If you are not happy with the results below please do another search
A July 2, 1870 Harpers Weekly illustration of the game. “Friend Chadwick,” Harry Wright addressed the esteemed baseball authority and sports journalist Henry Chadwick in a pre-season letter updating the condition of Wright’s Red Stockings team. The success of the undefeated Red Stockings in 1869 had sparked national interest in the club’s fortunes. Wright, […]
Dave McCarty entered the 2004 season at age 34, having played in the majors since 1993. Baseball America’s collegiate player of the year at Stanford University in 1991, then selected by the Minnesota Twins third overall in the amateur draft that June, McCarty was with his seventh big-league team, the Boston Red Sox, and he […]
At the end of June 1920 the National League pennant contenders were tightly bunched behind the defending champion Cincinnati Reds. The Brooklyn Dodgers, Chicago Cubs, and St. Louis Cardinals were in a virtual tie for second, three games out. The greatest surprise among these contenders was the Cardinals — the year before, they had finished […]
On June 16, 1884, the Chicago White Stockings were in Buffalo to play the Bisons in the first of a two-game National League series. Buffalo had won five in a row, leveling its record at 17-17. The White Stockings had started their road trip by splitting a four-game series with the Detroit Wolverines, and at […]
In 1913 the New York Highlanders were renamed the Yankees and moved from Hilltop Park into the Polo Grounds, the home field of the National League’s New York Giants. Two years later, the franchise was under the new co-ownership of Jacob Ruppert and Tillinghast L’Hommedieu Huston, who initiated the team’s transformation into an American League […]
New York Yankees shortstop Derek Jeter smiles at fans during a rehab stint with the Scranton/Wilkes-Barre RailRiders on July 7, 2013. (COURTESY OF ADAM MARCO / SCRANTON/WILKES-BARRE RAILRIDERS) The highlights of Derek Jeter’s Hall of Fame career with the New York Yankees are well-chronicled. Less renowned are the thrills he provided to minor-league fans […]
Seventh place in the eight-club National League in 1946 and 1947, the Pittsburgh Pirates challenged for the pennant in 1948. The team’s success – and left fielder Ralph Kiner’s league-best home-run stroke – pushed total home attendance toward 39-year-old Forbes Field’s all-time high with a month left in the season. On August 31, before a […]
Every kid dreams of hitting the game-winning grand slam with two out in the bottom of the ninth. It is highly doubtful that the young Geoff Jenkins ever fantasized about hitting the bases loaded game-winning fly ball that was dropped by the left fielder. But if he did, that fantasy came true on September 23, […]
When it comes to hard-luck losses, the textbook example is Harvey Haddix of the Pittsburgh Pirates dropping a 1-0 decision after his perfect game was snapped in the 13th inning of a 1959 contest. Cincinnati Reds fans of a certain vintage could never forget Jim Maloney getting saddled with the loss after his no-hitter was […]
Going into the Saturday night Double-A Eastern League game in Akron, the hometown Aeros, with a league-best record of 49-31, were in first place in the league’s Southern Division, 3½ games ahead of the Harrisburg Senators. In stark contrast, with the league’s worst record at 30-48, the Reading Phillies occupied last place in the Southern […]
The 1940 season was the finest of Bobo Newsom’s 20-year major-league career. After losing a 5-1 decision to the St. Louis Browns on Opening Day, Newsom won his next 13 decisions. On July 17, Newsom had a streak of seven consecutive complete games ended when he had to leave a game against the Boston Red […]
Babe Ruth spent 15 years of his 22-year major-league career with the New York Yankees. His career began in 1914 with the Boston Red Sox, where he was a standout pitcher until the end of the 1919 season. His contract was then sold to the Yankees in 1920. After the 1934 season, the Yankees and […]
Tommy Bond was a pitching star in the infancy of professional baseball. Then batters could request a high or low pitch from an underhanded pitcher whose arm was supposed to be perpendicular to the ground. “By 1875, Hartford’s Tommy Bond was living at the edge of the rule by throwing low sidearm with tremendous speed.”1 […]
Sophie Mary Kurys, born into a Ukrainian-Polish family in Flint, Michigan, on May 14, 1925, grew up during the Great Depression and developed a lifelong love of sports, especially baseball and golf. Starting in 1943 and playing through 1950 (and briefly in 1952), she became one of the all-time great players of the All-American Girls […]
“In my estimation, the greatest black pitcher ever to pitch for Detroit — that’s for the Stars or the Tigers.” — Negro Leagues historian Dick Clark1 Left-hander Andy Cooper, one of the Negro League greats with a Hall of Fame plaque to his credit, ticked nearly all the boxes in his illustrious baseball career. […]
Harry Simpson first saw life as a child in the segregated South. He went on to be one of the first black players to break the color line. Born in Atlanta, Georgia on December 3, 1925, (many accounts list his birth year as 1923 or 1924), Harry was the fourth child of Frank and Maggie […]
Tim Van Egmond was a very good pitcher in high school but wasn’t highly scouted by colleges or the pros. In fact, no one showed interest. “Not one college had talked to me about playing for them, and I really thought that after the summer league of my senior year I would never play baseball […]
Jay Kirke was a formidable hitter of the 1910s and 1920s. According to sportswriter Norman E. Brown, Kirke hit the ball “as hard as anyone who ever swung a bat.”1 His line drives “burned with smoke.”2 Kirke “hits everything — bad balls, good balls, curves, fasts and slows,” said outfielder Sherry Magee.3 A left-handed slugger, […]
When the Red Sox cold-shouldered him for bringing his wife to spring training, right-handed pitcher Tommy Fine may have been delayed for seven years on his way to the big leagues. That, and World War II. Thomas M. Fine, Jr. was born into a farm family in Cleburne, Texas, on October 10, 1914. His mother, […]
For a player who endured nicknames such as Twiggy Mini-Hawk, and Mighty Mouse for his light weight and short stature, Bud Harrelson is perhaps best known to the casual baseball fan getting into a fight. There’s no doubt that Pete Rose got the better of him in their brawl at second base during Game Three […]
Heinz Becker, the only German-born big-leaguer who played during the years of World War II, had a modest four-year career and appeared in just 152 games for the Chicago Cubs and Cleveland Indians. In 1945, his only full season in the majors, Becker became a fan favorite for the pennant-winning Cubs, and his feet were […]
He had a hard time hitting major-league pitching, but his stellar fielding helped the Cincinnati Reds win two consecutive National League pennants. There were several ups and downs in Harry Craft’s career. His catch of a fly ball for the final out of a 1938 game enabled a teammate to complete one of the most […]
In 1971 The Sporting News contributor Wayne Minshew submitted a report on the Atlanta Braves’ “bona-fide future ace . . . the pitcher visiting scouts like most when they visit Atlanta Stadium.”1 Minshew was not referring to Phil Niekro, who at the time was just one-third of the way along his path to Hall of […]
A highlight of the annual post-Thanksgiving meeting of SABR’s Lajoie-Start Southern New England Chapter for the past several years has been its mock Hall of Fame vote. This time, the electors gave the nod to ballot newcomer Chipper Jones (76.6 percent of the votes) and no one else. Only four others received at least 50 […]