Retro Simba

In September 1950, Bobby Tiefenauer was young, successful and in love. A 20-year-old reliever for a Cardinals farm club in Winston-Salem, N.C., Tiefenauer threw a knuckleball that had batters swinging at air. His manager, George Kissell, credited him with making his team the best in the league. Tiefenauer’s No. 1 fan was his sweetheart back home in the mining district of … [Read more...] about Bobby Tiefenauer made his best pitch and got hitched

Nearly 40 years before the 1984 movie “The Natural” transformed fictional baseball character Roy Hobbs into a pop culture icon, Bama Rowell of the Boston Braves did what Hollywood screenwriters only could imagine. On May 30, 1946, in the second game of an afternoon doubleheader against the Dodgers, Rowell launched a towering drive to right. The ball struck the Bulova clock high … [Read more...] about Tick-tock: How Bama Rowell made time stand still

In Bernard Malamud’s novel, “The Natural,” the central character, Roy Hobbs, wears baseball uniform No. 45. In the movie version, though, his number is 9. The decision to switch from No. 45 to No. 9 was made by Robert Redford, the actor who portrayed Hobbs in the 1984 film. Redford did it to honor his favorite ballplayer, Ted Williams, who wore No. 9 for the Red Sox. “When I … [Read more...] about How baseball played a part in the life of Robert Redford

When Walter Johnson emerged from the California oil fields to become the fireballing ace of the American League with the Washington Senators, he caught the attention of an Akron, Ohio, high schooler, George Sisler. In the book “My Greatest Day in Baseball,” Sisler recalled to Lyall Smith, “Walter still is my idea of the real baseball player. He was graceful. He had rhythm and … [Read more...] about American idol: George Sisler versus Walter Johnson

When Davey Johnson was a second baseman for the Orioles in the early 1970s, long before the time when analytics became as much a part of the game as balls, bats and gloves, he voluntarily developed computer programs to construct optimized lineups and brought the data to manager Earl Weaver. “I found that if I hit second, instead of seventh, we’d score 50 or 60 more runs and … [Read more...] about For Davey Johnson, brains and cockiness equate to wins