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Labor Day Weekend in the Bronx was greeted with little fanfare by fans of the Yankees. The 63-73 Yankees had lost the second game of a three-game series with the Texas Rangers on Saturday, returning them to fifth place in the American League East Division. As the pennant races materialized, Don Mattingly, the Yankees’ star […]

As members of the Society for American Baseball Research descended on the Sheraton West Palm Beach Hotel for SABR’s 30th annual convention, the Chicago Cubs came to town in a “circus-like” atmosphere to face off against the Florida Marlins. The South Florida Chapter of SABR was busy preparing for the first-ever SABR convention in Florida, […]

Sometimes, you just can’t win for losing. Dwight Gooden’s eighth-inning balk gave the Philadelphia Phillies the go-ahead run and marred an exemplary performance on September 17, 1984. It was an awful way to lose a ballgame, especially when the rookie hurler had 16 strikeouts and allowed no walks. For the 20,483 attendees trekking through the […]

Desperately needing a win, the Orioles entered Memorial Stadium in downtown Baltimore for Game Two of the 1983 World Series. They had lost Game One the previous day and were aware that no team had recovered to win the Series after losing the first two games at home. The Orioles’ Mike Boddicker had fashioned a […]

After the St. Louis Cardinals beat the New York Yankees 4-3 in St. Louis to even the World Series at one game apiece, the teams traveled to New York for Game Three. Wartime exigencies forced both teams to travel on the same train. It was an awkward arrangement, but there was no intermingling between the […]

As the first season of play at Metropolitan Stadium neared its end in 1956, the Minneapolis Millers continued a tradition from Nicollet Park days by holding an “Appreciation Night” on August 27, when they played the Omaha Cardinals. In previous years the event showed appreciation for the team members by presenting them with gifts, but […]

Ask a Tigers fan of recent vintage to associate “Blue Jays” and “extra innings” and the memories will not be positive. On August 10, 2014, Detroit squandered a 5-0 victory, eventually losing when Jose Bautista sliced a game-winning single in the 19th inning. Thirty years before, the Tigers and Blue Jays faced off in an […]

Henry Aaron hit 44 home runs in his first season as an Atlanta Brave. (SABR-Rucker Archive)   The Braves began their first season of play in Atlanta in 1966 after moving south from Milwaukee, the city they had called home from 1953 until 1965. The team featured a number of strong hitters, including catcher-first baseman […]

Before a nearly sold-out Anaheim Stadium crowd of 41,805, and with a national television audience tuned in, Nolan Ryan took the mound for the California Angels with four no-hitters under his belt. He shared the record with Sandy Koufax. Might the Ryan Express break the record against the visiting Yankees, the defending world champions? The […]

From the time he arrived in Milwaukee with the rest of his Braves teammates from Boston in the spring of 1953, Joe Adcock quickly became a fan favorite in the nation’s newest major-league city. The impressive power numbers of the mighty 6-foot-4, 220-pounder were often overshadowed by the likes of Eddie Mathews and Henry Aaron. […]

A crowd of 44,645 came to Dodger Stadium on a picture-perfect Southern California Saturday evening. The game-time temperature was 75 degrees under clear skies, and there was a gentle breeze of 7 MPH blowing out to left field. The typically large LA crowd was treated to a record-setting offensive performance by the Dodgers as the […]

The New York Mets entered the 1969 National League playoffs with their hopes riding on the arms of their young and talented pitching staff. But they won the first game of the series with their bats. After the Braves tagged Mets ace Tom Seaver for eight hits, including two home runs, Seaver’s teammates saved his […]

It had already been an interesting weekend of baseball in Cleveland for the visiting Boston Red Sox. After opening the 1992 season with two weekday losses in Yankee Stadium, the Red Sox came to Cleveland to play the Indians’ home opener on Saturday afternoon, April 11, and a doubleheader on Sunday, before returning to Boston […]

On June 29, 1990, Toronto baseball fans got to witness a bit of history when Dave Stewart of the Oakland A’s threw a no-hitter at SkyDome, beating the Blue Jays 5-0. It was the first major-league no-hitter thrown in Toronto. However, it wasn’t the first professional no-hitter thrown in the city, which has a rich […]

For the first three weeks of the 1980 season, the St. Louis Cardinals’ bullpen provided anything but relief. To wit: an 0-5 record, one save and a ghastly 7.46 ERA with 51 hits allowed in 35⅓ innings through April 29.1 “If we had the relief pitching, we’d probably be in first place,” general manager John […]

In the early 2000s, Major League Baseball was in the midst of a 20-year period of ballpark construction, as older multipurpose stadiums were being replaced by retro-classic, baseball-only stadiums. The era began in 1992 with Oriole Park at Camden Yards in Baltimore and concluded in 2012 when LoanDepot Park in Miami opened its gates.1 Great […]

Cleveland fans had high expectations for a banner year for their Indians in 1987. Cleveland ended 1986 in fifth place in the American League East Division with an 86-78-1 record. It was their loftiest record since 1968, when they finished in third place at 86-75-1. The current edition of the Tribe had some good young […]

In the opening contest of the most pivotal series of their baseball lives to that point, the Houston Astros lost on a Joe Ferguson walk-off blast in the 10th inning that breathed new life into the Los Angeles Dodgers’ fading 1980 playoff hopes. Yet, despite those heroics, momentum was still the greatest ally of the […]

Ken Crosby’s workday on a fine Southern California spring afternoon lasted only three innings. The Chicago Cubs right-hander, making the first major-league start of his career after eight seasons of professional baseball, gave up two singles, a double, and two triples; “three other drives were barely contained within the 410-foot confines” of Jack Murphy Stadium […]

In June 1970 Ted Williams, then managing the Washington Senators, reminisced for a reporter about the first time Williams had ever seen Dick Hall pitch. Hall, Williams recalled, “was taking his warmup throws, having come in to relieve somebody. I was kneeling in the on-deck circle and I thought to myself, ‘Oh, boy, he’ll be […]

Nick Etten was in total disbelief in January 1943. He learned that he’d been traded from the Philadelphia Phillies – the NL’s cellar-dweller – to baseball’s powerhouse: the New York Yankees. Ecstatically, Etten proclaimed, “Imagine a man in that environment hearing that he had been sold to the Yankees!”1 Since Lou Gehrig’s career had tragically […]

A Wisconsin hero on the football gridiron and the baseball diamond, Robert James ‘Red’ Wilson was a bright, talented, and dedicated student-athlete who later enjoyed a good major league career as a catcher for the Chicago White Sox, the Detroit Tigers, and, briefly, the Cleveland Indians from 1951 to 1960. One of the greatest athletes […]

Of the thirteen World Series (1903-1917) covered by Philadelphia sportswriter Billy Weart, the most important was in 1908. Non-writers overcrowded the press box, causing the scribes to form the Base Ball Writers’ Association, with the goal of securing ballpark creature comforts in the press facilities, which were often congested with fans who were unwilling to […]

In the 21 years since Major League Baseball granted an expansion bid to Arizona Baseball, Inc., the Arizona Diamondbacks franchise has been characterized by the stability of its leadership. The franchise has had two managing general partners, the term it uses for its chief executive officer: Jerry Colangelo (1995-2004) and Ken Kendrick (2004-). The actual […]