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A first-round draft choice of the New York Yankees, Slade Heathcott had just a cup of coffee in the majors. He hit two home runs – one an especially memorable blast – but problems with alcohol curtailed his career. Heathcott has Cherokee heritage. “A Cherokee is who I am,” he said. “That’s what I stand […]

John (Jack) Burwell Reed played the outfield in the regular and post-season for the fabled 1961 New York Yankees, and contributed to their pennant-winning efforts in 1962 and 1963. He was Mickey Mantle’s defensive replacement for most of these three seasons.  Jack was a terrific high school/college athlete in Mississippi, winning the state quarter-mile run […]

“That was the best play I’ve ever seen in my life.” — Happy Chandler, soon-to-be commissioner of baseball, September 18, 1945, reportedly commenting on a sparkling play by Johnnie Cowan in the 1945 Negro World Series1 From his Stockham Valves and Fittings industrial league team in Birmingham, Johnnie Cowan moved in 1940 to the Birmingham […]

For several years baseball was very, very good to Danny Tartabull. The game gave him honors and recognition, though not quite as much as he thought he deserved. Baseball paid him millions of dollars, enabling him to live a luxurious life style that most people could barely imagine. But it wasn’t enough. He was unable […]

If Calvin Schiraldi had never been called upon to pitch in the sixth game of the 1986 World Series, we might think of his career in baseball as a story of encountering and overcoming adversity — a series of comebacks. But Red Sox manager John McNamara did call Schiraldi in from the bullpen in the […]

Midway through the 2001 major-league baseball season, the Pittsburgh Pirates traded right-hander Jason Schmidt to the San Francisco Giants. Schmidt, who compiled a 49-53 record throughout the first six years of his career, would blossom into one of the elite pitchers in the National League during the mid-2000s. Jason David Schmidt was born on January […]

Left-hander Ron Perranoski’s sinking fastball, sharp-breaking curve and ability to thrive in critical situations made him one of baseball’s top relievers. Over 13 seasons (1961-1973) with four teams, mostly the Dodgers and Twins as well as the Tigers and Angels, he pitched in five postseasons and three World Series — earning championship rings with Los […]

Although his tenure in Baltimore was limited to two good seasons and a comeback year, both of the nicknames for which Don Stanhouse became famous were earned while wearing an Orioles uniform. Manager Earl Weaver, overly apprehensive every time Stanhouse was retrieved from the bullpen, called him “Full Pack” after the number of cigarettes he […]

Former major league player and scout Lenny Yochim once said in a New Orleans Times-Picayune interview, “I had a good life doing something I love.”1 From his teenage days in the Crescent City in the 1940s until his retirement in 2002, Yochim spent practically every summer participating in some aspect of the sport to which […]

January 29, 1981, was one of the most impactful days in White Sox history. That was the day Jerry Reinsdorf assumed control of the club, getting a 14-to-0 vote from American League owners at the O’Hare Hilton. Reinsdorf would go on to become the longest-tenured owner in the major leagues. At age 88 in 2024, […]

Puerto Rico and baseball. From the legendary Roberto Clemente and Orlando Cepeda to Roberto Alomar, Carlos Beltran, Carlos Delgado, and Pudge Rodriguez, the small island with only 3.5 million inhabitants has left an indelible footprint on the major-league landscape. As of 2016, the Caribbean nation has produced no fewer than 250 big-league players, including at […]

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, […]

At least 23 major-leaguers have been nicknamed “Deacon” as of 2022, all but two of whom debuted before 1952.1 So, it was not Ray “Deacon” Murray’s sobriquet that made him stand out during a big-league career spanning all or parts of six seasons (1948, 1950-1954) with the Cleveland Indians, Philadelphia Athletics and Baltimore Orioles. Instead, […]

Baseball history was made at Boston’s Fenway Park on Friday afternoon, September 14, 1951. In the top of the second inning, in his first major-league at-bat, Bob Nieman of the visiting St. Louis Browns hit Mickey McDermott’s low-and-away 1-2 pitch into the screen above Fenway’s Green Monster. An inning later, in his next trip to […]

Donald Wayne Hankins, a tall, lanky right-hander who suffered a broken elbow as a teenager, enjoyed an 11-year professional baseball career — including ten seasons in the minors — during the 1920s. Hankins finished with a lifetime minor league record of 75-87. But during the four seasons he hurled in the Double-A (the highest classification […]

At the start of spring training in 1974, longtime Detroit sportswriter Joe Falls had a problem. He could not decide which Tiger player was his favorite. He called it a “tossup” between veteran Ike Brown and second-year outfielder Dick Sharon. Falls wrote presciently that Brown, who would play the final two games of his major-league career […]

Hal Keller was 12 years old in 1939 when his brother Charlie became a hitting sensation for the New York Yankees. “I was in sixth grade when he played in his first World Series,” Hal remembered 71 years later. “I was proud as a peacock. They were all day games, and the teacher brought a […]

More than 30 years after his major-league playing days, one-time journeyman pitcher Alex Ferguson contemplated the questionnaire sent to him by the Hall of Fame librarian. The information sought was matter-of-fact: height, weight, date/place of birth, ancestry, etc. The questionnaire did not ask Ferguson to identify the high point of his career, doubtless membership on […]

Mark Brouhard isn’t one of the names people think of when they discuss the 1982 Brewers. Many other players who were a part of Harvey’s Wallbangers went on for storied, even Hall of Fame-worthy careers. Paul Molitor, Robin Yount, Rollie Fingers, Don Sutton, Cecil Cooper … this team was a who’s who of great Brewers, […]

When the Atlanta Braves began broadcasting in April of 1966, Atlanta area listeners had a long history of baseball radio. Atlanta Crackers broadcaster Ernie Harwell famously had such a reputation in the 1940s that he was traded to a major-league team for a catcher. Because of lawsuits in Milwaukee, the Braves’ move to Atlanta was […]

This article appears in SABR’s “Pride of Smoketown: The 1935 Pittsburgh Crawfords” (2020), edited by Frederick C. Bush and Bill Nowlin.   The Pittsburgh Crawfords franchise, one of the most famous in the history of black baseball, was started in 1926 by a group of youths connected to one of Pittsburgh’s neighborhood recreation clubs. For […]

On April 11, 1985, about 4,200 baseball fans got to claim a rare distinction: They watched a Baltimore Orioles game played between May 30, 1982, and September 19, 1998, in which Cal Ripken Jr. did not appear. How was that possible? Even casual fans know that future Hall of Famer Ripken established the major leagues’ […]

With two aces taking the mound, it was a safe prediction that a pitcher would seize the spotlight. But despite the San Diego Padres’ Yu Darvish lasting only three innings and the Washington Nationals’ Max Scherzer getting the hook before the end of the fourth, that prediction still came true, thanks to a rookie reliever […]

The long, record-setting, and sometimes turbulent career of umpire Joe West began about as quietly as could be imagined, in front of fewer than 1,000 paying customers on a rainy Tuesday evening in Atlanta on September 14, 1976. At age 23, West umpired his first big-league game in the first half of a doubleheader between […]