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For every great World Series pitcher’s duel, there are a dozen duds that don’t live up to the hype. Game Two certainly fell into the latter category; the hype belonged in a class by itself. The game’s starting pitchers had each put together 24-4 seasons by age 24 – Dwight Gooden pulled off the feat […]

The Minnesota Twins’ defeat of the Baltimore Orioles on September 1, 1979, didn’t make much difference to either team in the long run. The Orioles, leading the American League East Division by eight games, ended the season with the same lead and went to the World Series. The Twins, two games out of first place […]

After a last-place finish in 1901, the Cincinnati Reds began the following season hoping for better things, but initial results didn’t offer much reason for optimism. Opening at home against the Chicago Cubs, second-year manager Bid McPhee entrusted the first two games of the campaign to a pair of 23-year-old pitchers – Len Swormstedt, a […]

Like Three-Fingered Brown after him, Hugh “One-Arm” Daily was saddled with a sobriquet more fanciful than factual. For, as sure as Mordecai Peter Brown had digits enough to count to four on his right hand, so Hugh Ignatius Daily was possessed of a full complement of brachial appendages: the left one, owing to an accident […]

During the peak years of his 14 major-league seasons, before two knee injuries slowed him, Randy Hundley was regarded as a super-durable defensive player whose glove and leadership made him nearly indispensible to the Chicago Cubs. In 1970, when he suffered his first knee injury, manager Leo Durocher lamented, “If there’s one player I hate […]

It was a chilly spring evening at Coors Field. The Pirates were hoping to rebound from their 6-1 loss on the previous evening when their team leader, Andrew McCutchen, returned to the lineup. McCutchen had struggled on the Pirates’ Western road trip, getting only three hits in 23 at-bats before the team’s arrival in Denver. […]

The citizens of St. Louis had seen a lot of baseball played in the ballpark that stood at the intersection of Dodier Street and Grand Avenue. They had never seen it like this, though. After a single season in the upstart American League, the Milwaukee Brewers franchise was relocated to the “Gateway to the West” […]

On an unseasonably chilly Tuesday night in early May, a small crowd gathered at Tiger Stadium to watch the Detroit Tigers take on the visiting Chicago White Sox. The 7,327 who braved the cold — there were chill warnings in effect for later that night — were in for a treat: arguably the greatest pitching […]

The summer of 1969 was a loud summer, but the loudest blast was from the rocket that sent three men to the moon and back. With so much to write about during that eventful summer, author Roy Hoopes focused on his hometown team and wrote a picture book about Ted Williams and the 1969 Washington […]

“There are many things we only see clearly in retrospect.”1 The quote from Japanese writer Haruki Murakami had nothing to do with the August 13, 1960, baseball game between the eventual World Series champion Pittsburgh Pirates and the St. Louis Cardinals. However, in retrospect, the game proved to be important for both the Pirates and […]

The St. Louis Cardinals could almost taste it. Up three games to one against the Detroit Tigers in the 1968 World Series, manager Red Schoendienst’s team needed only one more victory to bring home their second consecutive championship. Except for Detroit’s Game Two victory, the Redbirds had dominated the Tigers, outscoring them 21-4. In battles […]

A contest pitting age versus youth produced a “scintillating pitching duel,” gushed Motor City sportswriter Brian Bragg.1 The Milwaukee Brewers’ 37-year-old, 254-game winner, Don Sutton, recently acquired as a postseason insurance policy, and 23-year-old Detroit Tigers emerging star Dan Petry, with 40 career wins to his credit, tossed zeros for seven innings until Harvey’s Wallbangers […]

John Milner idolized Hank Aaron, lockered next to Willie Mays, and on his best days could hit home runs with as much authority as either man. While injuries and inconsistency prevented Milner from becoming an elite slugger, he carved out a 12-year career for the Mets, Pirates, and Expos, helping each of those clubs reach […]

A flaky southpaw from California with a deep repertoire of pitches, Frank Bertaina spent parts of seven major league seasons (1964-1970) with the Orioles, Senators and Cardinals. Primarily a starter, he was in Baltimore’s bullpen for the 1966 World Series but did not see action. Frank Louis Bertaina was born on April 14, 1944, in […]

A right-handed power-hitting outfielder, George Foster was a feared presence at bat and in the outfield for most of his 11-year run with the Cincinnati Reds. Once he mastered the mental aspect of his game, Foster became a key ingredient in manager Sparky Anderson’s Big Red Machine of the 1970s. But as powerful as he […]

Outfielder Chaney White had a 17-year career in the Negro major leagues from 1920 through 1936. During that time, he was a member of numerous championship teams that included squads in various Negro Leagues, the Cuban Winter League, the Florida Hotel League, and the California Winter League. In 1934, at age 40, he was still […]

The small community of Vinegar Bend, Alabama, provided an unusual nickname to major-league pitcher and US Congressman Wilmer “Vinegar Bend” Mizell. Contrary to the belief that he was born in Vinegar Bend, Wilmer was born in neighboring Leakesville, Mississippi, and graduated from high school there in 1949, but the little town of fewer than 200 […]

He batted .400 for his major-league career, never committed an error, but was 0-1 as a pitcher. He appeared in four games — one in 1950 and three in 1952. His name was James Curtis Atkins, a big 6-foot-3, 205-pouind Alabaman who batted left-handed and threw right-handed. He pitched for 13 years in the minor […]

“It is difficult to muster up much sympathy these days for the young men who make their livings in professional baseball, but I submit for your consideration a possible exception,” Toronto sportswriter Marty York commented in 1993.1 He was referring to Domingo Martínez. Players have complained for decades about lacking chances to prove their worth, […]

Immersed in a pennant race that would go down to the wire, the first-place Los Angeles Dodgers took the field at Busch Stadium in St. Louis on September 28, 1966, in hopes of putting distance between themselves and their two closest competitors. The St. Louis Cardinals had no intention of making this endeavor any easier […]

From 1942 to 1944, when World War II deprived major-league baseball of many of its top players, Al Javery was considered by some to be among the better pitchers left playing in the United States. At the very least he was one of the better players on the mediocre Boston Braves of the time. But […]

Cookie Rojas is one of a handful of major leaguers who played every position in his career including pitcher. Of that group, he is the only one to make both the American and National League All-Star teams. Rojas worked in the major leagues as a player, coach, manager, and broadcaster for more than five decades. […]

Tommie Agee was one of the key components to the 1969 Miracle Mets, solidifying the defense and serving as the club’s chief power source, albeit from the leadoff spot. His on-field heroics during the ’69 season—including socking the only home run to ever reach Shea Stadium’s upper deck—helped propel the Mets to their first postseason […]

Jersey City, squeezed between Newark Bay and the Hudson River, is a prime metropolis for a ballpark. For 50 years, it had one, an Art Deco edifice débuting in the Depression, thriving for the first half of its life, fading into deep neglect in the 1970s, and succumbing to eventual nullity in the 1980s. Within […]