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“A ludicrous way to end it all,” wrote Bob Stevens of the San Francisco Chronicle after Dick Groat had walked to force in the winning run in the 21st inning.1 “At least the team won,” said right-hander Gaylord Perry after pitching 16 scoreless innings and not figuring in the decision. “That’s the breaks of the […]

The Red Sox were not having a good year. They had won their Opening Day game 13-2 but followed with two four-game losing streaks within the season’s first two weeks, leaving them at 6-12, last in the AL East. The visiting Tampa Bay Rays, on the other hand, were 11-8, just 1½ games back of […]

Sometimes the best deal for a major-league team is the one it doesn’t make. In the first six weeks of the 1965 American League season, pitcher Jim Perry was given little opportunity to show the Minnesota Twins the truth in that adage. From the start of spring training through the first 35 games of the […]

The 1953 Dodgers enjoyed so much success against the St. Louis Cardinals that it has stood the test of time. It was impressive dominance by a great team against a pretty good team that struggled mightily at Ebbets Field. The Ladies Day game between the Dodgers and Cardinals on September 1 was the last of […]

The Chicago Cubs had their work cut out for them if they were going to repeat as World Series champions in 1908. When they left Chicago on September 9 for a grueling 24-game road trip, they were mired in third place, two games behind the red-hot New York Giants and 1½ games behind the surging […]

Rick Reuschel had followed in his older brother Paul’s footsteps at every level of Organized Baseball until Rick reached the majors first with the Chicago Cubs in 1972. Ever since then, Rick had rooted for Paul, also in the Cubs system, to join him on the big-league club. Paul got the call from the Cubs […]

Minor-league power hitting, solid play as an injury fill-in, and Dave Parker’s departure in free agency thrust Doug Frobel into right field for the Pittsburgh Pirates on Opening Day 1984. Frobel’s struggles – beginning with an ignominious encounter with Hall of Fame-bound San Diego Padres reliever Rich Gossage in the season opener – soon reduced […]

Oh, how it rained. The day before the first World Series game ever hosted at Comiskey Park, the skies opened. The National League champion New York Giants had hoped for a practice that would have allowed them to acclimate themselves to the quirks of an unfamiliar ballpark. Instead, manager John McGraw kept his team at […]

The Boston Red Sox concluded their only visit to Seattle during 2013, a four-game series at Safeco Field, on Thursday afternoon, July 11. On the second stop of a three-city West Coast trip heading into the All-Star break, Boston had lost 11-4 to the Mariners on July 8, but then scored 11 runs themselves in […]

After the 1973 season, Yankee Stadium underwent a $100 million renovation, forcing the Yankees to share Shea Stadium with the New York Mets in 1974 and 1975. Finally, on the unseasonably warm afternoon of April 15, 1976, the Yankees returned to the Bronx and their remodeled stadium, as a spirited crowd of 52,613 (the largest […]

Between games of the doubleheader at Buffalo’s Federal League Park, those in the grandstands enjoyed “old songs from the days of ’61 and modern ragtime jingles”1 played by the 74th Regiment Band. Hopefully the music soothed some spirits. After they watched the battered Buf-Feds lose 8-0 in the first game, it only got worse. Buffalo […]

Baltimore is a city of heroes. Johns Hopkins. Francis Scott Key. Johnny Unitas. But in 1966, the men brandishing the Maryland state bird as their symbol ruled the metropolis by the Chesapeake Bay. When the Baltimore Orioles swept the storied Los Angeles Dodgers in the World Series, fans of underdogs everywhere were justified in their […]

The 1908 baseball season was “one of the most sensational on record,”1 according to the sportswriters who saw it unfold. And even some modern baseball scholars agree with that assessment.2 There were hard-fought pennant races in each league, and the winners weren’t known till the final games of the season. In the American League, the […]

Outfielder Carl Reynolds showed flashes of real stardom, and indeed enjoyed a 13-year career in the majors with a .302 batting average. The moment that earned him the most attention, however, was having his jaw broken by a punch thrown by Yankees catcher (and future Hall of Famer) Bill Dickey, though even that incident has […]

Sandusky or Terre Haute? 1888 or 1890, or maybe 1891? Tracing the birthplace of outfielder Elmer Miller, who played seven seasons in the major leagues for the Cardinals, Yankees, and Red Sox, is not the easiest of tasks. Standard sources consulted in 2012 claim he was born on July 28, 1890 in Sandusky, Ohio. That […]

A pitcher can be labeled a “.500 pitcher” if he is considered to be of average ability, or his number of wins equals, or nearly equals, his losses Right-handed pitcher Red Hardy, whose major-league career consisted of just two games with the 1951 New York Giants, was literally a .500 pitcher during his minor-league career. […]

Referred to as “the original dirt player” by Atlanta Braves manager Bobby Cox, Mark Lemke was a throwback second baseman who rarely left the field with a clean uniform.1 Standing at 5-feet-10-inches and weighing between 165 and 170 pounds, the undersized second baseman contributed in ways that didn’t always show up in a box score. […]

Detroit native Paul Andre Assenmacher (born December 10, 1960) epitomized the somewhat obscure baseball term LOOGY (Lefty One-Out Guy) by making a “long and profitable career out of coming into a game, pitching to one or two left-handed batters, then leaving.”1  Assenmacher, who pitched for the Aquinas College Saints (Grand Rapids) from 1981 to 1983, […]

Larry Dale Ray was born at King’s Daughter’s Hospital in Madison, Indiana, on March 11, 1958. The youngest of nine children, he was raised with a farming family near Vevay, Indiana. Ray’s parents, William and Dorothy Ray, had a dairy farm and grew tobacco. Larry worked the family fields as well as those of other […]

For those of you have never heard of the Magnus Force, as first described in 1852 by the German physicist Heinrich Gustav Magnus, it is a force generated by a spinning object moving through a fluid experience with a sideways deflection in its path. The force is perpendicular to the velocity vector of an object, […]

Jimmie Wilson was a two-time All-Star catcher whose major league career spanned 23 years (1923-46) as a player, manager, and coach with four different National League teams. He played on four pennant winners, was a coach on a fifth, and was a member of two World Series championship teams. He is best remembered for his […]

Bobby Richardson played second base for the New York Yankees from 1955 to 1966, a key contributor during one of the Yankees’ most successful stretches in their legendary history. Richardson was by all accounts a slick, rangy glove man and a steady stick man. He won the Gold Glove Award five times, he batted over […]

“Prince Hal” Newhouser had the unique distinction of being baseball’s best pitcher during the 1940s — as well as its most unpopular player. An uncompromising perfectionist who was as hard on himself as his teammates, he was famous for his hot left arm and mercurial temperament. Whether Newhouser was mowing down enemy hitters or smashing […]

Deron Roger Johnson, labeled the “next Mickey Mantle,” spent 16 seasons as a major-league slugger. His finest year was not as a Bronx Bomber but as a Cincinnati Red. A dual football and baseball interscholastic sports star, the San Diego native excelled on the gridiron. Johnson played end, linebacker, kicker, and punter for San Diego […]