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Shooting for .400, Ted Williams didn’t manage a single in the Boston Red Sox’ September 1 doubleheader with the Washington Senators, nor a two-base hit. He didn’t hit a triple, either, but he improved his batting average by three points, from .407 to .410. He did hit three home runs — two in the first […]
The Cincinnati Reds played the Pittsburgh Pirates in the first game of a three-game series on Friday, September 23, 1938, at Forbes Field in Pittsburgh. With 10 days remaining in the regular season, manager Pie Traynor’s Pirates were in first place in the National League with a 3½-game lead over the second-place Chicago Cubs. The […]
The Phillies (12-19) and Braves (19-11) were playing in their first series together since the NLCS the previous fall. Both teams were entering this series going in diametrically opposite directions. The defending NL champion Phillies had won their first three games of the season, but lost 19 of their next 28, including 13 of 15 […]
On May 30 — Decoration Day — the Boston Red Sox were playing the reigning world champion Philadelphia Athletics, a team that by the end of the 1931 season won 107 games. The Red Sox were not even a good team. In the preceding nine years, they had finished in last place (eighth place) every […]
The “Rule of Three” is based upon a perception that things – good or bad – come in threes. That unscientific tenet seemed to have been substantiated in the first game of a Monday doubleheader between the Boston Braves and Pittsburgh Pirates on September 12, 1921, at Forbes Field. The hard-fought opening contest was won […]
The Los Angeles Dodgers were coming off a 6-3 loss to the struggling Chicago Cubs when they arrived in Houston for a three-game series with the Houston Astros. Although the Dodgers held a two-game lead over the Cincinnati Reds in the National League, they had lost two of three games against the Cubs and were […]
“A Cub hits two home runs and drives in seven runs — but it isn’t Sammy Sosa. A starting pitcher takes a no-hitter into the eighth inning with nine strikeouts — but it isn’t Kerry Wood.”1 As Chicago Tribune sportswriter Bob Foltman observed, unlikely heroes do tend to emerge when September call-ups get a chance […]
A Sunday afternoon doubleheader at Comiskey Park pitted the hometown Chicago White Sox against the visiting Boston Red Sox. A crowd of 37,281 was on hand to watch the White Sox attempt a four-game sweep of last-place Boston. Just one week earlier (June 19), “the White Sox were encased in gloom”1 after a four-game losing […]
“It’s pretty exciting, but it’s also a pretty freaky thing.”1 That’s what Boston Red Sox shortstop John Valentin said after he hit for the cycle on June 6, 1996, against the Chicago White Sox. His 4-for-4 performance took place in the same game in which teammate Tim Naehring hit into a triple play. Two rare […]
As most baseball fans know, the Cincinnati Reds hosted the first night major-league game on May 24, 1935. The attendance1 of 20,422 made the first night baseball game an immediate success in the declining-attendance era of the Great Depression. However, there was another notable night baseball game in Cincinnati that year, on July 31. Night […]
Seattle was the scene of Randy Johnson’s rise from being just one piece of a trade for the Expos to acquire Mark Langston, to being one of baseball’s best pitchers. As a Mariner, Johnson was named to half of his 10 All-Star teams, won the first of his five Cy Young Awards (and finished in […]
Honus Wagner was one of the greatest players in baseball history. Bill James’s 2001 New Bill James Historical Abstract listed the Pennsylvania native and longtime Pittsburgh Pirates shortstop as the second best player of all time, with only Babe Ruth ranked ahead of him.1 Elsewhere, James wrote, “Wagner was a legendary figure in that era, […]
In 1965, the Pirates made an impressive second-half run at the pennant. That year, as they would the following year, the Bucs finished third to the Giants and pennant-winning Dodgers. On a rainy June 1 evening, with the Pirates riding an 11-game winning streak, fireballer Bob Veale struck out 16 Philadelphia Phillies batters in front […]
On July 23, 1916, the St. Louis Browns defeated the Cleveland Indians by a score of 5-2. The Browns scored three runs in the top of the 10th inning to boost their record to 38-49. The victory in itself was rather ordinary, but the win began an incredible streak for the Browns, who went 23-2 […]
New York’s American League team, known as the Highlanders in the earliest years before morphing into the Yankees, was mostly moribund in its first decade and a half. Only twice, in 1904 and 1906, did it even challenge for the flag. The Yanks finished third in 1919, 7½ games behind the pennant-winning Chicago White Sox […]
In 1912 Jim Thorpe set the sports world atwitter with his performance at the Olympics. The next year he started his major-league baseball career. A decade before Thorpe, sprinter Edmund Minahan competed in the 1900 Olympics. Minahan left track and field in 1903 for the baseball diamond. There he showed enough promise to be invited […]
“There ain’t much to being a ballplayer, if you’re a ballplayer,” said the greatest player of his time, or most any other time — Honus Wagner. He may be the greatest player in National League history. One of five sons and four daughters of the former Katrina Wolf and Peter Wagner, Honus (a diminutive of […]
The first legitimate home run hitter in baseball history, Buck Freeman escaped the coal mines of Northeastern Pennsylvania to become one of the premier sluggers during the first decade of the American League. Freeman won seven home run titles during his professional career, and his astonishing 25 homers for the Washington Senators in 1899 shocked […]
Joe Shaute, a sheriff after his baseball days ended, frequently handcuffed Babe Ruth. Ruth was the first hitter Shaute faced in the majors and he struck him out.1 Two innings later, he did it again. Overall, Shaute fanned Ruth 20 times in 82 big-league at-bats while holding him to just a .232 average. “Joe enjoyed […]
George Winn had one win and two losses in his dozen major-league games, and he hit .300 as a batter. Winn had first become known to baseball fans in Boston when secretary Larry Graver of the Boston Red Sox announced on March 3, 1919, that “Pitcher Winn had signed with the Red Sox. Winn comes […]
In his long and accomplished baseball career, San Francisco Bay Area native Emil “Lefty” Mailho managed over 2,500 hits, yet all but one — a pinch single in a 1936 contest — came in the minor leagues. One writer described Mailho as “arguably the best .056 lifetime hitter the majors (have) ever seen.”1 Mailho, who […]
“Liquor has put me out for the third time,” said Jerome Willis “Red” Downs to a police detective upon his arrest for armed robbery in 1932. “First, it caused me to lose a place in the big league, where I might, by this time, have been a successful manager. The second time it threw me […]
It takes a special kind of talent for a pitcher to lose 20 games in a season. The pitcher has to pitch both poorly enough to lose, but well enough that he keeps getting chances to pitch. If losing 20 games takes talent, how much more talent does it take to lose 48 games in […]
Throughout baseball history, careers have often been defined by a specific play or events. Joe DiMaggio is recalled for his 56-game hitting streak; Willie Mays for his catch in the 1954 World Series. Likewise, players can be maligned for ineptitude, real or perceived. Fred Merkle’s race-altering baserunning gaffe in 1908 and Bill Buckner’s inability to […]