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Fausto Miranda was the dean of Cuban sportswriters. Miranda’s writing showed just how elegant the Spanish language can be. Yale University professor Roberto González Echevarría, author of the Cuban baseball history The Pride of Havana, said, “He was a journalist who wrote with vigor, grace and agility.”1 Baseball, as Cuba’s national sport, naturally accounted for […]

Six-foot-seven right-handed pitcher Rich Gale joined Tim Stoddard of Baltimore as the tallest players in the American League when he debuted with an excellent rookie season for the Kansas City Royals in 1978. For a team that would win a third straight division title, he earned 13 of his 14 victories by the first week […]

Most major-league players dream of doing something good on Opening Day. On April 4, 1994, Wayne Kirby did something that was not just good. It was historic. Teeing off on a 3-and-1 fastball from Seattle reliever Kevin King, Kirby christened the Cleveland Indians’ sparkling new ballpark, Jacobs Field, in style. Stroking a game-winning single to […]

Bob Harvey was a menacing hitter, who reliably anchored right field for the Newark, Houston, and New Orleans Eagles from 1943 to 1951. Harvey was a large man, who stood 6-feet tall and weighed 220 pounds but was a capable fielder and possessed a deadly throwing arm.1 He threw right-handed but was a left-handed hitter, […]

“I can play this game,” said Lee Lacy confidently. “For hustle and determination, I won’t take a back seat to anyone.”1 An All-Star at three different infield positions in the minors, the right-handed-hitting Lacy broke in with the Los Angeles Dodgers in 1972 and fashioned a 16-year big-league career spent primarily as a versatile utilityman […]

Considering how dreadful his first full professional season was, it’s a wonder Mike Cvengros made it to the major leagues at all. Yet make it he eventually did, and he went on to win 25 major-league games over parts of six seasons, plus 177 in the minors. Over the course of his career, two themes […]

After six seasons in the minor leagues, Charlie Metro stepped to the plate at Sportsman’s Park in St. Louis wearing for the first time in a regular-season game the uniform of the Detroit Tigers. It was May 4, 1943, a Tuesday afternoon as America approached its 18th month at war. The next day, the radio […]

All across the world, when it comes to moments in baseball there are various scenes that play out in the minds of boys and girls. Most will think of hitting a home run to win the World Series a la Bill Mazeroski off Ralph Terry or Joe Carter off Mitch Williams or even Warren Morris […]

Hank Steinbacher amassed 170 hits in his three-season big-league career. Fully 10 percent of them came in a seven-game flurry in June and July 1938. In that spate, the 25-year-old lefty hitter came to the plate 34 times and pounded out 17 hits, including four doubles, a triple, and a home run. He knocked in […]

In 1942 St. Louis Cardinals’ farm director Branch Rickey singled out a particular right-handed hurler among a small army of top-flight pitching prospects: Max Surkont “can become another [Bob] Feller for us,”1 declared the future HOF executive. But by the end of spring training the Cardinals, blessed with the major leagues’ best pitching, assigned Surkont […]

Johnnie Dawson’s life was bookended by unknowns. His early life was full of uncertainties and the end of his life passed without mention. Even his date of birth is up for debate. Most sources agree that Dawson was born on November 8, but the year varies from 1914 to 1915 to 1916. The birth year […]

From the mid-1960s to 1980s, Vince Lloyd and Lou Boudreau brought Cubs games to life for legions of fans. Vince Lloyd Skaff was born June 1, 1917 in Beresford, South Dakota. His parents, Michael T. and Lula (Salem) Skaff, were Lebanese immigrants who owned a family bakery. He had three brothers (Francis, Alfred and John) […]

On July 27, 1948, Hank “Bow Wow” Arft’s major-league career began for the St. Louis Browns against the New York Yankees at Sportsman’s Park. He was called up to St. Louis from the Toledo Mud Hens at the end of July. Arft tripled and homered in his first major-league game and batted .400 in his […]

Team captain Sal Bando was the glue that held the volatile Oakland A’s together during their three-year run as World Series champions (1972-1974). Respected by teammates, peers, and his managers, Bando was Oakland’s unequivocal leader, a durable, rough-and-tumble third baseman who averaged 23 home runs and 90 runs batted in over an eight-year span in […]

For one generation of Pittsburghers, Pie Traynor was that tanned, silver-haired old man on Studio Wrestling. For another generation, he was the monotone voice that came out of the radio every evening to talk about sports. But for an older generation — and for most baseball fans outside the Pittsburgh area — he was the […]

The highlights of Dick Gray’s big-league baseball career all came in its first week – the first home run in Los Angeles Dodgers’ history and, two days later, the first major league home run hit in Los Angeles. But the highlights faded, the momentum could not be maintained and Gray’s career ended shortly. Richard Benjamin […]

4,256. 755. 5,714. 511. .366. As baseball has often been described as a game of numbers, fans, reporters, and students of the game would most certainly recognize the preceding list of significant digits. These were the career accomplishments forever linked to the respective immortals Pete Rose, Hank Aaron, Nolan Ryan, Cy Young, and Ty Cobb. To that list, another […]

Over the years, the Pittsburgh Courier, one of the nation’s leading African-American newspapers, used the following superlatives to describe Pittsburgh Crawfords infielder Chester Williams: Peppy, snappy, aggressive, hustling, scrappy, flashy. He was also referred to as sure-fielding, hard-hitting, a sparkplug, and even an inspired devil. From 1931 through the team’s demise in 1938, Williams was […]

Jason Jennings had what might be the greatest debut in baseball history. His first game at the major-league level was so impressive that no less an authority on greatness than the National Baseball Hall of Fame contacted the Colorado Rockies to inquire about displaying memorabilia from the game. The Rockies promoted pitcher Jennings from Triple-A […]

Expectations for the 1977 San Diego baseball season ran high, due to trades and free agent signings that everyone believed would strengthen the team. “The Padres are much improved and this should be their finest season,” wrote Phil Collier of the San Diego Union. The biggest question facing the team was the middle infield, comprised […]

The last home game of the 1952 season at Braves Field was played before 8,882 fans and nearly 32,000 empty seats on a Sunday afternoon in late September. Under the circumstances, this wasn’t much of a surprise. There are plenty of numbers one can use to describe the ’52 Braves, most of them bad. Boston’s […]

His career curtailed by prejudice, his life by AIDS, Glenn Burke hit just two home runs in four seasons of part-time play with the Los Angeles Dodgers and Oakland A’s, but the circumstances of his first big-league homer made it significant, decades before the major leagues recognized him as the first openly gay player. As […]

The underachieving Milwaukee Braves were on the verge of losing their eighth consecutive game and falling further behind in the pennant race. They trailed by a run in the bottom of the ninth of their July 22, 1959, contest against the Cincinnati Reds. Second baseman Roberto “Bobby” Ávila, acquired one day earlier and in the […]

East Field as pictured in 2021.   Over the course of a month and a half in March and April 1980, East Field in Glens Falls, New York, went from an unremarkable city-owned baseball field notable mainly for its swampiness to a showcase for some of the Chicago White Sox’ top prospects.1 It happened this […]