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Hank Thompson, a New York Giants mainstay from 1949 to 1956, is the answer to a host of trivia questions about black players. He was the first acknowledged black player to play for the Giants. He was also the first acknowledged black player to take the field for the St. Louis Browns, having received a […]

Lou Piniella was a key member of the expansion franchise Kansas City Royals. Piniella earned the nicknamed “Sweet Lou” because of his sweet swing and (facetiously) his temper tantrums. As a member of the Yankees of the 1970s, Piniella was never the best player on a team of superstars, but he was always a fan favorite […]

Visalia, California, has long been a good baseball town. Located in the agricultural San Joaquin Valley, it has been a mainstay of the California League since 1946, except for a couple of intervals.1 As of 2015, 13 men born in Visalia had played in the major leagues, including Marty Perez, who got into 931 games […]

Lou Finney was a tough man to strike out. A fast, feisty left-handed hitter with line-drive power, Finney made contact often enough and was versatile enough in the field to play an important role first for Connie Mack’s Depression-era Philadelphia Athletics and later for Joe Cronin’s World War II-era Boston Red Sox. A scrappy, curly-haired Alabaman […]

José Antonio Zardón Sánchez played just 54 games in the majors during a single season, 1945. However, his career also took him to Venezuela and Mexico, in addition to 11 years in the US minor leagues (1944-54) and five seasons of winter ball in his homeland. The outfielder was known most for his speed and […]

Right-hander “Schoolboy” Waite Hoyt signed an option contract with the New York Giants as a 15-year-old in 1915. The following season he began a 23-year-career in Organized Baseball, including parts of 21 seasons in the big leagues, where he posted a 237-182 record and logged 3,762⅓ innings. Most remembered as a member of the New […]

Dick Gyselman made it to the major leagues for 82 games with the Boston Braves in 1933-34, but his greatest achievement, arguably, is a mark he set in the lower circuits–his 2,500 games played at third base is the all-time minor league record. In a professional career that totaled nineteen seasons, the six-foot, two-inch Gyselman […]

On the night of May 1, 1979, the St. Louis Cardinals were playing the Houston Astros at Busch Stadium in St. Louis. Roger Freed, the Cardinals’ much-traveled first baseman-outfielder, had been restless, relegated to pinch-hitting duty in the first month of the season. Like many pinch hitters, he was unable to find his stroke, but […]

As far as Roy Lee Jackson was concerned, the highlight of his time in baseball wasn’t the 28 wins or 34 saves he compiled over 10 years (1977-1986) in the majors. Neither was it his induction into the National College Baseball Hall of Fame. Instead, it was a conversation he had with a young autograph […]

When Ned Garver won his 20th game on the last day of the 1951 season for the lowly St. Louis Browns in 1951, he became the first pitcher in major league history to win 20 games for a team which lost 100. One of the most durable pitchers of his era, the right-handed Garver led […]

Lennie Pearson was one of the mainstays of the Newark Eagles for more than a decade, but it wasn’t until the 1946 Negro World Series that Pearson came out of the shadows. The first baseman batted an astounding .393 in the Series against the Kansas City Monarchs to help the Eagles put their stamp on […]

The St. Louis Cardinals’ fan base extends over a lengthy section of middle America, partly due to the previous lack of teams out west and partly due to the powerful signal of their radio flagship station, KMOX 1120. On a clear night, when conditions are right, the voice of Cardinals announcers (historically Jack Buck and […]

They called him “The Blazer.” As a minor leaguer he drew comparisons to Jackie Robinson. Don Blasingame wasn’t as talented as Robinson, but he was good enough to play 12 years in the major leagues, with appearances in an All-Star Game and a World Series. He married a Miss America finalist, who was the daughter […]

Drafted out of high school, Don Aase began his professional baseball career with what might have seemed like something of a nightmare season for a pitcher — he was 0-10. When he made it to the major leagues five years later, he was hailed as almost the Second Coming for his debut year with the […]

Steve Ontiveros played in 10 major-league seasons (1985-1990, 1993-1995, 2000). A long and lithe right-handed pitcher, Ontiveros played for the Oakland Athletics (1985-1988, 1994-1995), Philadelphia Phillies (1989-1990), Seattle Mariners (1993), and Boston Red Sox (2000). A model of perseverance, the right-handed-hitting Ontiveros twice overcame injuries and struggles in the minors to return to the major […]

When Bowie Kuhn was named the fifth Commissioner of Baseball in early 1969, he was touted by owners as the man needed to modernize and strengthen the game of baseball, which was declining in popularity as pro football’s increased. It was a time, Daniel Okrent noted, when professional baseball was fighting for survival.1 Kuhn, a […]

Pitching in a pennant race must have seemed tame to Skinny Brown; when he was 19 years old, he jumped out of a shot-up bomber into the cold waters of the English Channel. Brown took the game seriously, but not himself. He said, “It takes a lot of guts to walk out there with the […]

The visiting Los Angeles Dodgers (13-9) and the host Philadelphia Phillies (9-9) were in second and third place respectively in their divisions, less than a month into the 1980 season. The Sunday crowd of 34,027 was ready to cheer the Phillies to a sweep. Their odds were good—the Dodgers had lost eight regular-season games in […]

On June 20, 1972, well-traveled baseball clown Max Patkin came to Dunn Field in Elmira, New York, to entertain 927 fans of the Elmira Pioneers of the Double-A Eastern League. The Pioneers, a Cleveland Indians farm team, did their part to entertain the fans by beating the Pittsfield (Massachusetts) Rangers 8-5. The teams were scheduled […]

In 1981 the Baseball Hall of Fame’s annual induction ceremony took place, as usual, in August in Cooperstown, New York. But one traditional component of the festivities – the Hall of Fame Game – had a different look and feel that year.1 With major-league players on strike since June 12, the Oakland Athletics and Cincinnati […]

A full-page ad in the August 6, 1951, issue of the Corning (New York) Evening Leader promoted an event “Important to All Local Baseball Enthusiasts.”1 Hall of Famer Connie Mack, legendary president of the Philadelphia A’s and recently retired after 50 seasons as their manager,2 was coming to the small city in New York’s Southern […]

Most fans dream of seeing a no-hitter in person, but decades can pass without an opportunity close to home. For instance, Pittsburgh’s Forbes Field hosted National League baseball from 1909 to 1970 – more than 4,700 games – without a no-no.1 Fans at Boston’s hitter-friendly Fenway Park could have attended Red Sox games from September […]

Detroit Tigers rookie Lou Whitaker could not have picked a better time to hit his first career home run. The 21-year-old second baseman came to the plate with two out in the bottom of the ninth, a runner on first base, and the Tigers trailing the Seattle Mariners by a run on July 28, 1978. […]

The 1961 World Series between the Cincinnati Reds and the New York Yankees moved to Cincinnati’s Crosley Field for a pivotal third game with the Series tied at a game apiece. The Reds, under temperamental manager Fred Hutchinson, had won the National League pennant by four games over the Los Angeles Dodgers.1 They were in […]