto Clemente were his peers – but he might have accomplished even more had he not suffered from back and eye problems. (The latter could have stemmed from […]

George Caster was a “gay and delightful fellow who went laughing through the summers, doing what was asked of him as well as he could.”1 He was the ace and backbone of the Philadelphia Athletics pitching staff in 1937 and 1938 despite losing 19 and 20 games respectively in the two seasons. He tossed 513 […]

“He came back from the war, raised seven kids, practiced law and life moves on.”1 So said Madison (Wisconsin) attorney John Gerlach in a 2012 interview about his late father and law associate, Johnny Glen “Henna” Gerlach, who captained the 1937 and 1938 University of Wisconsin baseball teams (a .415 hitter his senior season of […]

From the late 1970s through the early 1990s, few players were as feared with the bat or possessed the brashness of Jack Clark. Twice he powered teams to the World Series. Four times he played in the All-Star Game. His prowess at the plate moved his manager to call him “the greatest fastball hitter of […]

Before the lumber,1 natural gas,2 and oil3 industries brought unprecedented economic growth to Louisiana in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, baseball had already established itself as a favorite pastime throughout the state, centering on the cities of New Orleans and Shreveport.4 Baseball teams, created and maintained by industrial magnates, emerged. One such team, […]

Born on July 7, 1948, in Newton Center, Massachusetts, to Charles and Eleanor (Collins) Gallagher, Robert Collins Gallagher was named for his mother’s brother, Robert, who had been killed on Iwo Jima in WW II. His grandfather, Shano Collins, was a former outfielder and first baseman who had played for the Chicago White Sox and […]

England has contributed 33 players to major-league baseball. About two-thirds of them played in the late nineteenth century and first decade of the twentieth century. Charles Joseph Hanford, who made his major-league debut in 1914 at the age of 31, is one of a minority of English-born major leaguers who made his major-league debut after […]

On February 27, 1999, Texas Lutheran University in Seguin, Texas, rededicated its baseball park Katt-Isbel Field in honor of Ray Katt, the Bulldogs’ head baseball coach from 1971 until his 1992 retirement.1 For Katt it was a bookend event to a lifetime spent in baseball, including eight full or partial seasons (1952-1959) in the majors […]

This article was published in the June 2015 issue of the SABR Black Sox Scandal Research Committee newsletter.   On September 28, 1920, Cook County Assistant State’s Attorney Hartley Replogle announced, “We are going after the gamblers now. There will be indictments in a few days against men in Philadelphia, Indianapolis, Pittsburgh, Cincinnati, and other […]