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John Woods – September 16, 1924. Pitcher Woods, back in the year 1924, appeared in just one major-league game and threw just one inning. It was late in the season, September 16, when Woods (born John Fulton Woods) was called on to pitch the eighth inning for the Boston Red Sox. The game was at […]

The very best parts of a game always were at the end for Eric Plunk. He was a starting pitcher early in his career, but like many hard throwers, he had problems with his command, especially with his secondary offerings, and he found his highest and best use in major-league bullpens for 14 seasons. Plunk’s […]

On June 11, 1914, the Carbondale (Pennsylvania) Leader proudly informed readers that hometown minor leaguer Joe Kilhullen had been engaged by the National League’s Pittsburgh Pirates.1 Unhappily, by the time that the edition hit newsstands, the major league career of catcher Kilhullen was already over, confined to a two-inning stint the afternoon before. Undiscouraged by […]

Imagine being able to say you’d seen the big-league debuts of Ernie Banks, Roberto Clemente, Sandy Koufax, Don Drysdale, and Bill Mazeroski1 – not to mention an All-Star Game, a no-hitter, a four-homer game, and a batter hitting for the cycle. Some baseball lovers spend a lifetime hoping to see those kinds of milestones. Bill […]

A tenacious, feisty catcher who played six years in the 1890s with the Chicago club of the National League, Tim Donahue appeared in 466 major league games and compiled a .236 lifetime batting average. He was an outspoken individual, having what one sportswriter termed “a tongue as nimble as a squirrel’s and as sharp as […]

An every-other-year major leaguer, Gary Fortune was a switch-hitting pitcher – a right-hander on the mound – who wound up 0-5 in his big-league career. He pitched for the Phillies in 1916 and 1918, and for the Red Sox in 1920. His 0-5 record reflected a 6.61 career earned run average. He wasn’t any better […]

Carl Stimson pitched four innings in the majors, two each in games a bit more than a month apart. He gave up 10 earned runs in the four frames. He didn’t spend much longer in baseball. And he hadn’t spent much time beforehand, either. His only prior experience seems to have been on the sandlots […]

Harsh sunshine beat down on the Los Angeles Coliseum floor. Two men, drenched in sweat, practiced baseball drills while local temperatures soared past 100 degrees in the spring of 1960. Maury Wills, an eager Dodger infielder, and Pete Reiser, an enthusiastic LA coach, worked together for nearly two weeks. “You can’t quit,” Reiser said over […]

Wabishaw Spencer “Doc” Wiley played in the Negro Leagues for 15 seasons and earned his nickname by becoming a practicing dentist. He was an offseason dentist during his playing career and transitioned to dentistry full time once his playing career ended.1 Various sources give various birthdates for Wiley. Baseball-Reference lists him being born on February […]

Boyd Cypert was one of 988 players who had a “cup of coffee” (played a single game) in the majors before 2014, according to Baseball-Reference. What sets him apart from others in that group is his law degree from Harvard. He attended Harvard and earned his degree before embarking on a brief three-month, 65-game career […]

The Cubs called up Puerto Rico native Hector Villanueva on June 1, 1990, midway through his sixth minor-league season. The heavyset 25-year-old catcher burst onto the big-league scene with a homer in his first game and three in his first six. He quickly became a Wrigley Field fan favorite, batting .272 in 114 at-bats with […]

For the first time in 34 years, the National League pennant returned to Boston thanks to Bob Elliott’s 22nd home run, a three-run shot in the first inning. The Braves hung on to defeat the New York Giants, 3-2, before 31,172 jubilant spectators at Braves Field. Boston manager Billy Southworth celebrated his fourth NL pennant. […]

Game Five. Two words guaranteed to bring angst to the heart of any Washington Nationals fan. Three times since 2012 the Nationals had made it to a National League Division Series Game Five – and all three times they had lost, in heartbreaking fashion.1 A fourth NLDS trip, in 2014, had resulted in three one-run […]

New York City sports fans with a few dollars in their pockets and a Wednesday afternoon free on August 11, 1943, had a choice. Both National League clubs were at home, so those with a baseball rooting interest could either catch the Dodgers at Ebbets Field or the Giants at the Polo Grounds. Those interested […]

Typically stocked with ballplayers past their prime or otherwise below average, major-league expansion teams have had little prospect of participating in pennant races during their inaugural seasons. As a result, their fans celebrated lesser triumphs – like their first win, their first win at home, and their first walk-off win. The Kansas City Royals collected […]

Less than two years after the Los Angeles Dodgers selected him in the first round of the June 2006 amateur draft, Clayton Kershaw made an impressive major-league debut. He pitched six innings, struck out seven, and held the St. Louis Cardinals to two runs as the Dodgers won 4-3 in 10 innings on May 25, […]

In late July 1901, the Philadelphia Athletics traveled to Cleveland to complete an 11-game Western swing with a two-game series against the Blues. When the series opened on Saturday, July 27, the home team won, 4-3, but Philadelphia’s Napoleon “Nap” Lajoie was 3-for-5, boosting his batting average to a league-leading .429 in the American League’s […]

After a promising 1948 season in which they’d finished fourth but only 8½ games behind the National League’s pennant-winning Boston Braves, the Pittsburgh Pirates were beginning a descent in 1949. The team finished sixth that year and either seventh or eighth each season through 1957, but snapped out of its malaise to finish second in […]

Almost midway through their season, the 2005 Chicago White Sox promoted “Turn Back the Clock Night” to honor the 1959 Go-Go White Sox. That team had won the American League pennant but had then lost the World Series to the Los Angeles Dodgers in six games. The Go-Go Sox roster had included six future Hall […]

The first series of the 1916 season between the Washington Senators and the Boston Red Sox began on April 17. The Red Sox were the defending champions, coming off a four-games-to-one mastery of the Philadelphia Phillies in the 1915 World Series. The Senators, perennial residents of the second division from 1903 through 1911, had begun […]

The 1988 National League Championship Series was a matchup of a pair of teams that had comfortably won their division. The NL East Division champion New York Mets finished with a record of 100-60, 15 games ahead of the second-place Pittsburgh Pirates. The NL West Division champion Los Angeles Dodgers finished with a record of […]

It was a Monday evening well into a season in which the Cincinnati Redlegs would fall short in their ambition to win their first pennant since 1940. The crowd that came to Crosley Field was smallish (13,477), as was the catcher pressed into service by the Redlegs in the late innings. Hobie Landrith had been […]

It seemed an optimistic but relatively inconsequential signing at the time. In January 1990, the Detroit Tigers, coming off an abysmal 59-103 last-place season and in search of a power upgrade, gave a little-known and heretofore mostly unproductive former major leaguer named Cecil Fielder a $1.25 million incentive-laden contract and installed him as their starting […]

In February 1919 the recently proclaimed principal owner of the Chicago Cubs, William Wrigley, Jr.; his wife, Ada; and a real-estate broker, Captain David Blankenhorn, boarded the good ship Hermosa and set off across the San Pedro Channel for an hours-long reconnaissance in search of a California island Wrigley had purchased sight unseen for several […]