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Catcher Mike Brumley’s future in the major leagues appeared bright in 1964. That year Topps issued baseball card number 167, featuring two “Senators Rookie Stars”– Brumley and Lou Piniella. Piniella had a lengthy career as both a player and manager, but Brumley’s major-league stint spanned just three years. He collected 151 hits, five home runs. […]

William Barney McCosky, a Pennsylvania native who grew up in Detroit, was a talented and speedy all-around center fielder who broke into the major leagues with a bang in 1939, hitting .311 for the Detroit Tigers. Barney, who stood 6-feet-1 and weighed 185 pounds in his prime, threw right and batted left, and he did […]

Puerto Rican shortstop Tito Navarro played in 12 games for the New York Mets late in the 1993 season. He came to the plate 18 times, reaching base once – with a game-winning RBI single in extra innings. He appeared twice in the field. That was his only major-league experience. Navarro’s injury-plagued career ended in […]

The third player selected in the June 1966 amateur draft, Wayne Twitchell pitched for five big-league clubs, mainly with Philadelphia. At 6-feet-6, he possessed velocity, but he lacked control and couldn’t develop an out pitch to become a dominant hurler. Then, when he finally put together an All-Star season, a knee injury clouded the remainder […]

Todd Frohwirth was a high school senior with no future in professional baseball until he saw Kent Tekulve on television and tried pitching like the unorthodox right-hander. Eight years later, he was Tekulve’s teammate in the major leagues. Exclusively a reliever, Frohwirth spent parts of nine seasons (1987-1994, 1996) with the Phillies, Orioles, Red Sox, […]

As a young and hopeful Art Kusnyer (pronounced KUSH-ner) started his professional baseball career in 1966, he made a contingency plan: “If I didn’t make it in baseball, I wanted to be a highway patrolman,” he told the author.1 He never got to work for the highway patrol. Instead, the solidly built 6-foot-2, 197-pound Kusnyer, […]

Besides being a superb fielding but often light hitting second baseman with the St. Louis Cardinals for more than a decade, Julian Javier was a central figure in the history and development of baseball in the Dominican Republic. Javier completed his playing days with a career .257 batting average. But in 19 World Series games, […]

The 1934 Washington Senators, defending American League champions, were out of the playoff race by August after being decimated by injuries. Thus, team owner Clark Griffith was willing to take a chance on Reese Diggs, a hard-throwing 18-year-old who caught the eye of one of his scouts while pitching on the sandlots of Baltimore. Starved […]

On the heels of the British navy’s sinking of the German battleship Bismarck and President Franklin Roosevelt’s “unlimited emergency” speech defying the Germans, the Washington Senators inaugurated night baseball on May 28, 1941, on a sweltering evening in the nation’s capital. Senators owner Clark Griffith was following the lead of six other major-league teams and […]

The Baltimore Orioles entered the 1983 World Series on an absolute roll. They took the AL East by six games and dispatched the Chicago White Sox four games to one in the ALCS. The White Sox were a very good team — they had won the AL West by a margin of 20 games — […]

Del Wilber’s game on August 27, 1951, could easily rank among the most memorable of his life. After bringing his newborn daughter, Cynthia, home from the hospital earlier in the day, he smacked three solo home runs to account for all of the Phillies’ runs in a 3-0 victory over Cincinnati. Batting eighth in the […]

Without a day off in the 1950 World Series, the venue shifted from Philadelphia to New York, where Yankee Stadium welcomed its 15th World Series.1 On the face of it, Game Three looked to be no contest. Eddie Lopat, who had won 18 games during the season, opposed Ken Heintzelman, who had posted a feeble […]

Dave “Boo” Ferriss, an ex-GI discharged from the Army Air Corps in February 1945, began his major-league career with an astonishing eight consecutive wins in 1945. The start of his career was as unlikely as that of any player before him, since Ferriss had minimal time as a professional player prior to his debut. In […]

One year after his selection in the June 1969 amateur draft, 19-year-old pitcher Bert Blyleven was recalled from the minor leagues to start for the Minnesota Twins. When he took the mound at RFK Stadium in Washington on June 5, 1970, he became the youngest player in the major leagues and the first major leaguer […]

The fans had reason to question the wisdom of manager Bucky Harris back in February when the team spent $5,000 for a 22-year-old 6-foot-4 right-handed minor leaguer. He won 24 while losing only 4 but that was for Sanford in the Class D Florida State League. That kid, Sid Hudson, was anything but a sure […]

With the 1983 World Series knotted after two games, Philadelphia played host for Game Three. Both teams were concerned about their offense as the key hitter in each lineup was in a slump. Eddie Murray of the Orioles had been hitless since his single in the first inning of Game One. More importantly, he failed […]

In May 2006 the New York Yankees lost two of three games at Yankee Stadium in their first series of the season against the archrival Boston Red Sox. Two weeks later, the teams split the first two games of their three-game rematch at Fenway Park. Entering the finale on May 24, the Red Sox were […]

The 1984 Cubs drove to National League East glory after years of mediocrity and nearly four decades without a postseason appearance. Three Cubs integral to the upswing – second baseman Ryne Sandberg, left fielder Gary Matthews, and pitcher Rick Sutcliffe – placed capstones on their respective outstanding seasons in Chicago’s 4-1 division-clinching win in Pittsburgh […]

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 […]

“Jim Rice. Remember the name.”1 The uncredited scribe who wrote that sentence in the September 22, 1973, edition of the Boston Globe proved to be very prescient indeed. Rice hit 382 home runs in a 16-season career spent entirely with the Boston Red Sox, helped Boston teams reach two World Series, and was inducted into […]

Roger Craig was settling into retirement when he agreed to become manager of the San Francisco Giants on September 18, 1985. Owner Bob Lurie and new President/General Manager Al Rosen persuaded Craig to return to baseball and help restore a winning culture in the wallowing franchise. The Giants were well on the way to the […]

In their first 22 seasons after relocating from Washington, DC, in 1972, the Texas Rangers finished second in the American League West six times yet never captured a division title.1 In 1994 they moved from Arlington Stadium to The Ballpark in Arlington and were in first place2 – with a record of just 52-62 – […]

Like most forces of nature, Paul Lo Duca’s twin eruptions in June 2007 were remarkable for both their spontaneity and the havoc they left behind. Frustrated with his team’s recent struggles and what he considered undue expectations from the press, on June 23 the New York Mets catcher littered the diamond with his equipment after […]

When the Washington Senators suited up for the final game of the season on October 2, 1960, they didn’t know it would be the last one for the storied franchise in the nation’s capital. In what appeared to be a hasty action by the American League only a few weeks after the season ended, Senators […]