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On August 2, 1912, Harry Niles of the Toledo Mud Hens led off the first inning by drawing a walk from pitcher Bill Lelivelt of the Minneapolis Millers, but Niles was quickly erased by a double play. That walk was the only blemish on Lelivelt’s performance, as he pitched a no-hitter and faced 27 batters […]
Maynard Faye Throneberry was the decidedly less-colorful — and less-celebrated — of the major leagues’ two Throneberry brothers. His younger brother was dubbed “Marvelous Marv”, a player who gained infamy as a symbol of baseball ineptitude, particularly in the field and on the base paths. Faye (he was never referred to by his first name) […]
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 […]
In his six major-league seasons, left-hander Bill Short pitched for three American League teams and three National League teams. “I chose baseball as a career,” he wrote, because he’d loved to watch games on television. “Being a typical youngster I had a ballplayer or two which were my idols. My real idol was Ted Williams, […]
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 […]
Due to wartime manpower shortages, 20-year-old Cleveland Indian utility infielder Al Cihocki was one of an estimated 120 rookies in major-league baseball in 1945. When World War II ended and players returned to their former teams, Cihocki, like many others, was out of a job in the big leagues. However, he moved on to a […]
“That’s the hardest hit ball I ever saw.” – Terry Moore1 The ball came off the bat of Walter Sessi, the unlikeliest of heroes for the 1946 World Champion St. Louis Cardinals. Sessi debuted with the Cardinals in 1941 and was hitless in 13 at-bats. After missing four seasons while serving in World War II, […]
“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 […]
Over the years, the Red Sox have had players on their roster who were perhaps better known for the uniqueness of their name than for anything they did on the playing field. You may recall Jennings Poindexter, Carmen Fanzone, Creighton Gubanich, Gar Finnvold, Izzy Alcantara, Win Remmerswaal, Osee Schrecongost, Hipolito Pichardo, and Arquimedez Pozo, to […]
Fourteen seasons. That’s all it took for Scranton-Dunmore Stadium to go from a community’s shiny new plaything to, literally, a pile of parts waiting to be trucked out of town. Between 1940 and 1953, the people of Scranton, Pennsylvania – and of Dunmore, a small neighboring community – got to see Ted Williams, Satchel Paige, […]
It took the Philadelphia Phillies and New York Mets nine innings, 37 players, 366 pitches, eight pinch-hitters, 13 walks, six stolen bases, two blown saves, and exactly four hours of a Thursday afternoon to play one of the most exciting games of the 2007 season. The Phillies prevailed, 11-10, on August 30 to complete a […]
Baseball folklore has it that Abner Doubleday “chased the cows out of Elihu Phinney’s cow pasture on an afternoon in 1839”1 and thus was inspired to invent the game of baseball. While home on leave from the United States Military Academy, as the story goes, Cadet Doubleday (Class of 1842) drew up the rules and […]
“Screams, shrieks, whoops, bawls, howls, hollers, roars swept through the ball-yard with the weird noise raised by cow bells, auto horns, whistles, rattles, and musical instruments,” wrote Damon Runyon about the wild scene at Sportsman’s Park for first World Series game ever played in St. Louis.1 A member of the National League since 1892, the Cardinals had spent […]
Even had Kenny Rogers not tossed a perfect game on July 28, 1994, baseball fans would have remembered the date. Earlier that day, the executive committee of the Players Association had voted to go out on strike on August 12. The culmination of a long, bitter struggle between owners and players, the strike occurred over […]
Time and again during their run to the world championship in 1986, the New York Mets clawed back in desperate situations. They were all but eliminated in Game Six of the World Series, when the Boston Red Sox were one strike away from winning it all for the first time since 1918. Earlier, in Game […]
Momentum seemed to be on the side of the Red Sox. They had been down three games to none in the 2004 ALCS, but were coming off two extra-inning wins. Both were hard-fought, close games, but Boston won them both and was flush with exhilaration. The two teams traveled from Boston back to New York […]
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 […]
We all remember our first time. We felt anxious, excited, nervous, hoping that we wouldn’t get hurt or screw it up. Ultimately we hoped for a happy ending. There’s only one first time when your team goes from being an expansion punching bag to a kick-ass pennant contender (what were you thinking about?) For Montreal […]
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 […]
Editor’s note: On July 25, 1987, SABR placed a grave marker at the previously unmarked grave of John W. Jackson. Known in the baseball world as Bud Fowler, the New York native was a Black baseball pioneer who played, managed, and promoted teams during the late 19th century. The dedication ceremony at Oak View Cemetery […]