Of all the great Negro League catchers – from Bruce Petway and “Double Duty” Radcliffe to Josh Gibson and Roy Campanella – none of them mentored more players nor influenced the game on an international scale more than Biz Mackey. […]
In this episode of We Love Our Team, Jack Greiner and Randy Freking welcome artist and baseball historian Gary Cierdowski. They discuss Gary’s journey into baseball design, his creation of the Infinite Baseball Card Set, and his passion for illustrating obscure baseball players. […]
In the summer of 1951, a fireballing right-hander imported all the way from Costa Rica helped pitch a small-town team deep in the Kentucky mountains to an unforgettable minor league pennant […]
I’ll be handing out a different card for each day of the conference – COLLECT THEM ALL! […]
Today, this 6-time batting champ would be the model Designated Hitter. But Smead Jolley was ahead of the curve, his defensive shortcomings condemning him to the minors, long before the introduction of the DH. […]
There was a time when I had no idea what I was – I mean, I sorta knew what I was back then – a six or seven-year-old boy growing up in New Jersey, just like all the other kids on my block. Then came the day I was called a name to describe what […]
Oscar Bielaski joined the army to avenge his father’s death in the Civil War. Though he did not see combat, he did learn to play the new game of “base ball.” In 1872, he became the first Polish-American to play pro ball. […]
A broken down bus, an overcrowded Jim Crow train car, and an angry drunk with a pistol set in motion the events that led to the tragic death of a Negro League all-star in the prime of his career. […]
Five years ago, he was the National League’s strikeout king. Now Van Lingle Mungo was in a warehouse hiding behind cases of Ron Stacola Rum waiting to be smuggled out of Cuba on a seaplane. What the hell happened? […]
Though they’d been playing the game of baseball since the Civil War, it wasn’t until 1956 that Bobby “The Filipino Flyer” Balcena became the first player of Asian ancestry to debut in the major leagues. […]