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Tucked in the northwest corner of Rhode Island, just 10 miles from both Massachusetts and Connecticut, is the village of Chepachet, where Phillips Steere Paine was born on June 8, 1930. When Paine was a teenager in the 1940s Chepachet didn’t have a high school, so each school day Paine traveled five miles north to […]

Some of Boston’s more prolific exports over the years have been the priests and nuns, and sometimes those emissaries of the Catholic Church sent word back to Boston. Priests and nuns from the New England area were often quite fervent baseball fans, and Father Hyacinth L. Martin of Aquinas College – a prep school in […]

Tom Zachary pitched in the majors from 1918 through 1936, logging 186 victories.1 The Guilford College star — who took part in one of the greatest collegiate pitching duels ever waged — never played a minor league game, a rare occurrence in those days. He picked up three World Series checks and was on the […]

October 9, 1961. Game Five of the World Series, at Cincinnati’s Crosley Field. All that separated the New York Yankees from another championship was outlasting the Cincinnati Reds. New York scored five runs in the top of the first, chasing Reds starter Joey Jay. A home run by Roger Maris in the top of the […]

Six-foot-seven right-handed pitcher Rich Gale joined Tim Stoddard of Baltimore as the tallest players in the American League when he debuted with an excellent rookie season for the Kansas City Royals in 1978. For a team that would win a third straight division title, he earned 13 of his 14 victories by the first week […]

Cito Gaston had seen enough of Duane Ward. The Toronto Blue Jays manager had replaced starter John Cerutti with Ward to open the seventh inning with the visitors nursing a 4-2 lead over the Milwaukee Brewers at County Stadium. Four singles, two sacrifice flies, and an intentional walk later, Toronto was trailing 5-4. The Brewers […]

Darren Oliver grew up in a baseball family and pitched all or parts of 20 major-league seasons (1993-2004, 2006-2013). Although the lefty saw action for nine different major league teams, he made his biggest mark with the Texas Rangers, the club that drafted him out of high school. During his three stints with Texas, Oliver […]

To paraphrase one nineteenth-century baseball scholar, Charlie Buffinton, while perhaps not a truly great pitcher, was unquestionably a very good one.1 Possessed of poise, baseball intelligence, and a knee-bending 12-to-6 overhand curve (then called a drop), Buffinton racked up 233 wins in his 11-season major-league career.2 He also appeared in over 200 more games as […]

As far as Roy Lee Jackson was concerned, the highlight of his time in baseball wasn’t the 28 wins or 34 saves he compiled over 10 years (1977-1986) in the majors. Neither was it his induction into the National College Baseball Hall of Fame. Instead, it was a conversation he had with a young autograph […]

The dreaded trip to the woodshed altered many a young life; however, in the case of a young Washington, D.C., native, the effort was futile. Luzerne Atwell Blue was born on March 5, 1897, in the District of Columbia. Lu always claimed he was the youngest of seven sons; however, a look at the 1900 […]

Once described as the “Heinz of Baseball” because of his variety of pitches and deliveries, Elmer Ponder tossed a two-hit shutout for his first big-league win as a late-September call-up with the Pittsburgh Pirates in 1917. After missing almost a season and a half because of World War I, Ponder went on to post a […]

Michael Anthony Easler played 14 major-league seasons between 1973 and 1987. A left-handed hitter and right-handed thrower, Easler was nicknamed “The Hit Man” and “Line Drive” for his prowess at the plate. He was also sometimes referred to as Easy in reference to his last name, his graceful hitting stroke, and his quiet demeanor.1 The […]

“I have never seen a recruit pitcher with a more deceptive hook,” gushed syndicated sportswriter (and AL umpire) Billy Evans about rookie right-hander Sam Gray of the Philadelphia A’s in 1924.1 Gray rode his impressive curveball to a 10-year career, the final six with the St. Louis Browns. Three years after winning 20 games for […]

With a professional playing career that spanned 1987 to 2003, Bill Haselman spent 13 major-league seasons as a backup catcher for four different teams. He first reached the majors in 1990 with the Texas Rangers, a team he had three stints with, and appeared in a career-high 77 games in 1996 with the Red Sox. […]

Jim Brewer called himself a screwball, and he threw one. It saved his career. After three years of trying, the left-hander mastered the delivery with help from a Hall of Famer. Beginning when he was 30 years old, he fashioned a six-year run as the Los Angeles Dodgers’ late-inning fireman. Brewer became most famous for […]

For many pitchers, the pathway to the major leagues is a trail marked with the challenges and opportunities of injury. Joaquín Benoit is among those for whom injury presented both a challenge and opportunity. The perseverance that led him to win the 2010 Tony Conigliaro Award was a character trait present even at the outset […]

Steve Macko died from cancer ten weeks after his 27th birthday, leaving behind a sparse record of 25 games over two seasons with the Chicago Cubs. But the cold cadences of baseball’s official ledger misrepresent his life’s true measure. Macko continued a distinguished family lineage in the game, spearheaded an improbable College World Series bid, […]

“Don’t say I am predicting a pennant,” said Philadelphia Phillies skipper Eddie Sawyer after his club blanked the Chicago Cubs in both games of a doubleheader on July 25, 1950 to reclaim first place. “Just say my dreams come true.”1 Sawyer might not have been a fortune teller, but his dreams did come true as […]

Both starters worked into the ninth inning, and it seemed like a game the Red Sox didn’t want to let get away. Three times they had to take the lead, even in those first nine frames. And then they had to do it once again in the 12th, with one swing from their venerable left […]

Managers do not ordinarily vehemently protest an umpire’s decision during a spring training game, but when Cleveland Indians manager Mike Hargrove disagreed with a foul-ball call in the third inning on March 25, 1993, he strode toward umpire Durwood Merrill with purpose. Leading a roster of emotionally taxed players returning to action three days after […]

Before Game One of the 1987 American League Championship Series between the Detroit Tigers and Minnesota Twins, Tigers manager Sparky Anderson made a statement about Pat Sheridan. Although the Tigers outfielder ended the season 5-for-68 and spent most of the last three weeks on the bench during a tight race for first place, Anderson had […]

After the Houston Astros finished in second place in the NL Central Division for a third consecutive season in 1996, they hired Larry Dierker, the former Astros pitcher-turned-broadcaster, to replace hyper-intense Terry Collins as their new manager. Dierker’s hire was met with laughter and derision throughout the media and by a number of baseball insiders, […]

It was a “boiling” hot Saturday afternoon in Yankee Stadium, according to Yankees radio play-by-play announcer John Sterling,1 with a game-time temperature of 95 degrees. Little did the 41,682 fans know that two young prospects, Tyler Austin and Aaron Judge, would make their Yankees debut in spectacular fashion that day. New York entered the game at a disappointing 59-56 […]

When the Chicago White Sox took the field for Opening Day in 1919, no one knew which version of the team would come to play.1 Charles Comiskey’s club had ended the previous season in a disappointing sixth place, following the loss of stars like Eddie Collins to the Marines and Shoeless Joe Jackson to the […]