History

Sixty years ago to this day, Joe DiMaggio recorded a hit in his 56th consecutive game, an MLB record that stands to this day. Although other hitters have come close (most notably Pete Rose’s 44-game streak in 1978), DiMaggio’s streak stands as one of the most immortal accomplishments of all time.

Roy Halladay spent 11 full seasons in Toronto (and a few starts in a 12th), so this game will be quite a homecoming.

Here is a guy who when he left Toronto took out a full-page ad in the newspaper to thank the fans and the organization for everything they had done for him.

Perhaps it's just coincidence and happenstance, but it seems like the New York Mets have had the worst luck and/or timing when it comes to collecting talent on their roster.

Whenever they would obtain a perennial All-Star-type player or former MVP, that player would prove to be a huge bust and completely tank with the Mets.

On the flip side, the Mets seem to always trade away or let go of players who would go on to lead All-Star, MVP and even Hall of Fame careers.

Although baseball's opening day is special in every city, Cincinnati's has long been considered the creme-de-la-creme. Professional baseball's first team is the only team to open each year at home and its fans celebrate the entire day like no other.

The Boston Red Sox had few fans nearly 50 years ago. Fewer admit being fans back in 1963 and 1964. Few fans of today were alive back then. Those seasons were the Dark Ages of Red Sox lore. 

Jackie Robinson is one of baseball's all-time great players who is underrated by some of today's fans.

Robinson was a belligerent competitor who despised losing even more than he despised the New York Giants.

The general consensus today is the rivalry between the Boston Red Sox and New York's other team, the New York Yankees, is the fiercest rivalry in sports. It is difficult for many of today's fans to imagine that a more intense rivalry existed, but it did.

The San Francisco Giants had a bad year in 1992.  The club finished 72-90, fifth place in the National League West, and were on the verge of being sold to a group of investors in Tampa, who had plans for moving the team to St. Petersburg.

This essay won the Society for American Baseball Research Negro Leagues Committee Scholarship contest in April 2010.

On April 14, 1947, Major League Baseball was a whites-only sport. Not since the expulsion of black players in 1888 had a non-Caucasian man swung a bat or thrown a pitch in the Big Show.

That changed on April 15, 1947—64 years ago today—when Jackie Robinson suited up for the Brooklyn Dodgers at Ebbets Field.

Unbreakable records and feats are as intertwined with MLB history as metal cleats and pine tar.

Numbers like 56, 16, 1.12 and 41 are widely recognized as some of MLB's greatest and most famous stats and achievements, but every once in awhile a player or team will accomplish something that—due to styles of play or circumstances beyond their control—is so absurd it defies all logic.  

**This is an article I wrote after Harry Kalas passed away on April 13, 2009.**

Things certainly will not be the same in the Phillies' press box this 2009 season; despite the following-up of a most memorable championship campaign. Philadelphia, a city which has been gifted with the greatest of voices the world has seen, now have lost quite possibly the best of them all: Harry Kalas.