True Tales from the Big Leagues

The guys go old school this week as they look back at the 1800s to find some true tales of the big leagues. Parker regales us with some of the crazy rules from the early days of baseball, which helps explain the wild scores and then he tells us about the 1871 Chicago White Stockings. Marty then shares the story of Guy Hecker, who would "unfortunately" win 50 games in one season, but was the Shohei...

Parker and Marty are back for the the third and final round of players who had one great season and then disappeared. We chose the players independently and in different fashions. Parker chose a player that debuted near when Marty was born and Marty accidentally chose another player from the 1980 Indians. Sources: Baseball-Reference.com - Joe Charbonneau Baseball-Reference.com - Ken Harrelson True...

Parker and Marty are back for the second round of players who had one great season and then disappeared. We chose the players independently and in different fashions. Interestingly enough, Parker chose a player from long before he was born and Marty chose a player from his childhood that he saw play in person many times. Sources: Baseball-Reference.com - Miguel Dilone Baseball-Reference.com - Jim...

After a brief hiatus, Parker and Marty are back to talk about players who had one great season and then disappeared. We chose the players independently and today's pair debuted 63 years apart. Sources: Baseball-Reference.com - Bill James Baseball-Reference.com - Mark Fidrych True Tales of the Big Leagues is a Seldom Used Reserve Podcast and is narrated by Marty Coleman and Parker Coleman.  Co...

Most baseball fans know that 11-time Gold Glover first baseman Keith Hernandez was a 42nd-round draft pick and Hall of Famer Mike Piazza was drafted in the 62nd round, but did you know there was an 83rd-round draft pick that made it to the Major Leagues? This is Danny Young's story. Resources: Danny Bracy Young on Baseball-Reference.com Danny Bracy Young on B-R Bullpen True Tales of the Big League...

I had a childhood friend who pitched in the Major Leagues. He regaled me with stories of facing Don Mattingly, Wade Boggs, Mark McGwire and other superstars when we were in our early 20s. One day he called me from the road to tell me the story of his first Major League save opportunity. This is that story. Sources for this episode are  Baseball-Reference.com (Mike Cook) The game in question M...

Most baseball players spend thousands of hours practicing, playing and learning about baseball on their way to the to the Major Leagues, IF they’re even good enough and lucky enough to be one of the tiny fraction of players that make it to the Big Leagues. Some become stars and/or stick around for 10 or more years, living out their childhood fantasies. Some go up and down between AAA and the Big L...

One of the things Parker and I like to do is meander through baseball-reference.com in our free time. OK, we're not very exciting. But every once in a while we come across a gem like the one that took place on July 6, 1916 between the Phillies and Reds. It started as a blowout, with the Reds taking a 10-0 lead. Then the 9th inning happened. Parker found this one and he tells the story of what he b...

Phlip Humber was the third overall pick in the 2004 MLB draft, but things didn't go as planned. He spent years in the minors and was released twice before making the White Sox in 2011. Then, on April 21, 2012, in Seattle in his second start of the season, Humber did something only 20 pitchers in MLB history had accomplished at that time. 25 of the outs were relatively routine. One required a leapi...

The 2016 Oakland A's were one of the first teams that Parker ever followed. They weren't very good, but they were full of interesting players with names like Coco and Dull, not to mention Rzepczynski and Wendleken. They lost 93 games, but many of their players went on to be World Champions and Superstars on other teams while others faded away, some for years before returning to MLB and some foreve...

Last week we learned about the strange case of Jimmy Freeman and his 11-walk, complete game debut for the 1972 Atlanta Braves, but this week Parker Coleman joins me to talk about the weirdness of the season Atlanta had that year and some of the characters who played, managed and surrounded the team. Some of the stories detailed are Manager Lum Harris and his firing, Mike Lum, Earl Williams, Hank A...

Our first two episodes involved relatively well-known stories written in one form or another by professional writers. Today’s episode is different, this is one of the ones Parker and I found and fleshed out wandering through the pages of baseball-reference.com and as far as we can tell nothing has been written about the first time Jimmy Freeman toed a Major League rubber. We set out to change that...

When I was a kid playing little league baseball Robin Yount was a model for a lot of us. A hope and a dream that we were chasing at 12 years old. After all, he was just a few years older than the kids playing for Coburg Dairy, Baskin-Robins and Avondale Pharmacy. But Robin Yount at 18 years old after half a season in Single-A was a Major Leaguer playing the position where all the cool kids pl...

Baseball-reference.com lists 23,114 Major League Players as of this recording. If we assume half of those are pitchers and half are position players that gives us an estimate of 11,557 position players, almost all of whom have had a chance to bat. Of those 11,557 batters, only one has hit for the same average in 4 consecutive seasons. This is the story of that player… References: Baseball-Referenc...

As a kid I fell asleep with a transistor radio tuned to Oakland A’s baseball games almost 2,800 miles away.   Listening to those games that originated from what might as well been the moon for a kid in South Carolina fascinated me. It was a time when information was garnered from the back of baseball cards bought from the 7-11 with every penny of my allowance. I still have thousands of t...