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Only three pitchers have maintained earned run averages below 1.00 for a full season. Ferdie Schupp did it in 1916. Hall of Famer Dennis Eckersley duplicated the feat in 1990. The third person? Chris Hammond.1 In 2002, he pitched 76 innings and gave up a miniscule eight earned runs, resulting in a 0.95 ERA. Making […]

Charles Richard “Charlie” Maxwell, the popular outfielder of the Tigers from 1955 to 1962, often called “Paw Paw” by fans, writers, and broadcasters, was one of Detroit’s best power hitters. A lefthanded batter who averaged .264 lifetime, Charlie hit 148 home runs and batted in 532 runs in a major league career lasting from 1950 […]

Everyone has his baseball dream when growing up, but few get the opportunity to realize that one special moment. On October 12, 1956, the New York Yankees and the Brooklyn Dodgers played the seventh game of the World Series. The Yankees had lost the first two games but had come back to win the next […]

The Cleveland Indians boasted one of the strongest corps of starting pitchers in history in the early 1950s: Bob Feller, Bob Lemon, Early Wynn and Mike García. For a few years García was at least the equal of his Hall of Fame stablemates, but the righthander known as “The Big Bear” burned out early. Edward […]

A generation after Johnny Bench’s last game, he remains the gold standard for baseball catchers of any era. By the age of 20 he had redefined how to play the position, and by 22 he was the biggest star, at any position, in all of baseball. Catching eventually took its toll, moving him to the […]

Fritz Ostermueller was 41 years old when he took the mound on September 30, 1948, to make the final start of his 15-year major-league career. The Pittsburgh left-hander had played with four big-league teams; his lifetime ledger was even at 114 wins and 114 losses. In early September the Braves, Cardinals, Dodgers, and the surprising Pirates had […]

In March 1993 Rafael Ramirez was trying to secure a bench spot on the rebuilding Oakland Athletics. He was among the first cuts, nursing a sore arm and having been outplayed by another veteran, Dale Sveum.1 The 35-year-old shortstop’s career was effectively over. He spent 13 big-league seasons fielding grounders on two of the most […]

John Kyle Mitchell’s big-league pitching debut took place exactly where he had hoped it would, in Fenway Park. It was an exhibition game played there between the Boston Red Sox and New York Mets on September 4, 1986, to support Boston’s Jimmy Fund and New York amateur baseball.1 But he was not with the Red […]

Bobby Jones certainly meets the qualities of a baseball lifer. He spent much of his time on the playing field and in dugouts for more than 40 years after playing in Little League, crossing the country frequently during that odyssey. Jones’s dedication to the game eventually led to his appointment to the front office of […]

When Wally Moon came to bat for the first time in the majors, some of the home fans in St. Louis booed. Others yelled, “We want Eno.” Two days earlier Enos Slaughter, a Cardinal favorite for 16 years—the hustling, hard-nosed, red-necked Country Slaughter, who left the dugout running and kept running until he hit the […]

He pitched only 267⅓ innings in parts of three major league seasons, but Cletus Elwood “Boots” Poffenberger was the character in all of baseball in his day—and his day included such notable characters as Dizzy Dean and Van Lingle Mungo. While amassing a modest 16-12 career record, the right-hander holds the lifetime mark for funny […]

From 1995 through 1997, Jay Buhner was as prolific a home run hitter as any player in baseball. During those three years his 124 home runs exceeded those of his celebrated teammate Ken Griffey Jr. (122), 1995 MVP Mo Vaughn (118), 1996 MVP Juan Gonzalez (116), and 1993-94 MVP Frank Thomas (115). In addition to […]

Joe Astroth was a model of consistency for 10 years with an Athletics franchise that moved from Philadelphia to Kansas City, an area of the Midwest that had not enjoyed major league baseball since the nineteenth century. As a catcher, he was a solid defensive player who regularly threw out opposing baserunners and was an […]

“Yeah, we followed his lead, and it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that his kind of poise, his mentality, his way of going about his business, well, that’s what won him over 300 games.” — Chipper Jones1   The Atlanta Braves were on the cusp of nirvana. The World Series trophy was […]

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 […]

A new day was dawning for New York baseball fans. After the Dodgers and Giants had left town, 4 years had passed without a National League team in New York. Now National League fans had one. The New York Metropolitan Baseball Club had been formed in March of 1961 and quickly became known as the […]

The lean, lithe Roberto Clemente and the squat Smoky Burgess (“barely fit enough to play for the Moose Lodge softball team,”1 according to one critic) made for an odd, but certainly hard-hitting, duo. They batted fifth and sixth, respectively, in the Pittsburgh Pirates lineup for much of the 1962 season. On June 30, the two […]

As June 1948 neared its conclusion, the 1948 American League pennant race was as close as could be. Cleveland (38-23) held a one-game lead over New York (38-25) and Philadelphia (40-27). Boston (31-29) was in fourth place, 6½ games behind the Indians. Perhaps the biggest surprise was Philadelphia. The Athletics won three straight pennants from […]

Carlton Fisk knew how to rise to an occasion. His dramatic home run off Fenway Park’s left-field foul pole, punctuated by a tense hop-and-skip down the baseline and an exuberant leap, won Game Six of the 1975 World Series for the Boston Red Sox. Six seasons later, after a mistake by Boston’s front office made […]

There had been a Negro Leagues all-star game since September 10, 1933, when the first one was played at Chicago’s Comiskey Park. Often called the East-West Classic, or the Dream Game,1 by the early 1940s it attracted as many as 51,000 fans. Yet no matter how high the attendance figures were, the White-owned newspapers, including […]

The buzz from the wildly successful start to their inaugural season had worn off.1 The fledgling Expos had just lost their 18th consecutive game, and they were about to head out on a grueling 18-game road trip. Instead of going directly to Los Angeles to prepare to face the Dodgers, they made a side trip […]

On April 7, 1970, one historic first and one historic last occurred at Pittsburgh’s Forbes Field. In their ninth try, the New York Mets finally captured their first Opening Day victory, while Forbes Field hosted its final Opening Day after 61 years. The Mets, basking in the glow of their Miracle championship from last year, […]

It took the Philadelphia Phillies and New York Mets nine innings, 37 players, 366 pitches, eight pinch-hitters, 13 walks, six stolen bases, two blown saves, and exactly four hours of a Thursday afternoon to play one of the most exciting games of the 2007 season. The Phillies prevailed, 11-10, on August 30 to complete a […]

The Detroit Tigers were baseball’s biggest surprise of 2006. On a streak of 12 consecutive losing seasons, and three years removed from the most losses in American League history, Detroit surged to the head of the AL Central behind a new manager and an emerging rookie ace. Jim Leyland, in a major-league dugout for the […]