The Hall of Fame Case for Mickey Lolich

Consistency is the yardstick by which excellence is measured.  Mickey Lolich, a Detroit baseball icon, demonstrated consistency, ergo, excellence in a pitching career that, perhaps surprisingly, has not yet warranted admittance to the Baseball Hall of Fame.  Lolich...

1969

As described by German Prussian politician Otto von Bismarck, politics is the art of the possible.  So is baseball.  When the New York Mets defeated the Baltimore Orioles to win the 1969 World Series, possible elevated to miraculous. Once again, National League...

Shoeless Joe Jackson’s Hometown

When the Greenville Drive ball club of the South Atlantic League takes the field, they continue a baseball legacy kindled, in part, by Greenville’s most famous resident.  Shoeless Joe Jackson. Sitting in South Carolina’s northwestern region, Greenville...

The Decade of Baseball Migration

The 1950s was a decade of change. Elvis Presley spearheaded the introduction of rock and roll, television replaced radio as the preferred mass medium for news and entertainment, and several baseball teams migrated westward—way westward for two teams, mid-westward for...

The Death of John McGraw

John McGraw was to baseball what Henry Ford was to the automobile.  They did not invent their respective industries.  They reinvented them. Straddling the line separating the 19th and 20th centuries, McGraw ended his career as a baseball player by performing the...