Search Results

It was the spring of 1975, and Pete Rose was befuddled as he stood in the batting cage. A young, bespectacled right-hander named Tommy Hume, the Cincinnati Reds’ first-round choice in the January 1972 secondary phase of the amateur draft, was buzzing fastballs by the World Series MVP-to-be in batting practice. “The kid had Rose […]

His name was Clarence Charles Isreal. That’s Isreal, not Israel. His name should not be conflated with the country of the Middle East. Most of the newspapers of his time did not grasp that distinction. Consequently, often the misspelling has carried over into subsequent baseball records. In his six-year professional baseball career, Clarence Isreal spent […]

It was a dream come true for 23-year-old Stan Jefferson when he led off against San Diego lefty Dave LaPoint in the first game of a doubleheader at Shea Stadium on Sunday, September 7, 1986. He grew up in the Bronx, had been the Mets’ first-round choice in the 1983 amateur draft, and had just […]

Recalled from the minor leagues near midseason by the Cincinnati Reds in both 1974 and 1975, Tom Carroll was a hard-throwing right-handed pitcher who began his career by winning his first four decisions as a starter in 1974. With the Big Red Machine cruising in 1975, Carroll’s four wins helped stabilize the staff when their […]

Joe Azcue caught just shy of 1,000 major-league baseball games for six different big-league teams — all but his first 14 games played in the American League. An All-Star with the Cleveland Indians in 1968, Azcue was solid on defense with a .992 lifetime fielding percentage. José Joaquín (Lopez) Azcue was born on August 18, […]

“Baseball’s clichés remain largely unchanged through the years,” observed the writer Mordecai Richler in a 1986 essay for GQ.1 His first examples were the types of gripes from marginal pitchers and backup fielders: “If only they give me a chance to start, I know I can help this team,” and “I know I’m a .300 […]

Jack (John Besson) Taylor, “Brewery Jack,” was a star pitcher in the National League during the last decade of the nineteenth century. Taylor made his major league debut, appearing in one game in 1891 with the New York Giants, pitching for Jim Mutrie‘s team on September 16th. He pitched his final game on September 12, […]

No matter how you measure it, Tony Conigliaro’s career got off to a terrific start, but tragedy repeatedly intervened and the great promise of his early years remained unfulfilled.  A local boy made good, Tony was born and raised in the Boston area, signed with the hometown team, and made his major-league debut in 1964 […]

When Orlando Cepeda stood on the podium in Cooperstown, New York, on July 25, 1999, it is likely that no man had followed a more difficult path to the Baseball Hall of Fame, or that any man was any happier to attain the honor. Cepeda had escaped the slums of Puerto Rico to attain stardom […]

When the legendary University of Alabama football coach Paul “Bear” Bryant was growing up in Arkansas in the 1920s, he and his friends eagerly followed the exploits of quarterback Carey Selph of Ouachita Baptist College in Arkadelphia.1 Then called “the greatest football player in Arkansas,”2 Selph was a fierce competitor who “simply believed no team […]

In 37 seasons as an infielder and third-base coach for the Yankees, Frank Crosetti was on the field for 23 fall classics, of which New York won 17. After a while “The Crow” had collected so many rings that the Yankees started giving him engraved shotguns instead. Sandwiched between Tony Lazzeri and Joe DiMaggio as […]

When radio came along in the 1920s, it brought sports, including baseball, directly into people’s homes. Radio also created a new type of sports reporting: now, fans could not only read about the game in their favorite print publications but also listen to play-by-play announcers telling the story of the game in real time. In […]

While growing up in Chicago’s affluent North Shore suburb of Glencoe, Ross Baumgarten hardly looked like a kid who would live the American boy’s dream of playing major-league baseball one day. “I was small for my age,” recalled Baumgarten. “I was only 5 feet tall and weighed 90 pounds when I was a freshman in […]

You wind him up in the spring and he goes all summer. He hits .330 or .340 or whatever, and then you shut him off in the fall. – Yankees Hall of Fame pitcher Lefty Gomez1   Charlie Gehringer was a model of consistency throughout his major-league career with the Detroit Tigers. This Hall of […]

An average major-leaguer and a professorial manager who tried to treat his ballplayers like grown men, Steve Boros was a baseball lifer whose career spanned over two dozen teams across six decades. Broadcaster Ernie Harwell called him “one of the most cerebral baseball men I’ve ever known.”1 Born September 3, 1936, in Flint, Michigan, Stephen […]

A big man with a famous scowl and a name that felt ripped from a James Bond film, Mo Vaughn was a hulking 6-foot-1, 225-pound lefty hitter whose frame dangled over home plate. Baseballs seemed to disintegrate on impact when he exploded out of his crouched stance, extending one arm to the sky on his […]

Godsends always arrive on schedule. But God sends great baseball hitters far less frequently than are promised by even the most clairvoyant of baseball prophets. SABR-sophist Bill James once proclaimed the Los Angeles Dodgers’ Pedro Guerrero “the best hitter God had made in a long time.”1 It was the mid-1980s, and Guerrero was in the […]

Imagine being able to say you’d seen the big-league debuts of Ernie Banks, Roberto Clemente, Sandy Koufax, Don Drysdale, and Bill Mazeroski1 – not to mention an All-Star Game, a no-hitter, a four-homer game, and a batter hitting for the cycle. Some baseball lovers spend a lifetime hoping to see those kinds of milestones. Bill […]

“I was born in 1912 [sic] in Giddings, Texas, a little town between Austin and Houston. Rube Foster came from about twenty-five miles from my house, a little town right above me.” — Hilton Smith 1   Something must have been in the air as the state of Texas produced eight Negro League Hall of […]

“Charleston not only has the speed of a Carey, the arm of a Meusel, the brains of a McGraw and the hitting ability of a Hornsby, but he is a singer of rare ability, a writer of parts, a billiard player of more than ordinary skill and a happily married man. Charleston is a rare […]

“It’s going to be a tough act for the kid to follow,” said Cleveland pitcher Bob Feller.1 Indeed, it would be. Feller had just thrown the 12th one-hitter of his fabulous career, blanking Boston, 2-0, in the first game of a doubleheader at Cleveland on May 1, 1955. Boston catcher Sammy White singled to center field in the seventh inning for […]

Pitcher Brian Kingman compiled an 8-20 record with the 1980 Oakland Athletics. Prior to 1980, instances of pitchers losing 20 games in a season occurred with great regularity. After Kingman’s 20-loss season, however, his place in baseball lore was cemented for 23 long years until it finally happened again. The stinging effects of Kingman’s 20-loss […]

Bob Zupcic hit .217 in Double A one year, then .213 the next – and found himself in the major leagues the year after that. The former first-round pick of the Boston Red Sox in 1987 was a large right-handed outfielder (6-foot-4 and 220 pounds as a ballplayer) prized for his defensive talents. He played […]

Tried and convicted of murder in a court of law, Ralph “Blackie” Schwamb hurled his best pitches from behind prison walls. The tall, lanky right-hander with a nasty temper and a taste for booze won just a single game as a major leaguer. He won 131 games while playing for teams based at the San […]