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It was still early in the 2004 season, but the teams playing this Saturday afternoon game at Fenway Park were off to very different starts. The visiting Kansas City Royals were 8-19 under manager Tony Peña and in last place in the American League Central Division. The host Boston Red Sox were 18-11 under Terry […]

By the time Johnny Vander Meer came to the Cleveland Indians a few weeks before the 1951 season kicked off, he was far from the dominating starter who threw back-to-back no-hitters in 1938. After he was released by the Chicago Cubs on March 30 for loafing,1 Vander Meer made a call to an old friend […]

Roberto “Bobby” Ramos was born in Cuba in 1955. Emigrating to Miami, Florida, as a child, he caught for the Jackson High School baseball team. At the end of his senior year, he was named to the All-City team and selected in the seventh round of the June 1974 amateur draft by the Montreal Expos.1 […]

In a time when baseball players from the Dominican Republic were just beginning to populate major-league rosters, the Dominican-born Alou brothers—Felipe, Matty, and Jesús—made history in 1963 by becoming the first instance of three brothers appearing as teammates in a major-league game. Their place in baseball history is also defined by their becoming part of […]

When manager Lou Piniella’s Mariners opened a weekend series in Baltimore on Friday night, May 17, 1996, it presented a matchup of two ballclubs on the rise. Seattle came in with a record of 21-18, after reaching the postseason for the first time in franchise history the year before. Led by the sweet swings of […]

On an otherwise ordinary Tuesday evening in mid-August of 2016, the Tampa Bay Rays clobbered the Padres. This mattered little with regard to either team’s standing or playoff aspirations. The Rays hardly amounted to an offensive juggernaut that year and yet they nevertheless came within one run of a couple of franchise home records that […]

The 1979 St. Louis Cardinals were flying high when they arrived in Los Angeles for the start of a three-game series with the Dodgers on June 11. They had won nine of their previous 11 games — all at home, including a three-game sweep of the Dodgers — ascending into first place in the National […]

The end was coming. Such is the reality any time a 46-year-old pitcher climbs atop a major-league mound. Charlie Hough hobbled and limped his way on and off of the field throughout the 1994 season for the Florida Marlins. But as spring turned into summer — and despite the longevity that had afforded the knuckleballer […]

Going into a night game on Friday, August 17, 2001, the Cincinnati Reds were 48-72, in fifth place, 20½ games behind the Houston Astros in the National League Central Division. Their opponent, the Milwaukee Brewers, were 50-68, in fourth place, 17½ games behind the Astros. Baseball often provides great examples of life lessons; this game […]

The unusual 1981 season, torn into halves by a players strike and lengthened by a specially added first round of playoffs, ended on a familiar note – a World Series featuring the New York Yankees and Los Angeles Dodgers. The former New York City neighbors were facing off for the 11th time. The Yankees had […]

Change was in the air in the spring of 1969. As the turbulent Sixties came to a close, even staid major-league baseball went through a much-needed transformation. After a severe lack of offense in the “Year of the Pitcher,” baseball lowered the mound and shrank the size of the strike zone to give hitters a […]

“I don’t like [the DH] at all. It’s just a horse$#!* rule. When we win because Gates Brown or Frank Howard or one of our other designated hitters got a big hit, I’m still going to say the same thing: It’s a horse$#!* rule!” — Tigers manager Billy Martin1   In 1973, opposition to the […]

George Foster experienced American League baseball for the first time in his 18-year career on August 15, 1986, a little over a week after his tumultuous relationship with the New York Mets ended after controversial remarks.1 With 347 career home runs, the 1977 National League Most Valuable Player joined a youthful Chicago White Sox roster […]

In art, a painter may create masterpieces on canvas. In baseball the verb “paint” applies to a craft no less skillful. The Dickson Baseball Dictionary defines the verb as “… To throw pitches over the edges of the plate, which appear to be dark or black because of the contrast of the white rubber plate […]

St. Cloud, Minnesota, native Jim Eisenreich retired from baseball in 1998, capping a career that spanned 15 major-league seasons and included two World Series appearances. Still, with all of his success, Eisenreich’s baseball career may be most remembered for how it was almost ended before it ever really started.   Eisenreich was born on April 18, […]

In the 1930s and 1940s famed New York City restaurateur Toots Shor hosted many of the greats of sports and show business. But in the winter of 1947 Shor’s attention focused on a baseball prospect little known outside the environs of New York – Larry Miggins. Informed that the St. Louis Cardinals had snatched the […]

With one extraordinary season Roger Maris secured his place in baseball history. And yet his establishment of the major league home run record in 1961 proved to be more of a personal curse than a professional triumph. It also overshadowed, indeed overwhelmed, the totality of a career characterized at least as much by his consistent […]

As confetti filled the sky within Raymond James Stadium on January 9, 2017, Clemson assistant football coach Bill Spiers soaked it all in. The Tigers — representing his alma mater, and the team of which his son Will was a member — had just beaten the Alabama Crimson Tide 35-31 in a dramatic national championship […]

Betsy Jochum was one of the sixty original players, as well as one of the best, in the early years of the All-American Girls Base Ball League, a professional women’s circuit born during World War II and made famous in the 1992 movie, A League of Their Own. Sixty years later, she had the pleasure […]

When Bob Melvin was a 27-year-old big-leaguer, journalist Bill Glauber described him as “the strong, silent type, with gnarled hands and a no-nonsense manner that commands respect. He is part psychologist, and part intimidator. A good cop. And a bad cop. He is, of course, a catcher.”1 Following a playing career that spanned 10 seasons […]

It was early in the evening on March 9, 1934, as the City Light truck made its way down Fourth Avenue South in downtown Seattle. The driver saw a rotund older man step from the curb to cross the street a short distance ahead. The truck slowed to allow him to cross, but when he […]

Before signing a $100,000 bonus contract with the 1957 Milwaukee Braves, John Stephen DeMerit had been a standout athlete since he was a youngster. In the fifth grade he set a record for the 100-yard dash (12.1 seconds) at the Port Relays, an annual event held in his hometown of Port Washington, Wisconsin, 27 miles […]

“There are those who can, and there are those who will,” an old saying goes. James Paul David “Jim” Bunning was clearly one of the latter. He willed himself to become a great pitcher and then a successful politician through hard work and determination. Though he struggled for almost six seasons in the minor leagues, […]

But for a bucket kick, Bill Werber might reside in the Hall of Fame rather than be remembered as a good major-league ballplayer of the 1930s who helped lead the Cincinnati Reds to National League pennants in 1939 and 1940 and to the world’s championship in 1940. It happened in 1934, toward the end of […]