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Underappreciated in his late-19th-century heyday and largely forgotten for decades thereafter, Roger Connor was baseball’s first great slugger, the game’s career home-run leader prior to the arrival of Babe Ruth. A fastball-loving left-handed batter, Connor spent virtually every season between 1880 and 1894 among league leaders in a wide array of offensive categories. Over time […]

For nearly eighty years, Hub Kittle loved and studied pitching. He first realized that this was his calling when he was eight years old. He could outthrow all the neighborhood kids. “Something clicked there, that I had something the good Lord must have gave me. I don’t know why, I couldn’t outfight ’em and I […]

An unlikely big leaguer who reached New York from the bushes by way of the Ivy League, Walt Bernhardt appeared oh-so-briefly for the war-depleted Yankees before entering the U.S. Army in 1918. He afterward built a life outside of baseball, tending to dental patients and Holstein cattle. Walter Jacob Bernhardt was born on May 20, […]

Did you know that Crazy Horse had a World Series ring? Wait a minute! How could the Oglala Sioux Indian chief who, along with Sitting Bull, routed General Custer at Little Bighorn, have a World Series ring? He never played baseball. True. But “Crazy Horse” was also the nickname given to Tim Foli, a talented […]

Former Cleveland Indians and St. Louis Browns owner Bill Veeck once said, “A good groundskeeper was the 10th man on the field and was worth five to seven victories a season.”1 George Toma is often ranked among the greatest groundskeepers of all time, creating and maintaining professional baseball, football, soccer, and Olympic playing fields all […]

A practicing dentist in the offseason, pitcher Ed Lafitte was a lanky, square-jawed journeyman in the American and Federal Leagues during the Deadball Era. No one knew just what to expect when righty Doc Lafitte took the mound. His hurling was often wild and occasionally brilliant, sometimes both in the same game. His historic contributions […]

No matter where Gabe Kapler played during his 12 years in the major leagues, people who knew him made similar comments. Theo Epstein, general manager of the Boston Red Sox, said Kapler was “a real contributor on and off the field: an ideal teammate, a fan favorite, and the type of player who made the […]

Raised in “the tenements of Hartford,”1 Walter “Monk” Dubiel rose from hardscrabble roots to  seven-year career in the major leagues that began during World War II after he was declared 4-F because of an eye ailment. It ended eight years later after a series of injuries. His memorable nickname, “Monk,” had a colorful but perhaps […]

One of a very few ballplayers to ever collect more than 4,000 hits in Organized Baseball, Arnold Statz collected 737 of those hits in his eight seasons in the major leagues and another 3,356 in his 18 seasons in the minors. His career saw him in the majors before he played minor-league ball. Only Pete […]

Editor’s note: This article was selected as a winner of the 2012 McFarland-SABR Baseball Research Award.   In the early 1880s prosperous tobacco merchant John B. Day re-established the national pastime in New York – operating teams in both major-league circuits with great success. In 1884 Day’s New York Metropolitans were American Association pennant winners […]

It was October 28, 1995. In Atlanta’s Fulton County Stadium, the Cleveland Indians and Atlanta Braves squared off in Game Six of the World Series, with the Braves leading, three games to two. Through 5½ innings the teams were scoreless. As the contest entered the bottom of the sixth inning, 29-year-old left-handed pitcher Jim Poole […]

Those who served during World War II were collectively known as the Greatest Generation. Many young, and not so young, men went into the service during that time and returned home to resume their lives. But for those whose lives had been baseball, they often found that their days of playing major-league baseball were over. […]

Rock group Lynyrd Skynyrd, US Senator Sam Nunn, Hockey Hall of Famer Bernie “Boom Boom” Geoffrion, soul-funk pioneer James Brown, baseball Hall of Famers Johnny Mize and Luke Appling,1 and two members of US President Jimmy Carter’s Cabinet were among the famous names who attended the Atlanta Braves’ 1977 home opener.2 Shining brightest among the […]

As the second decade of the twenty-first century neared its end, Major League Baseball began to look at possible rule changes, many driven by the fact that more and more games were taking three hours or more to complete. MLB signed an agreement with the Atlantic League in the spring of 2019 for the independent […]

After 51 seasons and a single pennant at the Baker Bowl, the Philadelphia Phillies moved house. In late June of 1938, Phillies President Gerry Nugent announced that his team would become tenants of the Athletics at Shibe Park. The declining condition of the Baker Bowl motivated the relocation and was probably no surprise to baseball […]

It didn’t have nearly the impact of Bobby Thomson’s pennant-winning home run or the World Series-winning blasts of Bill Mazeroski and Joe Carter, but for the perennially weak Boston Braves of the 1920s and ’30s, Wally Berger’s pinch-hit grand slam on the final day of the 1933 season was worthy of bold-face headlines and its […]

Mother Nature and Old Man Winter were not yet in a “base ball” mood when the Red Stockings were supposed to begin their season in late April 1874. Two officially scheduled dates were snowed out and rained out respectively before May 2, when the Reds could finally open their season against the Mutuals of New […]

For the first of its eventual 110 wins, the 1927 Yankees team braved overflowing crowds, raised its 1926 pennant, and saw the Bambino whiff twice before being removed for a pinch-hitter in an 8-3 Opening Day victory against the favored Philadelphia Athletics. “The weather was lovely, the peanuts and hot dogs were unusually tasty,” wrote […]

On Tuesday, June 21, 1927, at Sportsman’s Park, the reigning World Series champion St. Louis Cardinals hosted the Chicago Cubs in a doubleheader. The Cardinals trailed the Cubs by two games for second place and were four behind the first-place Pittsburgh Pirates. Chicago, recently off a recent 12-game winning streak, had lost three of its […]

In 1997 and 1998, Fernando Tatis played in 210 games for the Texas Rangers and St. Louis Cardinals, hitting .266 with 19 homers and 87 RBIs. The Dominican native grabbed national attention in 1999 when he made baseball history by hitting two grand slams against Chan Ho Park in one inning on April 23. He […]

In late July of the 1973 season, Royals third baseman Paul Schaal suffered an ankle injury that sidelined him for 19 games.1 Utility infielder Kurt Bevacqua filled in at the hot corner during Schaal’s absence. Searching for a replacement, the Royals placed a call to their Triple-A team in Omaha, Nebraska. Around noon on August […]

Jim Manning’s career as a big-league pitcher lasted only 17 days from first game to last. What makes it noteworthy was Manning’s age at the time. He was 18 years and 268 days old when he first took the mound for Minnesota on April 15, 1962. Sixty years later, he remained the youngest player in […]

The first World Series game on the South Side since 1959. Attendance 41,206. (Courtesy of Ron Vesely / Chicago White Sox) Game One of the 2005 World Series featured a matchup between two strong right-handers: José Contreras of the host Chicago White Sox and Roger Clemens of the Houston Astros. Contreras finished the regular season […]

It certainly felt like mid-summer to the 39,578 fans attending this 4:10 Saturday-afternoon game as it was 87 degrees and humid. This was the third game of a four-game series with Atlanta taking the first two. Coming into Atlanta, Washington (33-24) had led the NL East by one game, but after the two losses, Atlanta […]