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Young Babe Ruth, 21, gave out plenty of free passes on this Saturday afternoon. He walked seven Browns batters in six innings of work. The lefty didn’t allow a hit, though, and got some help from his St. Louis counterparts, who allowed eight bases on balls. Ruth improved his won-lost mark in the young season […]

Ted Williams went on a bit of a homer-hitting spree over a 2½-week stretch early in the 1950 season. He homered twice on April 30 (both of them three-run homers), hit six more from May 2 to 13, and had another two-home run game on May 16. Twelve more homers followed in June. By midseason, […]

This game’s win was secured by Ted Williams’s first game-winning home run off a future Hall of Famer. On May 30, the 20-year-old rookie right fielder had hit a first-inning homer off Red Ruffing — his first off a Yankees pitcher and first off a future Hall of Famer — but it had been Jimmie […]

George Culver was feeling sick. “I had an upset stomach,” said the 25-year-old right-hander in his first season with the Cincinnati Reds. “I felt lousy, real weak and listless.”1 Not only bothered by nausea and a loss of appetite, the converted reliever suffered from a terribly ingrown toenail. I had to get a shot of […]

The lean, lithe Roberto Clemente and the squat Smoky Burgess (“barely fit enough to play for the Moose Lodge softball team,”1 according to one critic) made for an odd, but certainly hard-hitting, duo. They batted fifth and sixth, respectively, in the Pittsburgh Pirates lineup for much of the 1962 season. On June 30, the two […]

The Milwaukee Braves posted the best record in the National League during the four years from 1956 through 1959. They won two pennants, including a World Series championship in 1957, and had two near-miss second-place finishes.1 Although the Braves finished second again in 1960, they came in seven games behind the Pittsburgh Pirates, never really […]

Before the Yankees-Athletics doubleheader on September 27, 1919, New York pitcher Bob Shawkey had won 20 games in a season once. In 1916, his first full season with the Yankees, the man known as Sailor won a league-leading 24 games. Shawkey was 24-14 and retrospectively had a league-leading eight saves. Entering the doubleheader, the third-place […]

The beginning of the 1987 season had been a fun ride for the Milwaukee Brewers. After they beat the Baltimore Orioles on the nights of April 13 and 14, their record was 8-0. This was a Milwaukee team that had finished in sixth place in the American League East Division in 1986. It appeared that […]

Photo entitled “Famous Gate City Baseball Club of 1867” appeared in Atlanta Constitution, October 21, 1906, page 26. Left to right: Tom Johnson, Hugh Angier, Jim Gregg, Billy Sparks, Bob Dohme, Willis Biggers, George Cassin, Rube Tidwell and John Collier.   In the spring of 1866, a year after the end of the Civil War, […]

In a three-game stretch in 1950, Boston Red Sox left fielder Ted Williams homered at Philadelphia’s Shibe Park on June 27, 28, and 29. His homer in this Wednesday night game on June 28 broke a 2-2 tie in the top of the eighth inning and won the game for the visiting Boston Red Sox […]

“Mighty Baker Pulls Another Home Run Hit,” squawked the headline on the front page of the Philadelphia Inquirer on October 18, 1911, after Game Three of the World Series.1 The story behind the headline comes from one of baseball’s all-time great World Series matchups. Baseball’s first two dynasties, the New York Giants and the Philadelphia […]

The headline on the front page of the September 7, 1973, edition of the Montreal Gazette announced that it was time to start tracking the Montreal Expos’ magic number (it was 27). A timely six-game winning streak had moved them to within three games of the first-place St. Louis Cardinals and ratcheted up the excitement […]

Perhaps no other sport offers redemption to a player more often, or more quickly, than baseball. It can be a dangerous motivator for a young ballplayer. This is especially true for one who has been given his first opportunity to play every day. Or for a player who has been lauded for his skill on […]

Pedro Felix Borbón Marte (also known as Pedro Borbón Jr.) was born on November 15, 1967, in the town of Valverde de Mao, Dominican Republic. He is the son of workhorse relief pitcher Pedro Borbón, a two-time World Series champion with the Big Red Machine and 2010 inductee into the Cincinnati Reds Hall of Fame. […]

In many ways, the baseball career of Lloyd Davenport was quite similar to those of many of his fellow Negro League players. Rising from athletic obscurity in New Orleans, he eventually played for and managed an array of Negro National and American League squads, spent seasons in Mexico, and occasionally wintered in Cuba and Venezuela. […]

“You know ‘W.W.J.D., what would Jesus do’? Here, it’s what would Scott do? He doesn’t argue with the umpires, he runs every single ball out, he makes great plays, he makes routine plays, he gets the runner in when he needs to get him in, he gets the runner over when he needs to get […]

A gritty and hard-nosed middle infielder, Larry Brown debuted as a 23-year-old with the Cleveland Indians in 1963. Once described by The Sporting News as “one of the top shortstops in the league,” the 150-pound Brown proved that a rifle arm, sure hands, defensive versatility, and sheer determination could lead to 1,129 games in a […]

In the baseball record books, Bob Neighbors was originally without a date of death but a “date of loss.” Now, most have the August 8, 1952, date of death but provide no indication of where he died. For books or sites that offer information on the place of burial or cremation, there is often a […]

In just three big-league seasons, right-handed pitcher Rankin Johnson pitched for five big-league teams: the Boston Red Sox, Chicago Chi-Feds, Chicago Whales, Baltimore Terrapins, and the St. Louis Cardinals. Experienced historians will recognize three of Johnson’s teams as Federal League teams, and thus can pin down the era as primarily 1914 and 1915. He came […]

Willie Ramsdell, nicknamed “Willie the Knuck,” mixed a colorful personality with the unpredictable knuckleball to produce a 13-year professional baseball career. Ramsdell made two brief pitching appearances for the 1947 Brooklyn Dodgers, but was ineligible for the World Series. He subsequently pitched in 32 games for the Dodgers over the next two seasons, and then […]

Suggesting that a player was not good enough to make the 1927 New York Yankees is hardly an insult. The original Murderers Row is widely considered the greatest club ever to take the field. Spud Davis’ first opportunity to break into the major leagues was with the ‘27 Yankees , and while he did not […]

To many who saw Al Luplow dive over the right-center field fence at Fenway Park on June 27, 1963 to glove a potential game-winning home run, it was the greatest catch they’d ever seen. An outfielder with the Cleveland Indians, Luplow was instinctively doing something he’d done as a Michigan State running back — launching […]

“Missed train by a hare!” – Familiar refrain in Rabbitt’s wires to Beaumont Exporters manager Al Bernsen during the 1924 Texas League season, explaining why he didn’t accompany the team1   Well, of course Joe Rabbitt led various minor leagues in stolen bases – six times altogether. It’s also not every day that a player […]

By Joanne Hulbert The SABR Boston Chapter Fall Meeting was held on Saturday, November 3, 2018, 32 attended the meeting, at the WBUR-FM studio, a location that has become the tradition for us at this time of year. What better way to start a meeting than to begin with an impassioned report from Dixie Tourangeau […]