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As they prepared for Game Six of the 1924 World Series on the morning of October 9, the Washington Senators had reason to feel confident of a victory that would force a decisive Game Seven the next day. Although the Senators trailed the New York Giants, three games to two, the clubs had alternated victories […]

The New York Yankees had every reason to feel confident. They had won three consecutive World Series championships, 1949-51. When they arrived for a five-game series, July 25-28, 1952, at Briggs Stadium in Detroit, they were again in first place in the American League. And they had won eight of their last 10 games against […]

Kevin Gross did not receive a warm welcome after signing with the Los Angeles Dodgers following the 1990 season. Within days, fans wrote to the Los Angeles Times and aired their displeasure; one dubbed the signing of the veteran right-hander “a Gross mistake.”1 After the Dodgers fell five games short of a playoff spot in […]

“All in all, it was not a bad first weekend in the Bronx. Looking back, I am proud of the fact that it all began in Yankee Stadium. To get your first at-bat, base hit, and home run in the same box where Joe DiMaggio and Mickey Mantle stood is pretty special.” – Tim Salmon1 […]

The major leagues’ 2020 pandemic season, with its abbreviated 60-game schedule, was followed by the largest playoff field ever — eight teams per league, kicking off on September 29. While eight games on the second day of the playoffs captivated the sport, Minnesota Twins rookie Alex Kirilloff quietly made history. Game Two of the best-of-three […]

The Potomac Nationals and Lynchburg Hillcats met on Saturday, August 25, 2018, occupying first and second place respectively in the High-A Carolina League’s Northern Division. On the mound for the Nationals was Matthew Crownover, a 25-year-old left-hander in his fourth professional season. The Georgia native had won 2015 Atlantic Coast Conference Pitcher of the Year […]

During the last week of June 1982, the Detroit Tigers slumped into Baltimore with a 10-game losing streak. They had been swept in consecutive series by the Cleveland Indians, Milwaukee Brewers, and Boston Red Sox, and that dropped them from first place in the American League East Division to third.1 Their offense was struggling, averaging […]

Perhaps distracted by a heavy swarm of moths, a perennial Gold Glove winner committed a fielding blooper that gave Shawon Dunston an unlikely three-run home run against the San Francisco Giants in June 2000. The bizarre play – which gave Dunston a two-homer, six-RBI night – helped the St. Louis Cardinals rally from seven runs […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 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 […]

The Game Score was introduced by Bill James in his annual Baseball Abstract in 1988.1 It’s a simple stat – a measure of a starting pitcher’s effectiveness by adding and subtracting points from a starting point of 50 based on in-game events. SABR’s Jeff Angus wrote in the Baseball Research Journal that James “humbly called […]

“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 […]

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, […]

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 […]

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 […]

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, […]

Mickey Cochrane, Roger Bresnahan, and Ralph Kiner are enshrined in Cooperstown. Cecil Fielder once swatted 51 home runs in a season; Roger Maris, a still mythical 61. Nomar Garciaparra won consecutive batting titles in the American League. Shoeless Joe Jackson became an all-time great, all-time goat, or both, depending on your viewpoint. Hack Wilson drove […]

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 […]