Classic Baseball Radio

Two years after the Dodgers and the Giants moved to California to establish Major League Baseball on the West Coast, the Dodgers found themselves in the World Series. Following three games in the Los Angeles Colosseum, the Series returns to Cominsky Park with the Dodgers ahead 3-2. Larry Sherry had already won a game, saved two others, and is now on the mound in Game Six. The White Sox Early Wynn...

Masanori Murakami may only have two lines in his yearly stages, and just 54 Major League games to his credit, but as the first Japanese player in the MLB his place in the history of our Great Game is assured. Coming to the US as an exchange student, when his Japanese team forgot to call him back, he stayed in the San Francisco Giants system. His MLB debut as a reliever took place on September 1, 1...

Some weeks, we pick out a game that is a pivotal moment in a team's history. Other weeks, we have a classic matchup. Maybe it's a game of a storied player early in their career? Not today. Today, it's just a game of baseball. Admittedly, it's one from nearly ninety years ago, but our game is still our game. Sit back as the Senators (31-45) take on the White Sox (50-33). You can fin...

The 1969 season is underway, and the Minnesota Twins' Rod Carew is already raking up the hits. After seven games, he's posting .388. That form will continue through the rest of the year, his eventual .322 winning him the AL Batting Trophy for the first of seven times—enough for the title to carry his name from 2016. If you want another 1969 stat, Carew steals home seven times (just one sho...

The New York Mets put up a strike-less game in the 2024 National League Championship game against the Los Angeles Dodgers. It's a rare feat, but even rare are both sides forgetting to get any strikes. That was the case in the pivotal Game 7 of the 1960 World Series. Naturally, everything is on the line. We know that starting pitchers Bob Turley and Vern Law will impress, but the journey makes it w...

MLB’s first three years of post-season action saw the Baltimore Orioles appear each year. In 1971, the Oakland Athletic appeared for the first time and would have their own consecutive run of five years, reaching the fall knockout. The Orioles had come out on top in 1969 and 1970, winning the league pennant and making it to the World Series both years. Standing in front of them are the Athletes, l...

As the New York Mets and the Atlanta Braves meet for Game 161 and Game 162 to decide who goes into the 2024 Postseason, it's a chance to look back at some of the tiebreakers in the regular season, and specifically the last significant tiebreaker before the postseason expanded from just the World Series into the knockout format we recognise today. It's back to 1962 and as the season ends, the Giant...

He started in the major with the Pirates, and 21 years later, he retired from the majors, having never left Pittsburgh. But Willie Stargell was more than a one-club baseball player; he was the club. That's why the Pirates called him Pops. They could also have called him Power. Stargell was one of the big hitters of the sixties and seventies, with a career .282 from 2,232 hits and 475 home runs...

In a decade packed with legends that echo through history, there will be players who rarely grab the historical spotlight. Brooks Robinson might not be the household name of the former, but he's very much a legend. Starting his major league career in 1955, he played all of his 23 seasons with the Baltimore Orioles. In that time, he made third base his own and is arguably one of the greatest th...

Brought up into the majors by the Detroit Tigers in 152, Al Kaline spent 22 years playing for the Tigers before becoming the Tiger's color commentator until 2003, before heading into the front office until he died in 2020. His playing record is impressive, passing the 3000-hit mark just before he retired in 1974. Today, nearly fifty years later, Kaline sits at number 32 in the all-time hits ta...

When you win eleven Gold Gloves in eleven years, you know you're one of the best. Keith Hernandez knew he was one of the best. A contact hitter with a career .296, he won two World Series rings, five All-Star appearances, and picked up the NL batting championship award in 1979. Five years into his career, he cracked the .300 ceiling and never looked back. Yet for this week's game, we will...

When you look for the winning pitcher across the 1960s, it's impossible to ignore Juan Marichal. The 'Dominican Dandy' gave the Giants their first no-hitter in San Francisco, the first no-hitter seen in Candlestick Park, the first Latin-american no-hitter in MLB history, and the first Dominican player to enter the Hall of Fame. He also received one of the highest accolades any player c...

What is there to say about Willie Mays, who passed away peacefully last night? Legend. There's only one game we could choose. There's only one moment we could highlight. It's Game 1 of the 1954 World Series, Mays is in centre field, and in the top of the 8th, Vic Wertz is going to send an impossible-to-catch ball deep to the outfield of the Polo Grounds. You can find the boxscore here:...

As the four-time NL batting champion, Bill Madlock has an impressive reputation as a hitter. It's even more impressive when you realise he is one of only three right-handed hitters to lift multiple NL batting titles since 1960. The other two are Roberto Clemente and Tommy Davis. He finished his playing career over the .300 and 2000 mark, with a .305 batting average and 2,008 hits in total, 3 A...

Frank Robinson could hit the ball hard. He ran the base paths even harder. A formidable player who has been named MVP for both the AL and NL, the triple crown in 1966, 14 All-Star appearances, and 2 World Series rings. To this day, he holds the record for walk-off hits, with 26 winning moments to his credit. In the final years of his playing career, he became the player-manager for Cleveland in 19...

It's the opening day of the 1955 season, and leading off for the Cardinals is Wally Moon, who won "Rookie Of The Year" in 1954, memorably hitting a home run during his first At Bat in the Majors. Second in the line-up is Bill Virdon, who would go on to win "Rookie Of The Year" for 1955, giving the Cardinals back-to-back Rookies. Both would go on to pick up Gold Gloves and W...

Dave McNally is a legend, first as a starting pitcher and finally as an arbitration reliever. He won more than 20 games in four consecutive seasons, was a three-time All-Star, won two World Series rings, and was the AL wins leader in 1970. He was part of the 1971 Orioles rotation that saw himself, Dobson, Palmer, and Cuellar all post 20 or more wins. He left Baltimore as the then greatest Orioles...

As Baseball evolved during the expansion era, so did the role of the pitcher. Where the norm was once for starters to go for the full nine innings, the use of relief pitchers and the emergence of the closing pitcher took over. And there is no better example of this new role than Rollie Fingers… and his flamboyant moustache. He set the franchise record for saves at his three major league clubs (the...

Bill James called him “the slowest man who played baseball,” yet his ten years with a batting average over .300 would make him attractive to any team. In his seventeen years, he was the first catcher to earn two NL Batting Awards. He finished with a career .306, but it was one lapse of concentration in Game 4 of the 1939 World Series he would be remembered for. Taking a hard-hit ball without a pro...

There are pitchers who have storied careers, workhorses who can support a team’s offence for many years, and pitchers who shine brightly and burn out in a single season. Fritz Peterson was a workhorse. He had a winning record in seven of his eleven years in the Majors and posted a career 133-131 record. His time and productivity with the New York Yankees puts him currently in ninth-place in the al...

Legendary manager and player Whitey Herzog died this week at the age of 92. Here at Classic Baseball Radio, we'd like to take a moment to remember a career that caught fire after the playing ended, with one of his last appearances on the diamond. Herzog made it to the majors, playing for the Washington Senators in 1956. He spent time with the Athletics, Orioles, and Tigers before retiring from...

Imagine your playing career saw you selected seven times to play in the All-Star game, led the league in stolen bases, posted four seasons of .300 plus baseball, had a hitting streak of 34 games, and averaged over 100 runs per season throughout your career. Yet his name is one that never stood out, partly because he's on a Red Sox team with the greatest hitter who ever lived… and his older bro...

Can you go through an entire season on First Base without having an error charged to you? Unless your name is Steve Garvey, the answer is no. As you might have surmised, Garvey did just that, posting his yet-to-be-equalled feat in 1984 with the San Diego Padres. With a career .294 on 2599 hits and 272 home runs, Garvey's no slouch. A standout number, though, has to be his 1270 consecutive game...

899 games pitched, all in relief, with a lifetime 99-76 record; the delightfully named Sparky Lyle was an era-defining relief pitcher. Take his 1977 Cy Young award, the first AL reliever to do so, twice picking up the AL saves record, and three all-star appearances. Then you have his back-to-back World Series in 77 and 78, plus writing the book on the 78 season ('The Bronx Zoo'). Lyle has...

Apart from the occasional “one and done” years, the only team to have a winning record over .500 in every year they played is the Milwaukee Braves. There were losing years under the Boston Braves and Atlanta Braves banners, but the thirteen years in Milwaukee stand apart not just in this franchise but in every franchise. From the pennant-winning streak between 53 and 59, through record-breaking ap...