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The Atlanta Braves had been spiraling downward. From a division championship in 1982, Atlanta’s plummet to the National League West Division basement was slow but sure. In 1983 the Braves finished in second place, three games behind the Los Angeles Dodgers. In 1984 they were second again but looking up at the San Diego Padres, […]

Game Five. Two words guaranteed to bring angst to the heart of any Washington Nationals fan. Three times since 2012 the Nationals had made it to a National League Division Series Game Five – and all three times they had lost, in heartbreaking fashion.1 A fourth NLDS trip, in 2014, had resulted in three one-run […]

“Was just telling you that boy could hit that long ball this year and he just did it.” – Al Helfer1 The baseball season is about to burst into bloom. Examine the Opening Day starting lineups closely. You may recall stories of favorite players or the memories of visits to the ballpark. Perhaps a rivalry […]

For 20-year-old Ted Williams, this was the third visit to Cleveland. The rookie right fielder had already accumulated a dozen home runs by the mid-July visit. The Red Sox were riding an eight-game winning streak when they arrived. They took the July 13 game, winning in 10 innings. A win in this game would make […]

“Broad shouldered, round faced, moody, Beckwith was one of the first in that long line of black power hitters beginning with Louis Santop and Josh Gibson of the old Negro leagues and continuing down to Mays and Aaron of the modern major leagues. Some who saw him say Beckwith was the mightiest of them all.” […]

Going into Game Three of the 1981 American League Division Series, the Milwaukee Brewers faced a challenge: Make history, or go home. The Brewers – founded as the Seattle Pilots in 1969 – earned their first postseason berth in the strike-altered 1981 season. But the New York Yankees beat the Brewers in Milwaukee in the […]

“It was a fastball, and I thought I hit it good,” said Willie Mays after clouting a round-tripper against Houston in the inaugural season of the Astrodome to join the rarefied company of Babe Ruth (714), Jimmie Foxx (534), Ted Williams (521), and Mel Ott (511) as the newest member of the exclusive 500-home-run club.1 […]

“Three homers in a game. I’ve never done that before,” 26-year-old Philadelphia Phillies first baseman Ryan Howard said after adding to his club-record season total in an 8-7 win over the Atlanta Braves in the first game of a doubleheader on September 3, 2006.1 Braves pitcher Tim Hudson, who surrendered all three of Howard’s home […]

The annual Patriots Day game in Boston started just after 11:00 A.M. on Monday, April 19. The Red Sox had taken two of the previous three games from the visiting New York Yankees.1 Boston made it three of four with a comeback 5-4 win, aided by contributions from some of the less-celebrated Red Sox players. […]

The hopes of the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim of repeating as division champion in 2008 appeared to be derailed by injuries before the season began. As players reported to spring training in Tempe, Arizona, number-two starter Kelvim Escobar suffered a reaggravation of a shoulder injury and was certain to begin the season on the […]

The Detroit Tigers headed to Cleveland for a three-game, two-day set with the Indians in August 1958. The Tigers were holding down fourth place in the American League. The Indians were right behind them in fifth. Both clubs, as well as the whole league, were double-digit games behind the first-place New York Yankees. Nobody was […]

When the Philadelphia Phillies and Milwaukee Braves played a Sunday doubleheader in Milwaukee County Stadium on August 20, 1961, they were headed in opposite directions. The fourth-place Braves were riding a nine-game winning streak, including the first three games of the series with Philadelphia, which left them eight games behind the first-place Cincinnati Reds. The […]

The team once known as the St. Louis Browns had escaped to Baltimore in 1954. Their 35th season in Baltimore began on an awful note. To begin the season, they had lost 21 consecutive games (the Brownies never did that), and coming into the game on May 2, they had lost 23 of 24. They […]

Casey Stengel, who had debuted in the majors with 17 games for Brooklyn in September 1912, had initially held out for a better contract in his first full season with the Superbas. On March 13, 1913, Charlie Ebbets “finally sent him a contract he found satisfactory.”1 However, according to the Brooklyn Citizen, Stengel “had been […]

When an active player or manager dies during the regular season, surviving teammates face a difficult choice: Play the next scheduled game in their honor, or postpone it in their memory? In the twenty-first century the trend has been to stay off the field. Teams – or front offices – that have chosen to postpone […]

“Al Benton, 45, once the relief pitching ace of the Tigers, now partly blind, was one jump ahead of the FBI on a car-theft charge today.”1 That’s the kind of news story that attracts attention. Indicted in May 1957 on charges of driving a stolen car from Sacramento to Oklahoma City three years earlier, Benton […]

On August 30, 1977, there were two numbers that headlined the baseball sections of the Cleveland dailies. Those numbers were 1 and 893, each representing baseball records at opposite ends of the spectrum. The evening before, the Cleveland Indians hosted the Chicago White Sox in a regionally-televised broadcast of ABC’s “Monday Night Baseball.” The White […]

Bryan Roberts Price was born in San Francisco, California, on June 22, 1962. He spent his childhood in Mill Valley, just north of San Francisco’s Golden Gate Bridge, in an environment with a rich baseball heritage and abundant opportunities for young ballplayers.1 Price attended Tamalpais High School, where he developed into a solid left-handed pitcher with […]

Jesse Levan was the last baseball player to be banned for trying to fix games. A two-time minor-league batting champion, he was held back by injuries and was no longer a prospect when he was banished from professional baseball for life in 1959. He always denied conspiring to throw games, but the damning evidence against […]

The Newark Eagles’ May 5, 1946, season-opening game against the Philadelphia Stars, a 2-0 no-hit victory for Eagles pitcher Leon Day, soon spelled opportunity for a multi-talented college player named Oscar Givens. Shortstop Benny Felder made two errors in the game,1 and when the two teams moved from Ruppert Stadium to Delaware’s Wilmington Park the […]

Duke Maas pitched in the American League during seven seasons from 1955 to 1961, most notably with the New York Yankees. He appeared in relief in the 1958 and 1960 World Series. Maas won the game that clinched the 1958 pennant for New York. In 1959 he started 21 games, fashioning a 14-8 won-loss record […]

On September 19, 1988, the Pittsburgh Pirates paid tribute to the Homestead Grays by hoisting a black-and-white commemorative flag over Three Rivers Stadium. The occasion commemorated an event from 40 years earlier, when the Negro National League’s Grays defeated the Birmingham Black Barons, champions of the Negro American League, four games to one in the […]

Andy Karl was one of those ballplayers who were able to benefit by the departure of many established ballplayers during the Second World War. He broke into Organized Baseball in 1937, playing for the Boston Red Sox affiliate in Rocky Mount, North Carolina. Karl was a right-handed pitcher who stood 6-feet-1 and weighed 175 pounds. […]

Editor’s note: This article originally appeared in SABR’s “Baseball Research Journal,” No. 25, in 1996 and is reprinted here in its original format. By Mark Simon With the growth of television and everything that comes with it (cable, satellite dishes, etc.), there seems to be less appreciation for baseball on the radio than there used […]