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One of the rarest occurrences in baseball is the natural cycle. Of 334 known cycles in major-league history through the 2021 season, only 17 have been identified as natural cycles, meaning the single, double, triple, and home run happened in that order.1 In August 1886, three seasons after the first known natural cycle in big-league […]

In his second at-bat of the second All-Star Game in 1960, Willie Mays made history by completing the All-Star Game cycle. In the span of just two days, Mays had collected the four necessary hits to hit for the cycle: a single, double, triple, and home run. No major leaguer has ever hit for the cycle […]

The last time the Boston Red Sox had played a game in Buffalo was on July 6, 1917 – and that was an exhibition game. In the first two decades of the twentieth century, the team played four exhibition games there, all against local minor-league teams: April 18, 1903: Boston 8, Buffalo 7 April 13, […]

When major-league stars head to the minors for injury rehabilitation assignments, they don’t always find the going easy. Giancarlo Stanton furnished one example in August 2022, when the New York Yankees sent the former National League Most Valuable Player to the Somerset (New Jersey) Patriots of the Double-A Eastern League to get back into game […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

Long ago, baseball crossed the Pacific Ocean from the U.S. to Japan. Soon the reserve clause followed. It would reach back from Japan to the U.S. and bite its own tail, like a snake forming a ring that burst into fire–the “Working Agreement.” The first man it trapped was Masanori “Mashi” Murakami, the first Japanese […]

Normally when a pitcher sustains a serious arm injury, it might have a career-ending ramification. But adversity did not seem to bother Ted Abernathy. Instead, he made a habit of treating setbacks like challenges. He adapted by becoming a sidearmer and then a submariner. He appeared in 681 big-league games, saving 148 of them, from […]

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 […]

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 […]

Mark Langston, Mike Campbell, John Halama, Carlos Guillén, Freddy García, Brad Halsey, Dioner Navarro, Javier Vázquez, Alberto González, Steven Jackson, Ross Ohlendorf, Luis Vizcaíno. These dozen men were traded, in different transactions, for Hall of Famer Randy Johnson. While they share a bond, their major-league careers took different paths. Several would play in the World […]

Texan outfielder C. L. Taylor was the first star of the new West Texas League in the summer of 1920. The “sphinx-like speed merchant”1 also led the Texas-Oklahoma League in hitting in 1922. At age 27, in the spring of 1925, he reached the majors but went hitless in six at-bats with the Chicago Cubs. […]

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, […]

The right-hander stood on the pitcher’s mound in Tucson, Arizona, watching his manager Rocky Bridges walk out for a visit. It was the eighth inning; the bases were loaded with his team in the lead. Bridges grabbed the ball and gave it a good rub. After placing it back in his pitcher’s glove he offered […]

The 1924 Red Sox were entering “doubleheader season” with seven of them scheduled in the couple of weeks following June 20 (because of postponements, they actually played 10 in 21 days). Manager Lee Fohl said his team was playing better ball but still not winning. He was pleased that George Murray was starting to pitch […]

Whenever American League President Joe Cronin was asked to rank big-league third basemen, he always gave the same answer: “Well, you start with Bluege.”1 Of course shortstop Cronin was referring to his old partner on the right side of the Washington Senators teams of the 1920s and ’30s, Ossie Bluege. At the 1970 World Series, […]

Written in blue ink on his minor-league questionnaire was Wayne Granger’s ambition in baseball: “To be a steady starter in [the] major leagues.”1 In a major-league career that spanned nine seasons and seven teams, the right-hander never started a game. But his sinkerball and lanky, 6-foot-2 build helped Granger become the model of durability as […]

Bill “Wee Willie” Sherdel was a durable, rubber-armed starter and reliever who frustrated batters with a mesmerizing slowball during his 15-year big-league career from 1918 through 1932, most notably with the St. Louis Cardinals. Described by a contemporary as “one of the great left-handers” in baseball, Sherdel’s career is defined by a seven-year stretch (1922-1928) […]

Versatile sandlot alumnus Mike O’Rourke packed a fair amount of action into his nine-game career as a major leaguer. As a pitcher for the 1890 Baltimore Orioles of the American Association, he completed all five of his starting assignments, albeit with only modest results. O’Rourke also served the club as a backup infielder and outfielder, […]

In the sandy soil of Carteret County, North Carolina, young boys were schooled in a tough brand of baseball. They emulated their fathers, uncles, and community leaders who held regular jobs during the week in the whaling and fishing community of Morehead City and played baseball in leagues on the weekend. The spirited local nine was […]

There were 21 people present at the April 18, 2011, monthly roundtable of the Bob Broeg St. Louis Chapter at its usual location, the Original Crusoe’s restaurant in South St. Louis. Barbara Sheinbein, a member of the chapter’s historical ballparks marker committee, reported on the upcoming April 20 ceremony (read more about it here) to […]