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Sometimes even a 10-run lead isn’t enough. This was especially true in May 2004 when the Detroit Tigers, whose pitchers had the second-worst team ERA (4.93), traveled to Texas to face the Rangers, fourth in the American League in runs scored (5.31 runs per game). The Rangers’ starting pitcher was future Cy Young Award winner […]

With four games left in the 2000 season, the only role available to the Baltimore Orioles was that of spoiler. The Toronto Blue Jays were trying to make the playoffs, and the Orioles stood in their way. With four games left to play, Toronto (83-75) was 4½ games behind the American League East Division-leading New […]

It is not always that a star player gets to “come back” to his original team, to finish his career and take his final at-bats to the admiration of his hometown fans. In 2018, after spending six years away from the Seattle Mariners, including the last three with the Florida Marlins, Ichiro Suzuki was unsigned […]

On August 9, 2009, Felix Pie became just the second Baltimore Orioles player to hit for the cycle in a Baltimore ballpark. In the game, Baltimore batters smashed a record nine doubles as part of a 19-hit attack and defeated the Anaheim Angels, 16-6. Orioles rookie Chris Tillman picked up his first career win before […]

The 1968 season is remembered as “the Year of the Pitcher,” and for good reason. For the first time since the Deadball Era, both the American and National Leagues posted ERAs under 3.1 Only one AL hitter, Carl Yastrzemski, finished with an average of .300 or greater, and major-league batters as a whole averaged just […]

“Ebbets Field just isn’t the same.” – Roscoe McGowen1 Brooklyn’s Ebbets Field was a special place for baseball fans of all ages. Baseball’s literature tells the story of the National League’s Brooklyn Superbas, Robins, and Dodgers – over 3,400 games in 45 seasons (1913-1957) and 28 World Series games in nine different postseasons.2 Ask any […]

The game between the Philadelphia Phillies and Brooklyn Dodgers on July 9, 1938, may have gone completely unnoticed, except for the fact that Claude Passeau pitched all 16 innings for the Phillies. Only 1,277 fans showed up for the contest between the eighth-place Phillies and seventh-place Dodgers that had little significance for the two second-division […]

“It’s not hype,” Orioles right fielder B.J. Surhoff said of Twins pitcher Johan Santana after the September 19, 2004 series finale at the Metrodome in Minneapolis. “He’s that good.”1 En route to his first Cy Young Award, the left handed Venezuelan dazzled the afternoon crowd in his last home start of the regular season by […]

Early in the fall of 1887, Brooklyn Grays pitcher Will Terry married, breaking the heart of many a female admirer.1 Recently dubbed “Adonis” by the New York Tribune,2 the tall, slender 23-year-old was popular among men and women alike for his handsome looks, temperate manner and “gentlemanly … conduct on and off the field.”3 On […]

“It was all my fault,” Philadelphia Athletics first baseman Ferris Fain said in a postgame interview. “I threw the ball while I was still pivoting, and it was five full feet from the bag.”1 The 26-year-old rookie was lamenting his second-inning error on a groundball off the bat of Stan Spence that allowed the Washington […]

In 1949 Bantam Books published Joe DiMaggio’s autobiography Lucky To Be a Yankee.  It could be the title of Johnny Blanchard’s life story as well. “I was so lucky to have been a member of the best New York Yankee team ever,” Blanchard says, referring to the 1961 Bronx Bombers. “With any other organization, I […]

Bill Grevell was a semipro pitcher from Philadelphia whose scatter-armed stint with the talent-parched 1919 Athletics indicated that he was not ready for the majors. After parts of two seasons in the minor leagues, he returned to the sandlots until illness ended his life at age 25. William Joseph Grevell Jr. was born on March […]

Randy Gumpert was feeling flush with confidence in the spring of 1947. After being out of the Major Leagues between the ages of twenty and twenty-eight, the six-feet-three, 185-pound right-hander had returned in 1946 with an excellent season. He had an 11-3 record for the third-place Yankees, with a 2.31 earned run average and a […]

If William Ellsworth Hoy were playing today, he would not be called “Dummy”–not by players nor by fans nor by the media. He’d be “Bill” or “Billy,” perhaps “Will” or “Willie,” maybe even “Ellie.” He wouldn’t be a deaf mute, either. He’d be “aurally and vocally challenged.” But back when Hoy was playing, nicknames were […]

Born to a prominent family doctor in central Michigan, this one-game major league pitcher later became more noted as an umpire, thanks to a run-in with a star ballplayer. One of the few men to play and umpire in the major leagues, Charles Ferguson traveled the across the country playing baseball, and after retiring from […]

Voted by the Pittsburgh fans as the greatest right-handed pitcher in Pirates history, Deacon Phillippe may have been the greatest control pitcher ever — his 1.25 walks per nine innings is the lower ratio of anyone who hurled after the modern pitching distance was established in 1893. Longtime teammate Honus Wagner recalled that Phillippe “wanted […]

One of the top two-sport athletes to come out of the Twin Cities, Bill Davis starred at the University of Minnesota in both baseball and basketball in the early 1960s. After graduation Davis began his professional baseball career by signing with the Cleveland Indians. Davis played parts of three seasons in the majors but could […]

“From the Cape Fear League to the majors in three months is ‘some rise.’”1 High society. Murphy Currie was born into it in eastern North Carolina, in a vast country compound named “Glendale,” outside Fayetteville. He followed stardom on the diamond at in-state Davidson College with three no-hitters over 12 days in Carolina amateur ball […]

Pete Vuckovich was a menacing figure. He was big: 6-feet-4 and 220 pounds (or more). He glowered over a Fu Manchu mustache and often had a few days’ growth elsewhere to go with his long, unkempt hair. While pitching, he had “a streak of calculated weirdness.”1 Rasputin comparisons arose, and he encouraged them, applauding the […]

John Boyce Taylor – known as “Steel Arm Johnny” for his pitching – was the second of four tremendously talented baseball-playing brothers. One of them, Ben, was eventually inducted into the National Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown. Eldest brother Charles, known in baseball as “C.I.,” was a brilliant manager; along with Rube Foster, he […]

Perhaps Gene Oliver was born too soon. With the advent of the designated hitter in 1973, he was already four years removed from his ten-year major-league career. He was a power hitter who drew favorable comparisons to sluggers Frank Howard and Joe Adcock. His glove work was often (and unfairly) derided – making him a […]

Dwight Smith entered the major leagues with a bang, thanks to a dynamic rookie season that included clutch hits, a playoff appearance, Rookie of the Year votes, and even a chance to sing the National Anthem. He never matched the success of that first season, but Smith still had a respectable eight-year career in the […]

In the months leading up to his graduation from high school in 1968, Bill Greif, a 6’5″, 200-pound, multi-sport athlete, was in demand. He starred in track and field, started on the basketball team, led the football team to a state championship as the starting quarterback. As a pitcher he had been attracting baseball scouts […]

Right-handed pitcher Jason Johnson overcame a diagnosis of insulin-dependent diabetes mellitus as a youth to forge an 11-year major-league career during which he became the first ballplayer to wear an insulin pump on the field of play. Jason Michael Johnson was born on October 27, 1973, in Santa Barbara, California, to John and Deanna Johnson. […]