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Beginning with a base hit on May 15, 1941, Joe DiMaggio just kept hitting, game after game. Nobody noticed it much at first, but like a boulder that starts out slowly and picks up speed rolling down a hill, the story eventually took hold and the streak captivated a country during the summer of 1941. […]
The year after a last-place finish in 2012, the Boston Red Sox in 2013 were in position to win the World Series at Fenway Park in Game Six, having taken both Games Four and Five in St. Louis to seize a three-games-to-two lead. They had won it all in 2004 and 2007, but both clinchers […]
The 2021 All-Star Game shined a national spotlight on the Los Angeles Angels’ Shohei Ohtani, who not only was the American League’s starting pitcher, but also led the major leagues in home runs going into the game, with 33. Comparisons have been made to Babe Ruth, who won 89 games as a pitcher with the […]
In the days of two eight-team major leagues, “division” meant something quite different from the three regional designations currently used in the National and American Leagues. Back then, fans and writers alike tended to dwell at some length on which teams were in each league’s “first division” – among the top four teams in the […]
It was “a baseball burlesque … a wild slugfest with a flock of pitchers being rushed in and out of the box.” — James M. Gould, St. Louis Star, May 11, 1923 The Philadelphia Phillies hosted the St. Louis Cardinals at Baker Bowl on Friday, May 11, 1923. It was the final game of […]
Even after the game, the 1,500 people who watched a meaningless late-season contest between the Red Sox and the Yankees in the last week of the 1914 American League season would have had no idea that they had witnessed a historic hit by a rookie off a reliever nearing the end of his career. In […]
Formed by Frank P. Thompson, headwaiter of the Argyle Hotel in Babylon, Long Island, New York, and Stanislaus Kostka “Cos” Govern, who acted as manager, the Cuban Giants were the first salaried black baseball team. They began play in August of 1885 and took on their first major-league opponent, the American Association Metropolitans, on October […]
Cole Hamels was still unsigned in August 2002, two months after the Philadelphia Phillies had selected him 17th overall in the first round of baseball’s amateur draft. He was holding out for a signing bonus similar to that given fellow high-school left-hander Scott Kazmir, who was selected two spots ahead of him by the New […]
According to a well-worn tale, the National League’s Washington Senators held their first-ever Ladies’ Day on September 13, 1897. Thousands of women took advantage of the free admission simply to watch the dashingly handsome 23-year-old Win Mercer pitch. But the day turned ugly when Mercer was ejected by the umpire. After the game, hordes of […]
Mark Worrell enjoyed a memorable few days in Washington, DC, in early June of 2008. Recalled by the St. Louis Cardinals from Triple-A Memphis on June 2, the right-handed relief pitcher with the funky side-arm delivery1 made his major-league debut the next night against the Washington Nationals. He worked a scoreless ninth inning, allowing a […]
In 1913 future Hall of Fame right-hander Walter Johnson earned wins that stopped 18 losing streaks by his Washington Senators. He did it again 10 times in 1914 and 17 times in 1915. By the end of May 1916, he had stopped two more Washington losing streaks; on June 1 he was on the mound […]
Bob Zupcic hit .217 in Double A one year, then .213 the next – and found himself in the major leagues the year after that. The former first-round pick of the Boston Red Sox in 1987 was a large right-handed outfielder (6-foot-4 and 220 pounds as a ballplayer) prized for his defensive talents. He played […]
In a region noted for its rich baseball history, one of the Philadelphia area’s most precious treasures was surely a man named Whitey Witt, a big leaguer whose career began with the Philadelphia Athletics in 1916. The quiet country street that bears his name provides the only conspicuous testimony to Witt’s his former presence there. […]
There have been two big leaguers named Joe Morgan — and it’s not hard to tell them apart. Joseph Michael Morgan played fractions of four seasons in “The Show,” finishing with three games for the 1964 Cardinals. He is white. Joe Leonard Morgan’s Hall of Fame career ran from 1963 to 1984. He is black. […]
Everything about Jim Bibby was big. His frame: 6’5” and 235 pounds, with “legs like oak trees.”1 His hands: he could fit eight baseballs in his right hand — palm down — one more even than Sandy Koufax and Johnny Bench.2 His fastball: “vicious … serious heat … would scare the bejesus out of most […]
Brian Barkley’s career path has taken him from pitching major-league baseball to becoming a practicing pediatrician. When he began in pro ball, there had been the possibility of confusion with another pitcher of a nearly identical name. In the summer of 1995, the Boston Red Sox gave brief duty (2 1/3 innings over three games) […]
Doc Crandall is generally regarded as the premier relief specialist of the Deadball Era. Though he never led the National League in saves, he did lead the league in relief appearances each year from 1909 to 1913, and from 1910 to 1912 he led the NL each year in relief victories, compiling an overall record […]
Remembered mostly for his more famous older brother Ed, Jim Delahanty was a fine player in his own right, and one of the most well-traveled hitters of the Deadball Era. During a professional career that lasted nearly two decades, the free-swinging right-hander played for fifteen different clubs, including eight in the major leagues. Despite his […]
A hard-throwing, fast-living left-hander, Rube Benton pitched professionally for 24 years, compiling a 150-144 record and 3.09 ERA in his 15 seasons in the National League. Benton had a reputation for drinking, gambling, and driving too fast, all three of which combined in various ways to interrupt his major-league career. He eventually died at age […]
Betsy Jochum was one of the sixty original players, as well as one of the best, in the early years of the All-American Girls Professional Base Ball League, a professional women’s circuit born during World War II and made famous in the 1992 movie A League of Their Own. Sixty years later, she had the […]
Mike Maroth may be best known for being the last pitcher to lose 20 games in a season (as of this writing in 2017), but there was much more to his career than what happened in 2003. He toiled for one of the worst teams in history, the 2003 Detroit Tigers that went 43-119, but […]
Hard-throwing Bill Caudill pitched in the majors from 1979 through 1987. The righty struck out a batter per inning at a time when that was much less common. “Caudill doesn’t have much finesse,” said The Scouting Report annual for 1983, the year after he emerged as a closer with the Seattle Mariners. “He throws a […]
On a sunny but windy and cool September Sunday afternoon in Philadelphia, Bob Trice toed the pitching rubber at Connie Mack Stadium and peered in to the catcher for his signs. With the release of his first pitch, Trice made history. He was the first person of color to play for the Philadelphia Athletics; in […]
The Minnesota Twins have called Target Field home since 2010. (COURTESY OF STEW THORNLEY) The Twin Cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul have long been a baseball mecca. The Minneapolis Millers and St. Paul Saints were Triple-A mainstays, and each had a long and distinguished history, being the two teams with the most wins […]