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Camp Skinner played in 1922 for the first-place New York Yankees. The next year, he played for the last-place Boston Red Sox. That was the sum total of his major-league experience. He didn’t play long for either team – 27 games for the Yankees and just seven for the Red Sox – and even though […]
The third son of a saloon keeper who’d come to America to seek a better life, Albert Karl “Kip” Selbach played 13 years of major-league baseball and went on to become the proprietor of a bowling alley in his hometown of Columbus, Ohio. Selbach was born in Columbus on March 24, 1872. His parents, Charles […]
“The integrity of the game is the umpires. Nobody else. The entire integrity of the game is the umpires.” — Doug Harvey1 It was the late 1980s. The Cincinnati Reds had replaced the Big Red Machine with the Nasty Boys, and the Nastiest of the Nasty Boys was Rob Dibble. In the beginning of […]
Fresh out of St. Mary’s College in Kansas, right-handed pitcher Frank Bushey became the 25th and final player on the Boston Red Sox roster on June 14, 1927. He’d won nine of the 10 games he’d pitched for St. Mary’s during his senior year that spring, stood an even six feet tall and weighed 180 […]
Clarence Waldo Blethen was an “eternal busher” who spent 19 years pitching in the minor leagues, well into his 40s but never higher than Class A baseball, highlighted by two very brief stints in the majors – five games for the 1923 Boston Red Sox and two appearances for Brooklyn in 1929. He was a […]
By all outward appearances, George Davies was leading the good life in the early autumn of 1906. A dozen years removed from a short but respectable stint as a major leagues pitcher – he had won 10 games for the second-half pennant winning Cleveland Spiders in 1892 — Davies was now an eminent citizen of […]
Lee Otis Rogers appeared in 28 major-league games, 14 for the Boston Red Sox and 14 for the Brooklyn Dodgers, but never got a base hit. He was a pitcher, and a left-hander at that, and he capped off a stellar college career at the University of Alabama by signing with the Red Sox. Rogers […]
Brooklyn-born Mike Fiore was signed by the New York Mets on July 2, 1962, while he was still a 17-year-old student at Lafayette High School. He’d been the unanimous choice for all-city first baseman in the 1962 season, batting .476 with nine home runs. In three years of high school baseball, he had struck out […]
“An indispensable playoff weapon here on pocket change.” – Sportswriter Mike Lopresti commenting on Timo Pérez, October 17, 2000.1 “I’m still very new at this; I don’t know everything that entails fame. I love the fans. All game long, they’re yelling at me and having fun with me.” – Timo Pérez, October 16, 20002 […]
When Willie Royster debuted for the Baltimore Orioles in 1981, he was already 27. The catcher only saw action in four major league games, but he was fortunate to be able to see at all. Seven years earlier, he had been almost blinded in one eye by a bunt gone awry in Single-A ball. Willie […]
The hallmark of right-handed pitcher Harry Gumbert’s 15-season major league career was versatility. Depending upon club need, he assumed the role of staff ace, rotation regular, spot starter-reliever, or closer. But whatever assignment Gumbert was called upon to fulfill, his persona remained steadfast. Handsome Harry (as he was often called in the press)1 was affable, […]
From 1946 through 1951, Sheldon Jones pitched in 199 games for the New York Giants. He started 98 times during that span and made 101 appearances in relief. His willingness to accept any mound assignment earned him the nickname “Available.” The moniker was derived from Al Capp’s Available Jones, who first appeared in the Li’lAbner […]
Infielder Bill Ripken attacked the game of baseball with reckless abandon and paid the price, sustaining an inordinate number of injuries during his career. He never changed his all-out, hustling style of play, earning the reputation of a player who left it all on the field. The Ripkens were a baseball family. Bill’s father, Cal Ripken […]
“His rise from the ‘bushes’ to the big show has been phenomenal,” gushed one report about Big Bill Steele.1 Two years removed from the sandlots, Steele jumped from a Class B league to the majors, debuting with the St. Louis Cardinals as a September call-up in 1910. That fall the spitballer won his first three […]
On graduation day in 1954, San Diego High School star athlete Floyd Robinson was signed personally by Bill “Chick” Starr, the owner of the Pacific Coast League San Diego Padres, for a reported $500 bonus.1 He appeared in three games — two in the outfield. He was 3-for-6 at the plate, and handled all eight […]
On February 4, 1921, Carl “Babe” Holling was arrested for burglary of a San Francisco apartment … while holding his first major-league contract in his pocket.1 After charges were eventually dropped, the pitcher parlayed his two years with the Oakland Oaks of the Pacific Coast League into being one of a bumper crop of California […]
Camilo Pascual had good reason to be anxious about his start for the Minnesota Twins against the Baltimore Orioles on the final day of the 1962 season. In his ninth major-league season, it was the closest he had come to winning 20 games in a season. With 19 wins under his belt for the first […]
“Expect the unexpected,” an overused yet reliable phrase that addresses the surprising possibilities accompanying any game of baseball, proved especially trustworthy on what in advance seemed an inauspicious contest. Neither team going into this late-season National League matchup in Pittsburgh on September 7, 1899, possessed much incentive, particularly the visiting Louisville Colonels, who stood 28 […]
Just a year after winning the World Series in 2013, the Red Sox were struggling. With only two days left in June, they were in fourth place in the American League East, seven games behind first-place Toronto and five games behind the third-place Yankees. They had finished in last place in 2012, before bounding to […]
The wins pile up as the years pass by. The first win for Boston’s American League franchise came on April 30, 1901. The Boston Americans had lost their first three games before beating the Philadelphia Athletics, 8-6, in 10 innings. Cy Young was the winning pitcher. First named the Red Sox in 1908, they hit […]
After 15 years of resounding success under the bright spotlights of New York City, the Whitey Ford and Mickey Mantle Show played a less celebrated encore performance in July 1968, in Syracuse, New York, the baseball equivalent of off-Broadway.1 Ford, one year into retirement and serving on the New York Yankees’ coaching staff, returned to […]
It was a Goliath vs. Goliath situation. On July 14, 1967, Eddie Mathews smacked the 500th home run of his career — a three-run shot off fellow future Hall of Famer Juan Marichal. The Baseball Hall of Fame inducted Mathews in 1978, Marichal five years later. Wearing a Houston Astros uniform after a storied 15-year […]
“The greatest invention since the cotton gin”?1 Television or maybe the transistor radio? No, it was a batting helmet that the Brooklyn Dodgers team physician, Dr. Eugene Zorn, was referring to, one that prevented serious injury to Milwaukee Braves infielder Joe Adcock when he was beaned on August 1, 1954, at Ebbets Field. As several […]
Opened to baseball on April 19, 1984, Pfitzner Stadium is plopped in the heart of the McCourt Government Center in Woodbridge, Virginia, seating 6,000.1 The “Pfitz” has been the home of several incarnations of a Class-A franchise, the Potomac Nationals, under the ownership of Art Silber. The field has never drained well. On the evening […]