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When the regular season ends on a Sunday afternoon in late September or early October, baseball fans are of two minds. Some try to relax their nerves readying for the postseason baseball of their favorite team. Others just go home, anticipating the “hot stove league”1 that helps alleviate the anxiety or boredom of the long […]

Despite a roster featuring Hall of Fame-bound Henry Aaron, Eddie Mathews, and Joe Torre, the Atlanta Braves entered their September 3, 1966, doubleheader with the Houston Astros at Atlanta Stadium in the middle of the National League pack. The Astros were looking up at the Braves from several spots below. In fact, the Braves, in […]

Baseball is different. Among the worldwide variety of stick and ball games, baseball (along with its cousins cricket and rounders) is different in that it is the player, and not the ball, who does the scoring – and the ball is often far away when the scoring is done. In field hockey, hurling, lacrosse, shinty, […]

Slugger Fred McGriff had been an Atlanta fan favorite since he joined the Braves on July 20, 1993, and hit 19 homers and drove in 55 runs in 68 games to help the Braves rally from nine games behind the San Francisco Giants to win the NL West title in 1993. But he was struggling […]

Rusty Staub’s 23-season career was dotted with distinctions that established him as a consistently productive hitter, though not quite a Hall of Famer. Staub retired in 1985 as the first man to have collected at least 500 hits with each of four different teams.1 And he trailed only the legendary Ty Cobb as the second […]

Ted Williams hit the first of his 521 major-league home runs on Sunday afternoon, April 23, 1939, at Fenway Park against the visiting Philadelphia Athletics. It was the Red Sox’ fourth game of the season. Twelve thousand fans had come out to see the game despite it being a rather cold and rainy day. The […]

Heading into the 1961 season, the National League pennant race looked to be a five-team battle. Only three teams, the Cubs, Phillies and Reds, appeared to have no chance to challenge for first place.1 However, Cincinnati manager Fred Hutchinson was optimistic about the team’s prospects. “I don’t care about anyone’s pick,” he said on the […]

Life was hard for an Appalachian coal miner and his family in the 1920s and 1930s. So it was for Lloyd “Whitey” Moore. His father died when the lad was 13. He and his older brother Lester dropped out of school and found employment to support their mother and younger brother. Lloyd Albert Moore was […]

It simply should not have taken six years for Gary Carter to get into the Hall of Fame. He was one of the best catchers of his era, and many observers put him in the top ten in major-league history. He was an outstanding defender with a strong arm who did all the other things […]

In 1964 the Philadelphia Phillies found themselves mired in the throes of one of the greatest collapses known to our national pastime. Many fans blamed manager Gene Mauch for over-using starting pitchers Jim Bunning and Chris Short down the stretch. Others blamed the loss of Frank Thomas to injury. In addition, there were rumors of […]

The young prospect was having a hard time adjusting to the backstop position in the major leagues. Offensively, he was a threat from the beginning of his career.   He was a classic bad-ball hitter who could get wood on the ball no matter where the pitch was: high, low, outside.   He hit them […]

Luke Stuart was a long-time minor league infielder who, in the course of a brief three-game major league sojourn in 1921 with the St. Louis Browns, established an American League feat that went unrecognized for more than seven decades. Through the efforts of SABR’s Records Committee in the mid-1990s, Stuart ascended from total obscurity to […]

Over the years, the Red Sox have had players on their roster who were perhaps better known for the uniqueness of their name than for anything they did on the playing field. You may recall Jennings Poindexter, Carmen Fanzone, Creighton Gubanich, Gar Finnvold, Izzy Alcantara, Win Remmerswaal, Osee Schrecongost, Hipolito Pichardo, and Arquimedez Pozo, to […]

In a pro career that lasted from the winter of 1958-59 through summer 1973, righty-hitting corner infielder Rick Joseph played parts of five major league seasons with the Kansas City Athletics (1964) and Philadelphia Phillies (1967-1970). The Dominican Republic native was the Triple-A Pacific Coast League’s 1967 Most Valuable Player. Ricardo Emelindo Joseph Harrigan was […]

Buddy Hassett was a New York boy who played for two of his hometown teams and almost made the trifecta. The first baseman had two distinctions: his ability to put the bat on the ball and his tenor voice. “The Bronx Thrush” would sing “When Irish Eyes Are Smiling” at the drop of a leprechaun. […]

Ken Holcombe was a Jehovah’s Witness who first caught the attention of big-league scouts at a tryout camp. A right-handed pitcher of modest stature, he was 5-foot-11 and listed at 169 pounds. Kenneth Edward Holcombe was born in Burnsville, North Carolina, on August 23, 1918, to Lee Polk Holcombe and Eula Pansy (Wilson) Holcombe. Lee […]

Long before Bill Veeck sent a midget up to bat, Joe Engel sent a teenage girl out to pitch to Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig. Engel, “the Barnum of the Bushes,” was minor league baseball’s premier showman for nearly four decades. “I don’t care what you say about me,” he said, “as long as you […]

Gary Gaetti did it all over 20 seasons (1981-2000) for five major-league teams. He spent the first decade of his career with the Minnesota Twins, where he was a two-time All-Star and four-time Gold Glove winner at third base. In 1987, when the Twins won the first championship in franchise history, he was the MVP […]

One of the greatest defensive shortstops of the Deadball Era, Donie Bush used quick feet and soft hands to lead the American League in assists five times and putouts three times, and his 425 putouts in 1914 established an American League record and tied a major league mark which has never been broken. At the […]

What if? Are there any more tragic words in the English language? Helen of Troy’s face is reputed to have launched a thousand ships. Miguel Fuentes’ story may have launched fewer conversations, but the former is a myth while the latter is reality. Or in Shakespearean terms, a tragedy. For the Seattle Pilots’ fans, whose […]

At 6-foot-3 and 260 pounds (or more), burly Joey Meyer could really lay into a ball. The Hawaiian was a very promising minor-league slugger. On June 2, 1987, he unloaded a homer that is still talked about today — a shot into the second deck of the left-center stands at Denver’s Mile High Stadium that […]

Note: On Wednesday morning, April 23, 2014, Conrado Marrero passed away quietly in his native Havana, Cuba, marking the end to one of the most celebrated and tenacious baseball lives on record. The sad news comes less than two days before the seemingly ageless Cuban legend would have reached his 103rd birthday, extending a remarkable […]

The San Diego Padres celebrated their 50th season in Major League Baseball in 2019. (SAN DIEGO PADRES)   San Diego’s quest for major-league baseball began earnestly in the mid- to late 1950s, around the time California’s largest cities, Los Angeles and San Francisco, ascended to “the bigs.” Home of the Pacific Coast League Padres since […]