This Week In Baseball History

By Mike Bates and Bill Parker

History Professional Sports & Recreation

What's This Week In Baseball History about?

This Week In Baseball History is a weekly podcast devoted to the history of baseball, hosted by Mike Bates and Bill Parker, the co-founders of The Platoon Advantage and writers on many fine websites.

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Episode 306 - The Cubs Meet...

09.22.2023

Has there ever been a player as inextricably linked to his team as Ernie Banks was to the Chicago Cubs? Perhaps not. That beautiful, tragic relationship began 70 years ago this week when Banks suited up for the first time ...

This Week In Baseball History episodes:

09.22.2023 Episode 306 - The Cubs Meet Their Mister Has there ever been a player as inextricably linked to his team as Ernie Banks was to the Chicago Cubs? Perhaps not. That beautiful, tragic relationship began 70 years ago this week when Banks suited up for the first time ...
09.15.2023 Episode 305 - Our Idiot Brothers, Part 2 It remains hard, at times to be brothers. We covered that back in January with a set of siblings who fell well short of their illustrious kin. But there are still so many bad (or just mediocre) brothers out there! ...
09.08.2023 Episode 166 - No-Nos No More! When is a no-hitter not a no-hitter? When Fay Vincent decided, 32 years ago this week, that it shouldn't be. Specifically, he decreed that any no-hitters shorter than nine full innings or that was broken up after the ninth no ...
09.01.2023 Episode 304 - Ya Gotta Believe! 50 years ago this week, the Mets lost and fell back into the cellar in the National League East. Five short weeks later, they would finish the season at the top. And then, shortly thereafter, facing the A's in the ...
08.25.2023 Episode 303 - Juan Bad Day The Joker thinks all it takes to turn a good man bad is one bad day. And, in the eyes of many baseball fans, that's what happened to Juan Marichal 58 years ago this week when he attacked Dodgers catcher ...
08.18.2023 Episode 164 (Rerun) - The Death of Ray Chapman Ray Chapman was the toast of Cleveland, until 103 years ago this week, when his life was tragically cut short by a Carl Mays fastball that crushed in his skull. Mike and Bill go through the lives of the star-crossed ...
08.11.2023 Episode 302 - We Give Up It's hard enough to lose when you straight up get beat on the field. But when circumstances conspire to prevent you from even being able too compete? That's especially frustrating. That's what happened to the Dodgers 28 years ago this ...
08.04.2023 Episode 301 - Two Bad Big Apples (with special guest Chris Donnelly) As hard as it might be to believe in 2023 (he says with the sarcasm dripping in his voice) there once was a time when New York City was not particularly pleased with its two representatives in the American and ...
07.24.2023 Episode 300 - SABR Pirate Radio with Mike Veeck Unlikely as it seemed seven years ago, here we are at episode 300. And to celebrate, Mike and Bill and Mike Duncan present a special interview from the recently completed SABR convention with the great Mike Veeck, the son of ...
07.18.2023 Episode 299.5 - SABR Pirate Radio with Dan Levitt and Adam Darowski In their second installment from this year's SABR Convention in Chicago, Mike and Mike and Bill talked to a couple people you're familiar with if you've listened to the podcast. Dan Levitt (@dlevs1), co-author of Intentional Balk: Baseball's Thin Line ...
07.12.2023 Episode 299 - SABR Pirate Radio with Kat Williams and Katie Krall Once again, Mike and Bill join forces with Mike Duncan to talk to some of the most exciting people at the SABR convention. This year, we kick off with Kat Williams, professor, historian, author, President of the International Women’s Baseball ...
07.07.2023 Episode 56 (Rerun) - A League Almost Their Own (with special guest Frankie de la Cretaz) The All American Girls Professional Baseball League gave women an unprecedented chance to organize and play professional baseball. But, as special guest Frankie de la Cretaz (@thefrankiedlc) points out, it also worked to obscure its queer players with rigid "femininity ...
06.30.2023 Episode 298 - Chicago Chicanery, or It's 3 Minutes To Midnight Somewhere With the White Sox threatening to leave the Windy City and abscond to Tampa if they didn't get a new stadium 35 years ago this week, and with the Illinois legislative session winding down to the end of its session ...
06.23.2023 Episode 297 - 12 Straight Hits in 1930 What are the odds of a coin flip coming up heads 12 times in a row. Seriously, we're asking. Because we're not good at math. But it's pretty darn unlikely. So what are the chances of a team essentially doing ...
06.16.2023 Episode 296 - The Browns Get a Goose For Their Heine Like a binary star system, Goose Goslin and Heine Manush kept circling each other throughout their careers, but probably never moreso than when the Browns sent Manush and General Crowder to the Senators 93 years ago this week for Goslin. ...
06.09.2023 Episode 295 - Greg Proops's Giants With Bill sidelined this week, Mike talks to comedian, improvisor and actor Greg Proops about growing up as a Giants fan in San Francisco in the 1960s and 70s. Mays! Marichal! McCovey! And Alous galore! And, of course, the mystery ...
06.02.2023 Episode 294 - Even Babe Ruth Comes to an End Eventually We've talked about Babe Ruth before, but not about the end. This episode covers the Babe from 1933--right after his last championship and maybe most famous moment--through the end of his career and way-too-short life. Also, happy birthday to Carlos ...
05.26.2023 Episode 50 Rerun - The Beaning of Mickey Cochrane By any objective measure, Mickey Cochrane is one of the greatest players in the history of baseball, despite his career ending prematurely 81 years ago this week, when his skull was fractured by an errant Bump Hadley fastball. In this ...
05.19.2023 Episode 293 - A Ballplayer Wears Many Hats (with special guest Michael Clair) Since almost the beginning of baseball, they have been there, perched atop the domes of American athletes. The hat. The cap. The lid. But it wasn't always thus, and it wasn't always the caps we see on the field today. ...
05.12.2023 Episode 292 - Feeling the Vida Blues Vida Blue was, for a moment, the best pitcher in the world, and then carved out an excellent career beyond that. With his recent passing, Mike and Bill explore the surprisingly contentious career of one of 1970s greatest pitchers, and ...
05.05.2023 Episode 200 (Re-run) - The Twins' Killer With the podcast coming up on Episode 300 and Mike in an existential pit of terribleness this week, we're re-running our joyous and celebratory 200th episode, in which we tell the story of the great Harmon Killebrew, and are joined ...
04.28.2023 Episode 291 - An O's and 21 Start in 1988 Losing streaks are no fun. So are slow starts. And when you combine them, and the go on for nearly a month? Well, that's about the worst thing ever, as the Baltimore Orioles discovered 35 years ago this week, when ...
04.21.2023 Episode 290 - About Schmidt When picking what milestone to celebrate this week, Mike and Bill were torn between Mike Schmidt's 4 homer game 47 years ago and Mike Schmidt's 500th homer 36 years ago this week. So they just decided to do both, and ...
04.14.2023 Episode 289 - Players Pop Up Everywhere Yogi Berra had many fine qualities, but acting was not really one of them, as fans of General Hospital found out 60 years ago this week, when the Yankee great cameoed as Dr. Lawrence Berra, brain surgeon. Still, it made ...
04.07.2023 Episode 288 - The House That Ruth Paid For (with special guest Dayn Perry) This year is the 100th anniversary of the opening of Yankee Stadium, which Babe Ruth did not build, but absolutely helped fund with his mammoth home runs. While it's been gone since 2008, CBS Sports's Dayn Perry (@daynperry) took the ...
03.31.2023 Episode 287 - The Volume of David Cone One of the best pitchers of the 1990s, David Cone barely gets mentioned today unless he's in a broadcast booth. But for a while, he looked to be on a Hall of Fame track. On the 36th anniversary of his ...
03.24.2023 Episode 286 - Randy Johnson's Killer Fastball (with special guest Zach Buchanan) It's one of the most famous pitches ever, even though it officially never happened, and didn't even appear in a game that would have counted. A Randy Johnson fastball that, at just the wrong time and just the wrong place, ...
03.16.2023 Episode 285 - Los Dos Tiantes Perhaps the greatest father/son pitching duo in baseball history, Luis E. and Luis C. Tiant pitched at least a total of 29 years at the big league level, and an unknown number of other seasons in the Caribbean and for ...
03.10.2023 Episode 90 (Rerun) - Marvin Miller Joins the Fight (with Jay Jaffe and Michael Clair) Few, if any, non-players have had a bigger impact on the game of baseball than Marvin Miller, the legendary head of the MLB Players Association, who was elected to his position at the head of the union 57 years ago ...
03.02.2023 Episode 284 - Life of Pie Pie Traynor was widely regarded in his time, and for long after it, as the best third baseman in baseball history and earned the honor, 75 years ago this week, of being the first third baseman elected to Cooperstown by ...
02.24.2023 Episode 283 - Denny McLain, Rebel Without a Cause The '60s were such a great time for the counterculture. For people rebelling against injustice, prejudice, and war. But Denny McLain didn't care about any of that. He was just kind of a jerk. And 53 years ago this week, ...
02.16.2023 Episode 36 Rerun - Edith Houghton Scouts For the Phillies In 1946, 77 years ago this week, Edith Houghton walked into the Phillies office with a binder of press clippings and asked for a job. Team owner Bob Montgomery reportedly hired her on the spot, making her the first professional ...
02.10.2023 Episode 282 - Might As Well Jump When the American League declared war on the National, it caused all kinds of chaos. Dissatisfied and underpaid players like Napoleon Lajoie abruptly switched leagues, as Nap did 122 years ago this week. But, while the most prominent, Lajoie was ...
02.03.2023 Episode 281 - Al Spalding, Incorporated Perhaps no one shaped the public perception of baseball as America's pastime more than Albert Goodwill Spalding. Pitcher, team executive, owner, tycoon, politician and pseudo-historian, there wasn't anything on which Spalding tried to leave his mark. That mark is still ...
01.27.2023 Episode 280 - We May Have Cursed Sal Bando After two straight weeks mentioning Sal Bando and his brother Chris, Mike and Bill were alarmed to find out that Bando passed away. They're pretty sure it's a coincidence. Nevertheless, one of the most underrated players of all time deserves ...
01.20.2023 Episode 279 - Our Idiot Brothers, Part 1 Sometimes it's hard being brothers. It's even harder being brothers when you're the black sheep of the family. The guy who has to watch his sibling, who shares so much of your DNA, exceeds all your wildest hopes and dreams ...
01.12.2023 Episode 278 - Dominant Teams and the Writers Who Love Them (with special guests Steven Goldman and Rob Mains) Who cares who the best team of all time is? We want to know who the most dominant is. What team didn't just defeat their competition, but routed and embarrased them? Mike and Bill turn to special guests Steven Goldman ...
01.05.2023 Episode 277 - The Robins Get Grimey The last of the legal spitballers, Burleigh Grimes moistily made his way toward the Hall of Fame 104 years ago this week when he was traded from the Pittsburgh Pirates to the Brooklyn Robins. He would immediately take to his ...
12.22.2022 Episode 276 - A Less Perfect Union (with Special Guest Justin McKinney) Shrouded by time, the Union Association has gone almost ignored by baseball historians in recent years, dismissed as an inferior league that doesn't belong in the same ballpark as the American, National, or even the Federal Leagues. But, as special ...
12.15.2022 Episode 275 - The Wages of Rube Marquard's Sins We have entire websites and a whole industry devoted to reselling tickets these days. But in 1920, Rube Marquard was arrested for trying to scalp his World Series tickets to an undercover cop. Marquard's arrest would lead to his trade ...
12.08.2022 Episode 274 - Gaylord Perry Gets Caught (Again) With Gaylord Perry's passing last week, Mike and Bill are reposting their profile of the big righthander from 2019, on the 37th anniversary of the only day he was ejected for doctoring the baseball. RIP to one of the greatest ...
12.02.2022 Episode 273 - Weirdos, Part 1 Perhaps more than any other sport, baseball is a game that seems to have cultivated weirdos. It's a home for people who probably wouldn't fit in anywhere else. Maybe the weirdest of those is Turk Wendell, who signed a three ...
11.23.2022 Episode 272 - The Braves Cease Spahning When they moved to Atlanta, the Braves decided to leave some things behind in Milwaukee. Their stadium. Their loyal fans. And the greatest pitcher in team history to that point, Warren Spahn. Like an old sofa, he was left on ...
11.18.2022 Episode 271 - Pedro, No Mo' An Expo As the most electrifying pitcher in baseball at the time, the trade of Pedro Martinez from the Expos to the Red Sox overshadowed everything else 25 years ago this week, including an expansion draft. Pedro was simply too exquisite to ...
11.10.2022 Episode 124 Rerun - Girls Win One Off the Diamond (with special guest Justine Siegal) With Mike sidelined this week, please enjoy this classic episode of TWIB History. From its founding in 1939 through 1973, Little League Baseball refused to let girls play, and was deeply and intransigently committed to that position until a New ...
11.04.2022 Episode 270 - '76 Athletics End the Big Parade Everything ends, but some things end better than others. The way the Oakland A's dynasty of the 1970s ended was one of those others. At the request of a patron, Mike and Bill look back at how everything finally fell ...
10.27.2022 Episode 269 - The World Series Goes Global Despite its name, the World Series was purely an American affair 89 times in a row, until the Toronto Blue Jays won the AL pennant and beat the Braves 30 years ago this week to take the trophy back home ...
10.21.2022 Episode 268 - Sutter and His Splitter One of the greatest relievers of his day, Bruce Sutter also was a pioneer who helped turn the split-fingered fastball into the pitch of the '80s. As we mourn his passing, Mike and Bill look back on one of the ...
10.14.2022 Episode 267 - Joe Gordon for Allie Reynolds It's not often you get straight up one-for-one trades. It's even less often that you get one that works out as designed for both teams, but that's what happened 75 years ago this week when the Yankees traded future Hall ...
10.06.2022 Episode 18 Rerun -- The Red Sox Dream the Impossible Mike is traveling this week and Bill was too busy to scrounge up a Bud, so instead we're taking you all the way back to 2017, to an episode that in turn takes you allllllll the way back to 1967, ...

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