This Week In Baseball History

The World Series was seemingly made to create heroes, and Enos Slaughter became one 80 years ago this week when he made his mad dash from first base, scoring the winning run of Game 7 of the 1946 World Series for the Cardinals on a weak double (or perhaps a single) . Slaughter's baserunning immediately became a legend, and he seemingly immediately began undermining his own legacy. On the anniversa...

It takes a career to make it into the Hall of Fame. But sometimes it just takes one swing or one pitch or one game to become a legend. That happened to the otherwise unremarkable Don Larsen 70 years ago this week, when Don pitched a perfect game against the Dodgers in the World Series. Mike and Bill look back at one of the more imperfect men to achieve baseball perfection, and the self-imposed str...

If you think it's tough spending the Holidays with your siblings, you should try being in the same lineup. That's what happened 28 years ago this week to two sets of brothers: David and Aaron Boone, and Barry and Stephen Larkin. They were all in the same lineup. In the same infield, in fact. It was the kind of forced family therapy that only the Cincinnati Reds could pull together. It's also a gre...

At times, it seemed like Cy Young might just pitch forever. But everything, eventually, meets its end. And Cy won his last big league game 115 years ago this week. In honor of one of the game's true giants, Mike and Bill look back at his long and incredible career that spanned MLB's early and modern history, to discover a pretty decent man who happened to be an amazing hurler, and also that that f...

They don't really make players like George Sisler these days. A slick fielding, average dependent first baseman who demonstrated incredible bat control but almost no power, leading to two .400 seasons. But, before that, the St. Louis Browns tried to use him as a pitcher as well, culminating in a fantastic performance 110 years ago this week, when he beat Walter Johnson, 1-0. Mike and Bill look bac...

Like the rest of the United States, the baseball world stopped 25 years ago this week when the country suffered the most devastating terrorist attack in its history. There aren't words to adequately describe the sum of the national trauma that still resonates today, but maybe there are words to describe baseball's response. Mike and Bill look back on the 2001 season as a whole, and the first World...

The Pirates proved themselves the best team in baseball in 1971, winning the NL East, the pennant, and the World Series against the Orioles. But they are celebrated these days for another accomplishment, fielding the first all-black and brown lineup in baseball history 55 years ago this week against the Phillies. It was an accidental accomplishment, the result not of social engineering, but of goo...

Mike is still on vacation this week, so Bill talks to two of our friends who also presented really interesting information at the most recent SABR convention: Adam Daroski, on his quest to identify members of the elusive 400-win club, and Dan Cichalski, on Bruce Springsteen and whether or not you can call a fastball a "speedball" and still know ball (you can). 

With Mike away, cruising around the Pacific Northwest, the podcast is on the briefest of hiatuses. But all of baseball was on hiatus until this week, 45 years ago, when the owners and the players finally agreed to resume the 1981 season after missing almost 40 percent of the regular season. Mike and Bill look at the reasons behind the strike, who was at fault, how it got resolved, what effect it h...

Today, you can follow baseball on the radio, tv, laptops and phones. But that wasn't the case until 105 years ago this week, when the Pirates and Phillies game was sent out over the airwaves to the greater Pittsburgh area. It was the start of a surprisingly slow process that brought us to where we are today due to the owners' intransigence. In honor of this anniversary, Mike and Bill look back at...

With Mike and Bill at the 2026 SABR convention this week, they're reaching into the past to pull out one of their favorite SABR memories, when they got to speak to the great Mike Veeck, with their good friend, Mike Duncan. This was a special epsiode. Mike Veeck is, of course, the son of Bill Veeck, owner of the St. Paul Saints and Charleston River Dogs, business doer, book writer, fun haver, and f...

Though not talked about much today, there was a time when Joe Medwick seemed like he might become an inner circle Hall of Famer. And never more than 90 years ago this week, when he collected 10 straight hits over the course of three games. Mike and Bill look back at the man they called Ducky (very much against his wishes), and are surprised by his rapid decline after turning himself into one of th...

Beat writers and ballplayers have all the best stories, but it's the writers who tell them best. Mike and Bill are reminded of that this week when they talk with legendary Rangers beat writer T.R. Sullivan about his fantastic new memoir,  The Texas Rangers and Me: A Baseball Writer's Thirty-Two Years in Arlington about his time covering the ballclub from 1989 through the 2020. T.R.'s candid and fu...

With Bill still on the mend this week, we're happy to revisit the crazily still relevent story of how and why Arky Vaughn walked away from baseball for three years. Vaughan was one of the most underappreciated superstars in history until his reputation was restored by Bill James. His disappearance has always been linked with an attempted players' strike with the Dodgers in 1943 that occurred 83 ye...

Some stories are just to strange to be fiction, and that was the case 100 years ago LAST week when Sister Aimee McPherson held an impromptu rivival at the ballpark in Douglas, Arizona, days after her miraculous reappearance following six weeks of...something. Was she kidnapped? Did she run away? Was she just really, really lost? With Bill out recovering from surgery, our buddy Jacob Pomrenke joins...

In truth, the boys could have picked an actual topic this week, but the randomizer was just sitting there in the office, looking so tempting. So Mike and Bill pushed it and came up with this September 16, 1914 contest between the Cincinnati Reds and the New York Giants . In their research, they uncovered a bunch of cool facts about Cuban baseball and the origin of the phrase "good field, no hit,"...

Few men can boast the breadth of career that Joe Cronin can (or could; he's dead now). He went from being a Hall of Fame caliber shortstop to a manager to a GM to a league president in an almost 50 year career in Major League Baseball somehow without making any enemies. Rarer still, as Mike and Bill found out, he left each job on his own terms perhaps becoming the only person in baseball history w...

On the 30th anniversary of Major League Baseball suspending Marge Schott for two years over her comically stupid and wrongheaded comments about a certain German chancellor, Mike and Bill debut a new series of episodes, tracing the ownership history of every original MLB franchise from their origins. While Schott and her tenure would prove to be the most embarassing in the history of the team, ther...

For as beloved as he is today in Minnesota, Bert Blyelven couldn't get out of there fast enough 50 years ago this week, when the Twins dealt him to Texas rather than lose him as a free agent. It would become something of a pattern for Bert, an iconoclast who just happened to be one of the best pitchers of his era. Mike and Bill look back at the Dutch master who, in addition to being an unrecognize...

There is no denying the impact of Bobby Cox on the history of baseball, and that his passing marks the loss of an incalculable acumen that shaped the game in the 1990s and 2000s. But baseball has tried to deny another aspect of Cox: his impact off the field. Mike and Bill try to sort through both to find the whole of the man, for better and for worse, not just the Hall of Fame manager, leader and...

Nothing is more exciting in baseball than a prospect who is called up and immediately makes an impact. You can dream forever on guys like that. We've already seen so many incredible careers start in 2026 from Kevin McGonigle to Konnor Griffin to guys who don't have Ks and Gs figuring prominently in their names. Anyway, in honor of those debuts, this week Mike and Bill look back at some of the grea...

Apologies! We had to scrap a new episode this week due to some unexpected personal conflicts. Luckily, we have a banger (no pun intended waiting in reserve. There have been few pitching prospects as exciting as Herb Score, and few downfalls that have been disappointing. This week, 69 years ago, Score was struck by a line drive off the bat of Gil McDougald, knocking him out of the rest of the seaso...

Do to some technical issues in the original file, this is a re-posting of Episode 405 Any debate about the best pitchers of all time includes Satchel Paige on everyone's shortlist. Virtually everyone who saw Paige pitch or hit against him thought he was at least in the discussion. But the nature of his career, taking place in the Negro Leagues, the Caribbean, and across America on barnstorming tou...

The baseball world has been rocked over the past few weeks by the loss, in quick succession of Phil Garner, Davey Lopes and Garrett Anderson. All three were excellent players, multiple-time All Stars and World Champs, who helped define their teams and their eras. In tribute, Mike and Bill look back at their careers both on the field and in the dugout.  Plus, happy birthday to Spike Owen and Whitey...

It is exceptionally hard to play baseball in the Major Leagues. Now imagine if you had to do it with one hand or arm. Or with one leg. Or while battling a dibilitating disorder. Mike and Bill were thinking about that alot this week when they realized it was the 81st anniversary of Pete Gray's debut for the Browns. So they look back at the short career of the outfielder with one arm, and the career...