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On Saturday, August 14, 1971, a battle of the two fifth-place clubs in the American League, the Washington Senators and the California Angels, was a sidebar in that day’s baseball news. The lead story in the next day’s Washington Post sports section reported that at Three Rivers Stadium in Pittsburgh in front of nearly 31,000 […]

With an impressive 67-37 record, Canton, Ohio, won the 1889 pennant in the Tri-State League.1 After this achievement, the team’s best players moved on, forcing Canton to rebuild. One player acquired in the spring of 1890 stood out: Denton True Young, a 23-year-old farmer and semipro pitcher from nearby Gilmore, Ohio. He was tall (6-feet-2) […]

Edgardo Alfonzo did what few achieve in New York – be great while going relatively unnoticed. Alfonzo didn’t receive much attention, nor did he seek it out. On a team with power-hitting catcher Mike Piazza and outspoken manager Bobby Valentine, even Alfonzo’s breakout season of 1999 – which culminated an eight-year climb to his personal […]

On May 5, 1943, the Chicago Tribune was chock-full of news. For a cost of 3 cents, one could absorb 48 pages from the Trib, self-described as the “World’s Greatest Newspaper.” With the United States nearing its 17th month as a combatant in World War II, the bulk of the front page centered on military […]

On a typical workday in Tokyo, rush-hour traffic is notorious for being among the busiest on the planet.1 One can only imagine what it was like on Wednesday, September 18, 1996, at 4:30 P.M. (Tokyo time) when word began to spread about the possibility of a no hitto no ran (the Japanese words for “no-hitter”).2 […]

Mike Piazza had an affinity for Veterans Stadium long before he garnered more votes than any other National League player and was elected as the senior circuit’s starting catcher for the 1996 All-Star Game in Philadelphia. 1 Not only had the Los Angeles Dodgers superstar recorded a hit in 15 of his 16 career games […]

It was a perfect September afternoon for a ballgame in Washington: 78 degrees and sunny. A sellout crowd of 40,493 awaited the game and a postgame concert by Dierks Bentley. The Nationals fans were hoping to see Gio González (19-8, 2.95 ERA) become the first 20-game winner of the season. While at the ballpark the […]

Any time a baseball team ends a game with more errors than hits, chances are that it had a tough day at the office. That sums up the Kansas City Royals’ performance against the Oakland Athletics on the night of May 13, 1974. The six-hit complete-game pitching of Oakland’s Vida Blue would have been tough […]

The Watergate investigation took a mammoth leap forward in March 1973, with burglar James W. McCord Jr.’s disclosure that Attorney General John Mitchell masterminded the break-in of the Democratic National Committee headquarters the year before. A couple of weeks after McCord’s bombshell, however, you wouldn’t recognize the increased pressure on the 37th president of the […]

The 54,485 fans filling Yankee Stadium on a hot July afternoon were expecting a win. After all, the Yankees were 60-40, only a half-game behind the division-leading Red Sox in the AL East. The visiting Tampa Bay Devil Rays (42-61) were 20 games back, last in the AL East. The day before, the Yankees had […]

New Yorkers awoke to a dismal morning on June 13, 1948. Raindrops fell in spurts from low, gray clouds. A chill, unusual for late spring, filled the air. Players gathered in the clubhouse at Yankee Stadium. Where was Babe Ruth? The Yankees had scheduled a celebration on this day to mark the stadium’s 25th anniversary […]

On May 23, 2002, the Los Angeles Dodgers’ Shawn Green had a breakout game against the Milwaukee Brewers, after coming to “the land of beer and bratwurst mired in the worst slump of his eight-year career.”1 Mike DiGiovanna of the Los Angeles Times wrote of Green’s day: “Not bad for a guy who went five […]

Over the course of a 162-game season, there will invariably be games in which a team squanders a lead in the late innings and suffers a painful loss. When the season draws to a close and that team narrowly misses the playoffs, it’s only natural to look back upon the games that slipped away and […]

In the top of the eighth inning of a game between the Philadelphia Phillies and Brooklyn Dodgers at Roosevelt Stadium in Jersey City1 on April 22, 1957, with his team behind by two runs and runners at second and third with one out, Phillies manager Mayo Smith sent out John Irvin Kennedy to run for […]

The Montreal Expos completed a four-game sweep of the Pittsburgh Pirates on Sunday, August 16, 1987, by rallying from a three-run deficit to defeat the Bucs 10-7 in front of 26,134 fans at Olympic Stadium. Tim Raines hit for the cycle while Tom Foley delivered the big blow with a three-run home run to lead […]

In late August 1921, John McGraw’s New York Giants were 7½ games behind the first-place Pittsburgh Pirates. Pittsburgh owner Barney Dreyfuss was so confident of winning the pennant that he was adding bleacher and grandstand seats for anticipated World Series games at Forbes Field.1 But the Giants swept the Pirates in a doubleheader at the […]

The addition of the wild-card play-in game to the major-league playoff schedule in 2012 added the potential for greater postseason drama. It was now possible for a team with a comparatively mediocre record to get hot, qualify for the play-in game, and drive through the playoffs to win the World Series. As of 2018 it […]

Way back in the 1930s and ’40s, radio fans listened to a horror program designed to scare the daylights out of people, called Lights Out. During the show’s weekly introduction, the announcer advised people to turn off their radios if they couldn’t handle the creepy happenings to come in the next 30 minutes. While they […]

Jackie Robinson and Roy Campanella bashed NL pitchers in 1953. Jackie slashed .329/.425/.502 with 12 home runs and 95 RBIs, while Campy won his second of three NL MVP wards with his best season, setting personal records with 41 home runs, 142 RBIs, and a .611 slugging percentage. (Photo: SABR-Rucker Archive)   The New York […]

The Houston Astros’ deadline deal for Seattle Mariners ace Randy Johnson stunned baseball in 1998. Johnson’s 12-strikeout debut on August 2, two days after the trade, gave the Astros an immediate return on their investment, but they also needed Carl Everett’s and Ricky Gutierrez’s eighth-inning clutch hits to secure a 6-2 win over the Pittsburgh […]

Baseball’s greatest tragedy, the 1919 Black Sox Scandal, ruined the careers of some ballplayers, but it also gave opportunities to others. Some, notably Bibb Falk, took advantage of the opportunity and went on to long careers. Ted Jourdan did not. In the words of the Book of Daniel, he was tried, and found wanting. Theodore […]

Late in the afternoon of September 22, 1942, propelled by a Lew Riggs single, pinch-runner Stan Rojek rounded third base and scored a ninth-inning run that sent the Brooklyn Dodgers and the New York Giants into extra innings. A five-feet-ten, 170 pound shortstop, appearing in his first major-league game, Rojek found himself in the midst […]

A left-handed entomologist who forged a career in baseball? Handedness is immaterial in science, but successfully pitching left-handed in baseball is a sought-after skill. Bill Werle had a decent run, winning 29 games over six big-league seasons (two partial) from 1949 through 1954. Werle’s playing career spanned from 1943 to 1963, and he also managed […]

During his lifetime, Col. Frank Leslie Smith (1867-1950) adhered to a simple credo: the ends justified the means. The motto served him well as he built formidable business connections and amassed political clout on local, regional and national stages. By that same measure, it established the framework for his ultimate downfall. But during his youth, […]