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With his 29th pitch of the game on October 21, 1975, Cincinnati Reds relief pitcher Pat Darcy retired his sixth consecutive Boston Red Sox batter, Carl Yastrzemski, on a weak grounder to shortstop Dave Concepción to end the 11th inning and keep the score tied in the most pressure-packed game of his life: Game Six […]

You’d be hard pressed to find two more disparate back-to-back seasons than the ones Charlie Pittinger put together in 1902 and 1903. Pittinger, an imposing, fireballing right-hander, won 27 games in 1902 for the Boston Nationals, second only to Hall of Famer Jack Chesbro that season. He was also second in the league in complete […]

One of the first things one notices about short-term Boston Red Sox leftfielder/pinch-hitter Gene Rye is that he used another surname while playing professional baseball, apparently Anglicized from Mercantelli. He was also sometimes known by the nickname “Half Pint” – he was 5-feet-6 and weighed 165 pounds. He batted left-handed, but threw right-handed. Rye, as […]

Jack Chesbro of the New York Highlanders won 41 games in 1904 by throwing a “spit ball,” and the pitch became the talk of the baseball world. Chesbro’s teammate Brose Puttmann said, “They talk about that spit ball as if it were a new wrinkle. I saw it in use on the Pacific Coast when […]

Mike Balenti was often overshadowed by teammate Jim Thorpe on the powerful Carlisle Indian Industrial School football team. Playing quarterback in the backfield, he combined with Thorpe to give Carlisle a one-two punch that often overwhelmed opponents with their incredible speed. But it was Thorpe who captured most of the headlines with his staggering athleticism. […]

He won 247 games in his 23 seasons in the major leagues, plus dozens more in the minors and as a semipro in a pitching career that spanned more than 30 years. Yet we do not know for certain when or where he was born, the national origin of his forebears, or even his birth […]

Over his 22-year career, fleet-footed center fielder Bernard “Frenchy” Uhalt knocked out more than 3,000 hits and was elected to the Hall of Fame. His name might not be familiar to many baseball aficionados, though, since 21 of those seasons and all but 40 of his hits came in the minor leagues, and because he […]

In life James Donaldson Brown’s journey took him from humble beginnings in Laurel, Maryland, to a nondescript death in an Oregon logging town. In between his birth and death he completed an odyssey that entailed stops in at least 28 minor-league cities, one foreign country and two major-league cities. He crisscrossed the county playing in […]

Considering that his professional career almost ended before it started, Joe Sambito made the most of his opportunity. His future in the game teetered several times, but for a period of five years, 1977-1981, the left-hander from Long Island, New York, with a good fastball and a nasty slider was arguably one of the best […]

In Candlestick Park on September 2, 1963, the final nine outs were tallied by closer Lindy McDaniel, insuring the 20th win of the season for the tall Chicago Cubs left-handed starter. This particular win, coming off a 20-loss campaign the preceding year, would etch the youngster’s name with a mere six other hurlers who, since […]

By the end of the 1957 major-league season, Ed Bouchee had made good on all his early athletic promise with a fine rookie season as the first baseman for the Philadelphia Phillies. His slash line was .293/.394/470, with 17 home runs and 76 RBIs. The 24-year-old Bouchee, a former high school sports hero from Spokane, […]

Sandy Koufax was a 23-year-old hurler in his fifth season as a Dodger, and was off to an abysmal start: “My own start in 1959 had to be seen to be believed.”1 He feared receiving a one-way ticket to the Los Angeles Dodgers’ Triple-A affiliate in Spokane from Dodgers general manager Buzzie Bavasi.2 Expectations of Koufax […]

On July 24, 1886, Adonis Terry hurled a 1-0 no-hitter for the American Association’s Brooklyn team against a dominant St. Louis Browns ballclub in Brooklyn’s Washington Park.1 But Terry’s performance was not uniformly reported as a no-hitter in the New York City, Brooklyn, and St. Louis newspapers. The sticking point was Arlie Latham’s sixth-inning grounder […]

“On August 8 I won a tough game in Milwaukee,” Sandy Koufax recounted of his second victory over the Braves in 1964. “Tougher than I thought.”1 Indeed, the star Los Angeles Dodgers lefty had to struggle through a complete game after jamming his throwing arm while diving back to second base and avoiding a fifth-inning […]

On a gloomy afternoon, more than 3,000 fans settled down in American League Park.1 The forecast for June 28, 1902, called for rain. But clashing personalities, not weather, ended the game early. Little Napoleon The new Orioles had been a franchise only since 1901, when they finished three games over .500 but were still 13½ […]

As the 2021 trade deadline passed at the end of July, the Atlanta Braves seemed to be facing an uphill battle in the National League East standings. At the end of play on July 31, the Braves were tied with the Philadelphia Phillies at 52-54, both five games behind the New York Mets. Over the […]

On September 3, 1985, 21-year-old righthander Troy Evers capped a dominant season in fitting style, pitching a postseason no-hitter in the Class A New York-Penn League. Evers’ 2-0 no-no enabled the Oneonta (New York) Yankees to eliminate the Geneva (New York) Cubs in the first round of the league playoffs, sending Oneonta to the championship […]

Refreshed from a day off, the Indianapolis Hoosiers of the Federal League hosted the Brooklyn team, owned by brothers Robert and George Ward. Robert had ascribed the team its name after the Ward Bakery Company’s best-selling product, Tip-Top Bread. The Indianapolis club was owned by Harry Sinclair, a millionaire by age 30, at the time […]

After their 18-inning victory in Game Three, the Los Angeles Dodgers were back on the field less than 17 hours later, with left-hander (and Boston native) Rich Hill pitching against the Red Sox, hoping to see his team even up the Series at two wins apiece. Starting for the Red Sox was another lefty, Eduardo […]

“The [Chicago] Cubs, who haven’t won a world championship since 1908, have had only one winning season since 1972,” wrote Sports Illustrated’s Steve Wulf in his assessment of the National League East prior to the start of the 1989 season. “You can be certain this will not be their second.”1 Wulf was not alone. Several […]

The evening of June 1, 2012, will be remembered as the night 50 years of frustration ended for the New York Mets. Johan Santana went through the St. Louis Cardinals’ lineup all evening on the way to the Mets’ first no-hitter. He walked five and struck out eight in the historic 8-0 victory. It was […]

Bill Mazeroski’s Baseball yearbook gave a blunt assessment of the Montreal Expos’ chances for the 1987 season: “If they think they can win with these imposters, they’ve got another think coming.”1 Sports Illustrated had more tact in its season preview, although it predicted that the Expos would lose 98 games and finish dead last in […]

It was a recipe for disaster. Houston’s Mike Cuellar, a native of Cuba, was a fiery, intensely competitive pitcher. The Phillies skipper, Gene Mauch, was known for his abrasive and combative personality. Factor in a tight game in the ninth inning, underachieving teams needing to prove something, and a good dose of bench jockeying, and […]

“We’re just a couple of natural born pitchers from down Texas way,” bantered Paul “Daffy” Dean about himself and his famous brother Dizzy. “Two good natured ordinary fellers who God gave perfect pitchin’ bodies.”1 After Dizzy worked on a no-hitter for 7⅓ innings in the first game of a doubleheader, Daffy upstaged his loquacious older […]