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“No more pitiful case exists in the annals of base ball than that of Arnold Hauser,” stated The Sporting News on April 9, 1914.1 Hauser, since debuting with the St. Louis Cardinals in 1910, had emerged as one of the game’s finest young shortstops. By 1913, however, injuries and personal tragedy began to derail both […]
“When I was on the island of Tinian in the Marianas in ’45, Johnny Mize was managing a Coast Guard team there. I had pitched against his team a couple of times. He belonged to the Giants at that time, so when he got discharged, the Giants asked him if there was anybody he had […]
For many people, Steve Rogers is the guy who gave up the game-winning home run to Rick Monday in the 1981 National League Championship Series. However, to think of him for just that one pitch does a disservice to a player who was a five-time All-Star, an ERA leader, and the ace of the excellent […]
When John Hiller retired in 1980 after 15 seasons, all with Detroit, he was the last member of the 1968 world champion Tigers still playing in the majors. Best known, perhaps, for his work out of the bullpen, Hiller in fact started 43 games for the Tigers, 12 of them in the star-struck 1968 season. […]
Harry Coyle taught us how to watch baseball on television. As the director of 36 World Series telecasts, beginning with the first one in 1947, he invented many of the images that shape our view of the game. One of his innovations, the center field shot showing the pitcher, batter, catcher, and umpire, became the […]
Arturo (Art) López had 49 at-bats with seven hits for the 1965 New York Yankees. He was the first player born in Puerto Rico to be originally signed by the Yankees and play for them.1 The outfielder was also the first boricua to play for a Japanese professional baseball team. During a professional career that […]
When Baltimore broke though in 1979, ending New York’s stranglehold on the American League East title, the postseason was a new experience for John Lowenstein. Since the year he broke into the majors with Cleveland in 1970, “Steiner” had been on two teams that played .500: Cleveland in 1975 and Texas in 1978. In Game […]
A potential championship baseball team should possess both a strong cleanup hitter and catcher to provide stability for the long season. One player left his mark on the 1984 Detroit Tigers by demonstrating to the blue-collar Detroit faithful that he had the strength and versatility to put on the so-called tools of ignorance and swing […]
As an itinerant left-handed pitcher in the 1870s and 1880s, John Driscoll pitched for numerous independent professional teams as well as three major league teams. He appeared as a pitcher in 83 major league games over four seasons in the early 1880s, recording a lifetime winning percentage of .494 with 38 victories and 39 defeats. […]
A 1 1/3-inning stint with the 1938 Boston Bees was the only major-league action that pitcher Mike Balas achieved during a professional baseball career that spanned a dozen years, from 1929 through 1940. His greater legacy to baseball, though, was his conscientious objector status during World War II. Unlike the majority of his ballplaying brethren […]
“It went about half way up in the right-field stands. It would have been a home run anywhere. … Ruth either hit a knuckleball or a curve. I really don’t know. All I can remember is watching the ball disappear.”1 The batter was Babe Ruth, hitting his 60th home run in 1927. The pitcher was […]
A “flashy infielder” known for his fancy defensive work rather than his bat, Tom Carey played eight major-league seasons with the St. Louis Browns and the Boston Red Sox, retiring with a .275 batting average, 2 home runs, and a .972 fielding percentage in 466 games. According to St. Louis sportswriter J. Roy Stockton, the infielder […]
A teenage Willie Mays with the Birmingham Black Barons. Mays’ father did not allow him to join the Black Barons full-time in 1948 until school was over at the end of May. (Courtesy of Memphis Public Library) The Birmingham Black Barons and the Kansas City Monarchs met at Rickwood Field for Game Two of […]
The Boston Red Sox lost to the Cleveland Indians on August 9, 1953, but for Red Sox fans there was something to savor – after being away for more than 15 months, Ted Williams was back in a Red Sox uniform and he’d hit his first home run. It was home run number 325 of […]
The Boston Red Sox certainly had momentum on their side as they headed into the 2004 World Series. They also had an unfortunate history of failing to close the deal when it came to winning world championships; it had been 86 years since the team had last won it all and they had lost in […]
It had been more than 116 years since the Boston Red Sox had found themselves in a road game where they trailed the New York Yankees by multiple runs with two outs in the ninth inning – but rallied and won the game. On June 2, 1908, the Red Sox were playing the New York […]
The clock finally struck midnight on the Cinderella New York Giants when the New York Yankees hung on to take the 1951 World Series with a 4-3 Game Six victory, sparked by the heroics of Hank Bauer at the plate and in the field. As befitting a crazy season that columnist Red Smith called a […]
Heavy underdogs against the Yankees, who with 114 wins set a since-broken American League record, the Padres in the 1998 World Series opener faced David Wells, who “before the Series … proclaimed … that the Yankees would beat his hometown Padres in five games.” After leading the 1998 AL with only 1.2 walks per nine […]
Entering the 2022 season, only one player had hit more than 14 triples in a season since 2012: Eddie Rosario. The left-handed-batting outfielder stroked 15 triples in 2015, leading all major leaguers. And he accomplished this feat as a rookie with the Minnesota Twins, playing in 122 games. In his next six seasons, though, Rosario […]
On August 4, 1991, a sellout crowd of 41,0591 packed into Comiskey Park to see the Chicago White Sox host the Baltimore Orioles. Chicago (58-45) had won eight straight games before losing the first two games of this series against Baltimore, and that 8-out-of-10 stretch had enabled them to climb into second place, three games […]
After seven years out of contention, the New York Yankees started a three-game home series with the Milwaukee Brewers on August 11, 1972, in third place but only two games behind the first-place Detroit Tigers in the American League East Division. Milwaukee was deep in last place, 14 games behind the Yankees. A strike at […]
On August 12, 1911, the Washington Nationals played the third of a five-game series against the visiting New York Highlanders at National Park. Washington’s home grounds had burned down on March 17, but, amazingly, a new ballpark was built on the site in less than a month. Although it was ready by Opening Day, the […]
Jackie Robinson and the Brooklyn Dodgers came to Chicago’s Wrigley Field in mid-May of 1947 amid a grand experiment that changed professional sports, opening the gates to a stream of talented Black athletes and advancing the cause of racial justice. The experiment proved an emotional stress test for Robinson, the Dodgers team, and the National […]
Drafted out of the University of Tennessee by the Toronto Blue Jays with the 21st overall pick of the 2007 MLB Amateur Draft, J.P. Arencibia1 blossomed in 2010. After hitting .303 and slamming a minor-league-leading 31 homers2 in Triple-A Las Vegas, he was called up to the Blue Jays when their starting catcher, John Buck, […]