This Week In Baseball History

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 final win may not have actually been...

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 back at Sisler's bifurcated career and...

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 Series to bleed into November that...

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 good scouting and good organizational ...

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 had on a deeply weird season, and th...

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 the various ways that baseball broa...

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 family man. And there is a fantastic...

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 the most dominant players in the game...

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 funny and his memory for details ...

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 years ago this week. But that's not t...

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 us this week to talk about his re...

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," some incredible pigeon facts, a bunc...

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 who has never had to be told when it...

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, there are plenty of other interesting c...

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 unrecognized genius on the hill, unexpectedly ...

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 teacher. 

Plus, happy birthday...

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 greatest debuts in baseball history, in...

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 season and, supposedly, ruining his care...