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Luke Easter was a phenomenon. His imposing stature (6-feet-4) and friendly disposition may have led some folks to label him as a gentle giant, but there was nothing gentle about the tremendous clouts Easter belted around ballparks coast to coast in a career that began with Black independent clubs in the late 1930s and ended […]

The Los Angeles Dodgers (50-29), in second place a half-game behind the San Francisco Giants, were eager to host the last-place New York Mets at Dodger Stadium. The Mets, in their inaugural season, had won just 20 games and lost 52. The last time the Dodgers’ starting pitcher, Sandy Koufax, faced the Mets was Memorial […]

Frank Robinson wasn’t used to seeing Olympic Stadium so full. He looked up at the structure’s Teflon sky and told himself, “Hey, there’s fans in the upper deck!”1 Indeed, throughout Robinson’s three years as manager of the Montreal Expos, big crowds had been rare. Yet to many of the 31,395 spectators, some who recalled the […]

Depending on who you listened to, the New York Yankees were either shell-shocked or coolly determined as they approached the third game of the 1963 World Series. The venue had shifted across the continent to Los Angeles, but the pall of the Yankees’ losses to the Los Angeles Dodgers in the first two games of […]

Pumpsie Green’s successful Millers debut was nearly set back when the car in which he was riding in a morning parade down Nicollet Avenue in downtown Minneapolis ran out of gas.1 The parade was the idea of the Minneapolis Chamber of Commerce as a way to introduce fans to an entirely new 1958 Millers team. […]

Unlike Chicago, New York, or St. Louis, Boston never got to celebrate a one-city World Series or “Subway Series.” The American and National League teams representing the Hub of the Universe never managed to reach the World Series in the same year before the National League Braves left town prior to the 1953 season. Fans […]

Following a last-place finish by the Orioles in 1902, the city of Baltimore was left without a major-league franchise. The team packed up and relocated to New York, leaving disheartened Charm City fans rooting for a series of minor-league franchises for the next 50 years.1 The Boston Braves’ move to Milwaukee in 1953 began a […]

A transformation of baseball’s fandom in St. Louis was undeniably apparent in 1998. Crowds pouring into Busch Stadium had shifted their fans-in-the stands appreciation moments from stolen bases, pitching skill, and defensive gems of the 1980s to batting practice, the booth announcer, and home-run derby. Despite the fact that a disappointing season in the standings […]

At the dawn of the 1966 season, 24-year-old Dick Allen was entrenched as a central player on the pennant-hopeful Philadelphia Phillies. Allen burst onto the major-league stage in 1964, winning the National League Rookie of the Year Award with 29 home runs and league-leading stats in runs, triples, and total bases. He supplemented that exceptional […]

On July 18, 1923, the Philadelphia Phillies rallied in the bottom of the ninth inning to win a see-saw battle with the Chicago Cubs at the Baker Bowl. The win pulled the Phillies out of last place, but had little impact on the fortunes of either team that season. Philadelphia sank back into the National […]

“I’ve played in pain before, but this hurt me just to blink.”1 That was how Philadelphia Phillies backup catcher Mike Ryan characterized the experience of playing through 15 innings with a severe back spasm he sustained while pulling on his sanitary socks before the July 26, 1971, game against the Houston Astros. But as Philadelphia’s […]

In the days leading up to one of Yankee Stadium’s most surprising comebacks, it was the visitors’ ballpark that was making headlines. The previous week, the New York Yankees dropped a two-game series to the Minnesota Twins, and placed the blame on the Hubert H. Humphrey Metrodome’s roof. After New York fielders lost some routine […]

Early in the 1987 season, a large chart was hung on the wall of the Expos’ clubhouse with a small box for each game on their schedule. Players could select a square, and whoever correctly guessed the game in which a much-anticipated milestone took place would win the money in the pool.1 The event that […]

The Boston Braves played 2,811 regular-season home games at Braves Field between 1915 and 1952, winning 1,378 of them. The very last of those wins, recorded in the first game of a Sunday doubleheader in September 1952, appears in retrospect to rank among the tightest and most exciting wins ever seen by Boston’s National League […]

Early on Sunday morning, May 2, 1954, a group of 37 people from Chillicothe, Missouri, boarded a chartered bus for the first leg of a round trip to Busch Stadium1 in St. Louis to see a doubleheader between the Cardinals and New York Giants. The Midwestern town’s depot agent, J.E. Brotherton, had arranged the excursion, […]

The Kansas City Royals had developed from an expansion franchise in 1969 to a division contender in the American League Western Division by the mid-1970s. The Royals had had given the powerful Oakland Athletics a challenge for the division crown in 1975 but despite 91 wins, they came up seven games short of the A’s.1 […]

The Cleveland Indians certainly started off the 1940 season in grand fashion. Bob Feller threw the only Opening Day no-hitter in baseball history on April 16 at Comiskey Park. Feller was far from sharp as he struck out eight, but walked five on a cold, raw day in the aptly named Windy City. But his […]

The Philadelphia Phillies had hoped to play their 1970 season at the new Veterans Stadium, but delays in construction meant the 1970 season would at least begin at Connie Mack Stadium. Built in 1909 and originally called Shibe Park, Connie Mack Stadium was the home of the Philadelphia Athletics until 1954 and the Phillies beginning […]

One of the California Angels’ shortcomings in 1992 was a lack of production from their cleanup hitters. As the season trudged into August and the Angels sat 12 games below .500, interim manager John Wathan thought of a new way to try to get some production from the fourth slot in the lineup—bring up the […]

Like thousands of youth pitchers, Frank Castillo dreamed of winning a game in the major leagues. He was drafted out of Eastwood High School in El Paso, Texas, in the sixth round of the June 1987 amateur draft by the Chicago Cubs and progressed quickly through the minors. After reaching Triple-A Iowa to start the […]

Fresh off a second-place finish in 1979, the Milwaukee Brewers arrived in training camp in Sun City, Arizona, in 1980 with dreams of a division title. But talk of games and pennants was shunted aside when, on March 6, Brewers manager George Bamberger was hospitalized with chest pains. Bamberger had suffered a mild heart attack. […]

After administering the worst home-team defeat ever in a World Series opener,1 the Brewers began Game Two against the St. Louis Cardinals at Busch Stadium looking for a sweep and a commanding lead to take home to Milwaukee. The Cardinals, who had won the World Series five of the last six times they won Game […]

Gil Coan was heralded as a speed merchant who could hit for average with some power after two spectacular minor-league seasons as World War II wound down. But beyond baseball, his life was and always remained rooted in his family and his community. An unusual skin allergy significantly hampered his rookie season. Injuries bedeviled him […]

  Baseball only decrees 90 feet between bases and 60 feet 6 inches from home plate to the mound. Elsewhere, look backward, angel.“Thanks to Alexander Cartwright,” said former Commissioner Bowie Kuhn, “the outfield distance, fence height, and space between the seats and lines vary. Parks could do as they liked.”1 Some have been liked better. […]