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“They used to say Brantford could put its left-fielder five feet from the foul line, the right-fielder five feet from the other line and Jimmy Wilkes would cover the rest.” — Bob McKillop1 “Riding the bus again!” Jimmy Wilkes said, his voice cracking with excitement. “I love it. Now, that brings back memories.”2 The 69-year-old […]

The Cincinnati general manager had seen enough. Sitting at home on April 24, 1960, Gabe Paul watched on TV as his club’s reliever coughed up a lead in the first game of a doubleheader in Philadelphia. Worse was the manner in which it was done: an eighth-inning grand slam to light-hitting Phillies catcher Jimmie Coker. […]

The first thing one notices when looking at the statistical record of left-handed pitcher Rudy Sommers is the 11-year gap between big-league appearances. And if you don’t count the Federal League as a major league, there were 13 years between stints in the majors. Sommers began with the Cubs in 1912 (just one game), then […]

While pulling on his gray Pittsburgh road uniform in the visitors’ locker room at Wrigley Field on the morning on September 16, 1975, Pirates second baseman Rennie Stennett grimaced in pain. Unsure if he would be able to play, Stennett gazed down at a heavily-taped sprained ankle “which he said has been hurting him for […]

The 1943 World Series was a rematch of 1942’s fall classic, with the St. Louis Cardinals and the New York Yankees topping their respective leagues. However, in 1942, the first two games were played in St. Louis and the next three were played in New York. In 1943 the first three games were played in […]

You know you’ve been to a great ballgame when you leave the stadium with a raspy voice after your team wins. It’s easy, then, to imagine that 2,303 St. Louis Cardinals fans were just this side of laryngitis when they left Sportsman’s Park on August 4, 1937, after watching their team roar back from a […]

With due respect to Ted Williams, for Montreal fans there was only one Kid. And if any player ever bled the colors of a franchise, it was The Kid, Gary Carter, who became the face of the Expos and led it through sometimes faltering steps from being an expansion novelty to a contender in the […]

On June 6, 1945, Tommy Holmes of the Boston Braves began a hitting streak that ended as a modern National League record of 37 games; the record lasted until 1978 when Cincinnati’s Pete Rose established the current (as of 2014) mark of 44 games. The Braves connection remained: Atlanta’s Gene Garber stopped Rose in Atlanta […]

As pennant races go, the 1949 races in both the American and National Leagues were among the closest in history. In the American League, the New York Yankees trailed the Boston Red Sox by one game with two to play (in Yankee Stadium) and won them both to win the AL title. In the National […]

For a player who had excelled so consistently for the prior three seasons, Don Mattingly’s 1987 was unusually streaky. After leading the American League in hitting in 1984 and finishing first and second respectively in the 1985 and 1986 MVP voting, Mattingly got out of the gate slowly, batting .175 without a home run in […]

Part of the beauty of baseball is just how unpredictable the national pastime really is. No matter what the standings show, or what the prospects for a particular team are, on any given day at the ballpark, there is a chance that you might see something you’ve never seen before. That was certainly the case […]

As their 1954 season staggered toward its conclusion, the Philadelphia Athletics would host the New York Yankees in the home finale at Connie Mack Stadium. The game, however, was bereft of suspense for either team. For the Yankees, winners of the previous five World Series, their dethroning by the Cleveland Indians was complete. The day […]

The 1985 World Series featured two franchises and teams that had each enjoyed a great deal of success, one over a very lengthy time span and the other over a relatively short one. The St. Louis Cardinals were one of the flagship franchises of the National League. They’d just finished their 104th season with the […]

The Blue Jays finished the 1991 season by losing in the American League Championship Series to the Minnesota Twins four games to one. Falling just shy of the World Series was becoming an all-too-familiar feeling for the team and its fans. The Blue Jays had winning records in nine consecutive seasons, but it was the […]

The anticipation might have been as great as any Mariners opener since baseball returned to Seattle 20 years previously. The 1995 team had staged a remarkable race to the AL West title and its first playoff appearance. The season was climaxed with a thrilling AL Division Series win against the Yankees, highlighted by a 12th-inning […]

Well aware of Carl Yastrzemski’s reputation as the best prospect in the Boston Red Sox minor-league system, Minneapolis Millers manager Gene Mauch couldn’t wait to get the young second baseman into his lineup. He should have. The timing seemed perfect. Mauch’s Millers had finished their American Association season in second place in the Eastern Division […]

The Wednesday afternoon game between the Cleveland Indians and Minnesota Twins produced a modern-era major-league first when the Twins’ Bob Allison and Harmon Killebrew blasted first-inning grand slams in the 14-3 blowout victory.1 The same team hitting two grand slams in one inning has been matched only four times since Allison and Killebrew accomplished the […]

Those fans among the 20,413 at the Angels-Blue Jays game on April 15, 1994, who left after the seventh inning must have been shocked when they eventually heard the final score. Through seven innings, California led Toronto, 6-3, in what could be describe as a typical major-league game, but over the next two innings the […]

The Seattle Mariners, with a record of 43-46, had lost three in a row, including two against Anaheim each of the preceding evenings in their series. But in a tight AL West Division, playoff hopes were not dead for the new Seattle skipper, Eric Wedge, and his team. The best embodiment of this was their […]

The pendulum kept swinging the same way after the New York Yankees had evened the 1951 World Series with a convincing win over the New York Giants in Game Four. Gil McDougald hit the third grand slam in World Series history, Eddie Lopat pitched his second five-hitter of the Series, and the Yankees bombed the […]

April 15, 1997, was the 50th anniversary of one of the most impactful events in baseball history: Jackie Robinson breaking major-league baseball’s color barrier in his debut with the Brooklyn Dodgers. The major leagues marked the occasion with commemorative celebrations across the country. The central event was a ceremony at Shea Stadium before the New […]

“I was surprised (manager Herman Franks) called on me, but I would do it again, if needed. My best pitch was the home run ball.” – Cubs first baseman-outfielder Larry Biittner after yielding three homers in his major-league pitching debut.1   In the first game of a Fourth of July doubleheader at Wrigley Field that […]

When the Boston Red Sox hosted the Arizona Diamondbacks on June 25, 2008, the pitching matchup featured two starters who had been getting out major-league hitters for a combined 37 seasons … in vastly different ways. Standing 6-feet-10 and throwing from the left-hand side, Randy Johnson was an intimidating presence, and he often overpowered batters […]

American Independence Day, July 4, roughly marking the middle of the baseball season, is also significant in the venerable history of the Boston-Milwaukee-Atlanta Braves franchise. On July 4, 1914, the Boston Braves lost both ends of a home doubleheader to the Brooklyn Robins to further embed themselves in the National League cellar with a 26-40 […]