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What do you, a young ballplayer, do when your college of choice doesn’t offer you a scholarship to play baseball? If you’re Brad Hawpe, you pick up the phone, dial the campus, and invite them to see you play. In Hawpe’s case, that led to a nine-year big-league career, mostly with the Colorado Rockies. Bradley […]
Russ Nixon spent more than half a century in baseball. A catcher who played 12 years for the Red Sox, Indians, and Twins, he went on to coach and manage at levels from rookie ball to the major leagues, with five seasons as a big-league manager. The son of farmers Thomas and Edith Nixon […]
East of Puerto Rico lie the isles of Vieques and Culebra. Along with a sprinkling of cays, they are sometimes known as the Spanish Virgin Islands. As of 2018, pitcher Julio Navarro was the only viequense ever to make the majors, largely because the island is an undeveloped place with a population of only about […]
Of the two Skinny Grahams who played major league ball, at more or less the same time, it’s Arthur William Graham of Somerville, Massachusetts (born there on August 12, 1909) who is the subject of this biography, not the pitcher from Alabama, Kyle Graham. Arthur Graham’s father was the original “Skinny” and a contemporary of […]
A decade before the Ray Chapman tragedy, another infielder from Cleveland met a similar fate. Charles “Cupid” Pinkney was playing for Dayton in the Central League, and just 21 years old, when a pitch from Casey Hageman of Grand Rapids struck him in the head. Pinkney died the next day and was buried in Cleveland’s […]
In 1945, The Sporting News reckoned Eddie Mayo as “an excellent example of the Salvation Army adage, ‘A man may be down, but he is never out.’”1 Acquired by the Detroit Tigers a year earlier after he had failed in several attempts to stick in the big leagues, the 34-year-old infielder helped pace the club […]
Joe Cunningham was a left-handed first baseman and converted outfielder who played parts of 12 major-league seasons with the Cardinals (1954, 1956-61), Chicago White Sox (1962-64), and Washington Senators (1964-66). In his All-Star season of 1959, he hit .345 to finish second for the batting title. Known for his excellent batting eye, Cunningham’s lifetime on-base […]
During 24 years in the National League, August John Donatelli was one of major-league baseball’s most respected umpires. He worked four All-Star games (1953, 1959, 1962, 1969), five World Series (1955, 1957, 1961, 1967, 1973), and two League Championship Series (1969, 1972). Moreover, he was the home-plate umpire for four no-hitters: Warren Spahn (1961), Carl […]
“Funny thing, nobody asked me about my pitching,”1 said the hurler best remembered as the only pitcher to hit two grand slams in one game. Yet Tony Cloninger was much more than a great hitting pitcher. In the waning days of Warren Spahn’s great career, the Milwaukee Braves looked to Cloninger to step into the […]
Before and after his two years in the major leagues, when he was one of the most successful batters for the Federal League’s Kansas City Packers, Bill Kenworthy was both a pitcher and second baseman. He led the Packers in slugging in both 1914 and 1915, and led the team in home runs and RBIs […]
A prematurely bald, round-faced Irishman, Frank Isbell was a fixture of the Chicago White Sox for the first decade of their existence. Best remembered as the second baseman of the 1906 “Hitless Wonders,” Isbell spent most of his career as a versatile utility player – one of the few men to have played all nine […]
“He was a faithful, conscientious player, who always worked to win and could always be depended upon.”1 To have something very complimentary said about you at your passing is gratifying, but the person who says it can be as telling about your life. This testimonial was made by 1870s star ballplayer (and future Hall of […]
With a fourth-grade education from the Marshall Street school in San Antonio, Jake Volz did his family proud. Born in the city of San Antonio on April 4, 1878 to parents who had immigrated from Germany a little over 10 years earlier, Jacob Phillip Volz took up baseball as a youth and broke in professionally […]
In Tribe folklore, Tony Peña will always bring back moments of elation and unbound hope for a world championship after he crushed an early-morning pitch toward left field for a walk-off homer in the 13th inning of Game One of the 1995 American League Division Series. For the Indians, it was their first postseason since […]
“Mystique” is a word often linked with Sandy Koufax. He was dubbed “The Left Arm of God” for his pitching feats – especially over the five years from 1962 to 1966. A long litany of statistics attests to his brilliance during this period, but perhaps the most salient points are these. Koufax became the first […]
Long before most teams had at least one reliever who could routinely hit 100 mph on the radar gun, the Cincinnati Reds had Rob Dibble. In his first four full seasons in the majors (1989–92), the 6-foot-4, 240-pound right-hander had a strikeout-to-walk ratio of nearly 4-to-1 while setting a record for the fewest innings (368) […]
Had World War II continued indefinitely, Carden Gillenwater might have fashioned a noteworthy major-league career. As a member of the 1945 Boston Braves, he posted solid offensive numbers and led National League center fielders in several fielding categories. But the return of baseball’s elite for the 1946 season soon relegated placeholders like Gillenwater back to […]
On Wednesday, August 24, 1921, the Pittsburgh Pirates and New York Giants began a five-game series at the Polo Grounds with a doubleheader. The Pirates were in first place with a 7½-game lead over the second-place Giants, and nine games ahead in the lost column. The Pirates were a confident group, evidenced by having their […]
The 1938 season was a good one for the Pittsburgh Pirates: a second-place finish, just two games out. But it was the heartbreaking September collapse that made it a season Pirates fans don’t enjoy talking about.1 The team featured four future Hall of Famers: manager Pie Traynor, shortstop Arky Vaughn, and outfielders Paul and Lloyd […]
Born as the Seattle Pilots in 1969, they moved to Milwaukee the following season and became the Brewers. In the first 12 years of their existence, the team never reached the postseason. That was about to change. The 1981 Brewers were a team that had been on the rise for the three prior seasons, but […]
Before the era when “walk-off home run” became part of baseball’s lexicon and pitchers earned millions for producing six- and seven-inning starts, Milwaukee County Stadium played host to one of the latest walk-off homers in history and also one of its lengthiest and most impressive starting performances. Remarkably, each of those signature events occurred in […]
The last day of the regular season in the 1959 National League pennant race, September 27, ended without a league champion. The Los Angeles Dodgers and Milwaukee Braves ended the schedule in a tie. Los Angeles had bested the Chicago Cubs 7-1 on the final day and the Braves, hearing of the Dodgers victory, and […]
Carl Yastrzemski was legendary in Boston — and throughout baseball. In his 23-season Hall of Fame career with the Red Sox, he made 18 All-Star teams, and won three batting titles, seven Gold Gloves, and the 1967 Triple Crown before retiring in October 1983. Two generations later, the Yastrzemski name returned to the majors.1 His […]
For more than a century, the correct answer to the baseball trivia question Who was the first player to hit a home run in his first major league at-bat? was Baltimore Orioles outfielder Mike Griffin. The title holder’s record-setting blast came in the top of the first inning of an April 16, 1887, American Association […]