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Perhaps the greatest example of the old baseball cliché “good field, no hit,” Raymond Francis Oyler was the regular shortstop for two late-1960s Detroit Tigers teams, including the world champion 1968 squad, as well as the original Seattle Pilots the following season. Ray compiled a sub-”Mendoza line” .175 career batting average—the lowest of any player […]

Ellis Clary played in the majors for nearly four seasons during World War II, and he had an at-bat during the St. Louis Browns’ only World Series appearance in 1944. Once his playing career ended, he spent six years as a coach with the Washington Senators and more than three decades as a scout for […]

John J. McHale Sr. was a highly esteemed major-league executive from 1948 through 1989. He worked for the Detroit Tigers, the Milwaukee and Atlanta Braves, the Commissioner’s office, and the Montreal Expos. On two occasions, McHale received significant support as a possible commissioner himself. Jim Fanning, a colleague for many years with the Braves and […]

Roy White was a quiet, graceful leader on the New York Yankees during a transitional period in the club’s history. His strength of character and remarkable versatility enabled him to survive, and even excel, in the shark tank that is so often New York Yankee baseball. At a time when the great careers of Mickey […]

As a 33-year-old veteran outfielder, “call me Mike” McCormick was a major contributor to the Boston Braves’ run to the 1948 pennant. In 343 at-bats in 115 games, the right-handed-hitting McCormick batted .303, to help solidify the Braves outfield. A pinch hitter extraordinaire, Mike stroked six hits in 14 tries off the bench. He started […]

“Baseball isn’t statistics; it’s Joe DiMaggio rounding second.” — attributed to Jimmy Breslin by Herb Caen, San Francisco Chronicle, June 3, 1975.   Joe DiMaggio was one of the most recognizable and popular men in mid-twentieth century America. He was celebrated in song and literature as an iconic hero, and he was married, briefly, to […]

When the Baltimore Orioles announced their 2015 Hall of Fame class, it seemed fitting that Gary Roenicke and John Lowenstein would be inducted together. The two previously shared left field duties for the Orioles in the late 1970s and early 1980s, not an ideal situation for Roenicke – a former first-round pick still in the […]

On July 14, 1966, two days after the All-Star Game, the San Francisco Giants started a six-game road trip in Philadelphia. The Giants were in first place in the National League and had been for most of the season, but they had been inconsistent since a 12-game winning streak in May. When they arrived in […]

Stan Musial’s first and last appearances in Forbes Field spanned just short of 22 years and 3,002 major-league games. The iconic ballpark in Pittsburgh’s Oakland section had been a fixture in the National League since 1909. Musial was born 11 years later in Donora, Pennsylvania, 20-plus miles down the Monongahela River from Pittsburgh.1 He’d played […]

Fueled by the St. Louis Cardinals sidelining him during the National League wild-card series in 2022, longtime rotation mainstay Adam Wainwright was driven to show that he could still pitch.1 The Cardinals believed in the 41-year-old veteran, and the team signed him to a one-year, $17.5 million contract for 2023, which Wainwright declared would be […]

The Hubert H. Humphrey Metrodome in downtown Minneapolis became the home for the Minnesota Twins in 1982. The multipurpose stadium, whose main professional tenants were the Twins and the National Football League’s Minnesota Vikings, replaced Metropolitan Stadium in suburban Bloomington, where both teams had played since 1961. The first Metrodome event was an exhibition game […]

Max Kepler drilled a four-seam fastball to deep left-center field. Aaron Hicks took off from his spot in center. Hicks had nearly 75 feet to travel in the 3.6 seconds it took the drive to travel 376 feet. No one — not the players, coaches, fans, writers, broadcasters, viewers, bloggers, or game officials — knew […]

It was a perfect day for a perfect game. Under a clear blue sky 64,519 fans trooped into historic Yankee Stadium to witness a World Series contest between the two dominant teams of the era. The world champion Dodgers were facing the club that had won more World Series titles than any other two clubs […]

As future Hall of Famer Rickey Henderson approached Ty Cobb’s career runs-scored record of 2,244,1 he said that when the moment arrived, he “promised he would slide into home plate to officially mark his reign as baseball’s career runs leader.”2 In the 159th game of the 2001 season, before a home crowd of 21,606, Henderson, […]

When the St. Louis Browns relocated to Baltimore in 1954, the new Baltimore Orioles played their home games in Memorial Stadium, a multipurpose facility located north of downtown. Thirty-eight years later the Orioles moved to Oriole Park at Camden Yards, a trail-blazing ballpark situated by the waterfront in the heart of downtown. From its opening, […]

On the first Sunday of the 1956 season, the American League’s two worst teams from the previous year met for a doubleheader. The temperature in Baltimore was pleasant enough – in the low 60s – but the sky appeared gloomy and a few raindrops fell during the 2 o’clock matinee.1 Nevertheless, fans continued to stream […]

The potent Red Sox lineup of 1940 hadn’t been enough to overcome their own weak pitching. In between four second-place finishes (1938-39 and 1941-42), the Red Sox were mired in fifth place when the team began its final homestand on September 26. At the plate, the Red Sox were the equal of the first-place Tigers, […]

Motivated by the unusual antics of opposing rookie pitcher Mike Loynd, Kansas City Royals second baseman Frank White took a frenzied game into his own hands and powered the Royals to a come-from-behind win over Texas on August 19, 1986. However, White’s record-setting game would be squandered by the Royals in a disheartening season. Mired […]

As winter turned to spring in 1941, war was spreading across the globe, a wildfire uncontained. Nazi Germany had subjugated much of Europe, with invasion of the Soviet Union next. Britain had endured The Blitz for months, Luftwaffe terror raining from above. Hitler’s racist regime brutally persecuted Jews, evolving by 1942 into the genocide we […]

Thursday, October 12, 1972, brought to Detroit overcast conditions that seemed perfectly suited to the grim circumstances of do-or-die baseball. The fifth and final game of the American League Championship Series saw Oakland right-hander John “Blue Moon” Odom and Detroit southpaw Woodie Fryman meet in a rematch of Game Two, won by Odom 5-0. The victory […]

A crowd of more than 15,000 left Estadio de Béisbol Charros de Jalisco in the early hours of Monday, March 13, 2017. Many, if not all, of the spectators expected to come back later that day to see the host team, Mexico, play in a tiebreaker game to determine who would advance to the next […]

The revamped St. Louis Cardinals were off to a rousing start in 1981, winning six of their first eight games, when Lary Sorensen took the pitcher’s mound for the finale of a three-game series with the Chicago Cubs at Busch Stadium on Wednesday, April 22. Coming off a disappointing fourth-place finish in the National League […]

Baseball was played at the Olympics for the first time as a demonstration sport at St. Louis in 1904; very little information on this game is available. Further Olympic baseball exhibitions took place in 1912 and 1924. Hoping to make baseball a sanctioned medal event, former major leaguer Les Mann petitioned the Olympic Committee to […]

Brian Giles emerged as one of the National League’s top hitters after a 1998 trade to the Pittsburgh Pirates freed him from the Cleveland Indians’ talent-heavy roster. An early-season game in 1999 demonstrated his immediate impact. Upstaging San Francisco Giants slugger Jeff Kent’s five-hit cycle and teammate Jason Kendall’s five hits and two runners caught […]