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In one of his baseball abstracts, Bill James relates an amusing anecdote about the surname change of journeyman pitcher Pete Appleton. The right-hander spent the first six years of his major league career (1927-1933) pitching for various teams under his birth name: Peter William Jablonowski. He then drifted back to the minors. Three years later, […]

As the owner of the Boston Red Sox for 43 years, few if any people have influenced the history of the team as much as Tom Yawkey. He was a man of immense wealth who spent millions on the Red Sox and on gifts to dozens of charitable organizations. He saved a dying franchise in […]

Eight major-leaguers died while serving in World War I.1 The third of these casualties, Eddie Grant, had the longest playing career and is also well remembered because he received a plaque in center field at the Polo Grounds. The shortest career on this list belonged to Alexander Thomson Burr, a pitcher who played just one […]

One of the rarest things in baseball is a shut-down righty-lefty bullpen. Players, managers, and – let’s face it – agents, like relief roles defined. Today you have eighth-inning guys and ninth-inning guys. And if you’re lucky, you have hurlers who can form a human bridge from the starters to those players. Having two closers—one […]

Tenacity and zeal were hallmarks of Gail Henley’s game, which along with stellar baseball skills fueled a rapid rise to the major leagues and engendered high regard from renowned talent evaluators. That tenacity and zeal also played a part in making his big-league career much shorter than expected. The native of Wichita, Kansas, developed a […]

Gerald “Gee” Walker was one of the most popular players in Detroit Tigers history, even though he often drove his managers crazy with his risk-averse approach to baserunning. Walker also played for the Chicago White Sox, Washington Senators, Cleveland Indians, and Cincinnati Reds in a major-league career that went from 1931 to 1945. Walker was […]

Stewart Bowers was a right-handed pitcher for the Boston Red Sox in the middle 1930s who compiled a winning record (though the record was simply 2-1) over the course of three seasons. In the last of the three seasons, his lone appearance was as a pinch-runner. (He scored.) He played in 105 minor-league games, with […]

John Donahue played 1,176 known minor-league games from 1914 to 1927. His only time playing in the majors saw him get into just 10 games as a right fielder for the Boston Red Sox at the tail end of their last-place 1923 season. He was one of just 22 Red Sox players, as of 2014, […]

The 1994 major-league baseball season came to an abrupt end on August 11 because of a player strike. The strike lasted for 232 days, which meant that the 1994 postseason was not played. This was the first time a major professional sports league did not play a postseason because of labor struggles. Before the strike […]

Jack McCallister was appointed manager of the Cleveland Indians on December 11, 1926. He knew his biggest task for 1927 would be to fill center field, the position his predecessor Tris Speaker had played. Speaker hit .304 in 1926 with 67 extra-base hits. Even at age 38 his fielding numbers were slightly above average. The […]

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 […]

“Who is the only person enshrined in both the Pro Football Hall of Fame and the National Baseball Hall of Fame?” Cal Hubbard first earned acclaim as a bone-crushing tackle, then as a formidable umpire, and finally as an exceptional baseball executive. For nearly half a century his name was known by every self-respecting football […]

It is the bottom of the eighth inning of Game Two, and the Boston Red Sox are squarely facing the prospect of heading to Detroit having lost the first two games of the 2013 ALCS at home. The score is 5-1 Tigers, but the Red Sox have a glimmer of hope. The bases are loaded […]

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 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 […]

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 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 […]

The play sparked immediate controversy and remains one of the enduring questions in World Series history. Did Sam Rice catch Earl Smith’s deep fly while falling into the stands to preserve the Washington Senators’ 4-3 victory in Game Three of the 1925 World Series? Sportswriter Chester L. Smith described Rice’s feat as “one of the […]

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 […]

The Cincinnati Reds, defending National League champions, were hosting the Phillies for a four-game series in June 1971. The Big Red Machine was not having a good season. At 32-38 they were in fourth place in the NL West, 14 games behind San Francisco. The visiting Phillies were no better off: At 27-40 they were […]

The league-leading Philadelphia Athletics saw their six-game win streak snapped at the hands of the “meek and lowly trailing Browns of St. Louis”1 in a Thursday afternoon game at Shibe Park, the first game in a three-game series. The Browns entered the game with a record of 34-77; this meant that they were 43 games […]

As many baseball fans know, Cleveland Indians shortstop Ray Chapman is the only player to die from an injury sustained during a major-league baseball game. But 27 years after Chapman was struck and killed by a pitch, a Brooklyn Dodgers outfielder came frighteningly close to becoming the second. Long before 1947, Pete Reiser had a […]

In mid-July of 2018 the Tampa Bay Rays were making their only interdivisional foray of the season into the Land of 10,000 Lakes to play the Minnesota Twins. Back in April the Rays had swept the Twins in a three-game series at home in Tampa — but now Minnesota was closing the gap. The Twins […]