Bob Feller, Phil Cavarretta, and the End of the Pre-World War II Generation of Major Leaguers

Earlier this year I used Wikipedia’s list of former major league players age 90 and up to put together an all-star lineup of such players. In the following half year, Bob Feller, Ralph Houk, Phil Cavarretta, and George Binks have all left that lineup. Feller and Houk were both well known for their time serving […]

Bob Feller in His Own Words

A few months ago I went through newspaper archives from the past 30 years or so to gather up some of Bob Feller’s remarks on his life, his baseball career, and many other topics. Feller was one of the last surviving stars who’d played major league baseball before the U.S. entered World War II. Besides […]

Thinking About Jamie Moyer at 48

Jamie Moyer is old enough to have helped prompt the Chicago Cubs to trade Dennis Eckersley to the Oakland A’s in the spring of 1987, when Moyer was a rising prospect displacing Eckersley as a starter, and to have been traded along with Rafael Palmeiro to the Texas Rangers for Mitch Williams before the 1989 […]

Noticing a Few Similarities Between Ken Griffey Jr. and Willie Mays

Ken Griffey Jr. turns 41 tomorrow, November 21. I recently read through the authorized Willie Mays biography by James S. Hirsch, and although I’d known of a few loose analogies between the careers of Griffey and Mays, I was struck by the sense that the two great center fielders had several key points in common, […]

Vada Pinson and the Question of Character and the Hall of Fame

About a year ago, while looking for something else, I came across a couple newspaper articles on the death of Vada Pinson on October 21, 1995. I’d heard of Pinson, vaguely, as one of the best center fielders of the 1960s, for a long time the man with the most hits (2757) who wasn’t in […]

Scenes and Quotes From San Francisco and the Giants Clubhouse After Winning the 1962 Playoff

A while ago I hunted down the San Francisco Chronicle from the day after the Giants beat the Dodgers to win the 1962 N.L. pennant. It’s been overlooked by the World Series that followed, but the race was a thriller that nearly matched 1951’s, and was the start of the Giants-Dodgers rivalry in California. To […]

Remember the Northwest League Seattle Rainiers, 1972-1976?

A couple months ago I saw a comment on a post I’d done about the infamous Portland Mavericks. I came to learn that the commenter, Bruce Baskin, remembered the Mavs because he’d grown up cheering on the Seattle Rainiers, the Mavs’ counterpart in the Northwest League, playing from 1972 through 1976. Bruce acknowledged that “people didn’t […]

Talking With Jack Perconte About Comiskey Park, Municipal Stadium, and the Kingdome

Last year I looked up the story of the first game at the original Comiskey Park on July 1, 1910. Months later I talked with Jack Perconte about his time playing for the Mariners in the mid-’80s to commemorate the 10th anniversary of the Kingdome’s implosion this March. I realized that Jack closed his career […]

An All-Star Team of ex-Major Leaguers in Their 90s

A recent quick visit to Wikipedia produced a list of the ex-major leaguers who are 90 and up, and from there it was an easy process to put together an All-Star lineup for these guys, practically all of whom starred in the ’40s. I’m offering it for consideration and debate: Catcher: Mike Sandlock, who spent […]

Babe Ruth Talking About His Called Shot

Some time ago I picked up an early ’90 vhs of classic baseball plays, and partway through, there was Babe Ruth, hitting and then talking about his called shot in the 1932 World Series vs. the Cubs. The less-than-perfect audio (with music in the background) is on Archive.org. I’ve written out the most relevant part of what […]

The Rapid Emergence of Stephen Strasburg in 2007

Last year, after I looked up some stories about Dwight Gooden as a teenage phenom, I started wondering about Stephen Strasburg’s early pitching performance. Was he touted as a future star in high school before graduating in 2006? The answer’s no. The San Diego Union-Tribune hardly mentioned Strasburg when he was at West Hills High […]

Fun Facts about the 19 (no, 20) Perfect Games in MLB History

A while back I completed a project of chronicling most of major league baseball’s perfect games. What fun is that if you can’t make out a list of trivia about the games? So yes, the following list (updated to include Braden’s feat, and Halladay’s) is trivial—but then, much of life is trivia, and sometimes trivia […]

Some Stories About John Marzano

John Marzano died two years ago today at his home in Philadelphia. He’d spent his last three years as a player, 1996 through 1998, with the Seattle Mariners. To help remember him, here are some quotes and anecdotes from his time with the Mariners. With his fairly marginal status as a long-term backup catcher, Marzano […]

Jamie Moyer and Greg Maddux Playing for the Iowa Cubs in 1986

I don’t know how many people noticed on September 27, 2008, when Jamie Moyer and Greg Maddux, by posting wins over the Nationals and Giants, respectively, reached a combined 601 wins for their two careers. At the close of 2008, Moyer had 246 wins, and Maddux had 355 (Moyer added 12 more in 2009, but […]

Touring the Bases With…Seattle Pilots Documentarian Steve Cox

I don’t have any special knowledge of the Seattle Pilots; like many thousands, I’ve read Jim Bouton’s Ball Four, but I’m nowhere near old enough to have firsthand experience of the team. Still, that book, along with an interest in baseball in Seattle, made me curious about Rainer Valley’s one-year wonder. So a few months […]

Jim Abbott and the Question of One-Armed Power

A while ago, thinking about Jim Abbott and his missing right hand, I wondered how much power he could possibly have generated swinging the bat with one arm. I found this story from the USA Today of March 19, 1991, about Abbott hitting a triple in spring training: Ever since he began his career with […]

Walter Johnson in Weiser, Idaho in 1907

A few weeks ago I came across a book from the mid-’90s called Boise Baseball: the First 125 Years, by Arthur A. Hart. In one of the early chapters, Hart talks about Walter Johnson’s time spent playing in the semi-pro Idaho State League in 1907. Johnson was on the Weiser Kids: he was 19 years […]

Wade Boggs and Don Mattingly as Prospects

One of the major themes of spring training, of course, is the emergence of new stars: in some cases, they’re prospects who’ve been waiting impatiently for a chance to establish themselves in the majors. A while ago I looked up reports on Wade Boggs and Don Mattingly as they were exhibiting that mood of impatience. […]

Jimmie Foxx Pitching in 1945: A Surprising Story

Back in July 1980, the Boston Globe recalled that Jimmie Foxx’s “final appearance in the majors was as a pitcher. “In 1945, when he was 37, Foxx had slipped badly and was hanging on by his fingertips with the Phillies. One day, Ben Chapman, Phils’ manager, came to Jimmie.” Chapman told Foxx, “We’re desperate. Would […]

Looking Back at the 1990 Lockout

The spring training lockout of 1990 is one of the most obscure disputes in the long stretch of sharp bitterness between MLB players and management from the early ’70s through 1995. As Thomas Boswell wrote just after the lockout ended, “Can anyone remember the details of the baseball strike of 1985, which lasted two days? […]

Ron Luciano on Life as an Umpire in the 1970s

A few months ago, the memory of devouring Ron Luciano’s four collections of tales and anecdotes from his umpiring days when I was a kid led me to look up the story of his suicide in 1995, 15 years and one month ago today. In the process, I discovered a long interview he gave back […]

The Looie (Aparicio) Curse

The news that Luis Aparicio has let the White Sox unretire his jersey, number 11, to let Omar Vizquel wear it in tribute to his Venezuelan predecessor called to mind the story of the Looie Curse, said to have been pronounced on the Sox by Aparicio in revenge for being traded to Baltimore in January […]

Babe Ruth, Movie Actor

Many baseball fans already know about how Red Sox owner Harry Frazee sold Babe Ruth to the Yankees after the 1919 season, apparently to fund his production of the play My Lady Friends in 1920, which became Frazee’s musical hit, No, No, Nanette, in 1925. But the superstar he sold did some acting of his […]

Memories of Billy Martin From Mike Pagliarulo, Rod Carew, and Rickey Henderson

Billy Martin’s death on Christmas evening 1989 provided the troubled finish to a melancholy year for baseball. As a way to look back on that day and Martin’s career, as well as the reasons why he had such an impact on baseball and the players he managed, here are some memories of the man. In […]

Alabama, the Cradle of Baseball Greatness

A little while ago I started to realize that Alabama has produced some of the greatest players in baseball history. I remembered reading Bill James making a point somewhere in his Historical Baseball Abstract from the ’80s about sports players tending to come from poor areas. I thought about Willie Mays and Hank Aaron, and […]

Lena Blackburne’s Playing Days

I first remember hearing of Lena Blackburne several years ago, when Mike Rowe on Dirty Jobs went over to New Jersey to gather some river mud with Jim Bintliff, the head of Lena Blackburne Rubbing Mud. But his name only stuck in my mind last year, when I saw his name on a list of […]

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