This hilarious nugget is from a book I just ordered, “To Every Thing a Season: Shibe Park and Urban Philadelphia“: The 2700 block of North Twentieth Street was more intimately connected to baseball than any other part of North Penn. Across the street from the bleacher entrance was the obvious place for ballplayers to live. […]
Fans across the street from Shibe Park take in a game, 1910. In 1934, Jack Shibe, with attendance dropping and people charging admission to watch games from their roofs and houses across the street, erected a 38 foot wall (a “spite fence”) and the view from across the street was gone. The neighbors took Shibe […]
This photo of Philadelphia Stars GM Carl Peterson appeared in their 1983 yearbook. I love the fact that he is talking on a phone outdoors. It says so much about the man. He probably had a servant just off camera who always had to keep Carl’s black rotary phone jacked in to whatever line was […]
I was thrilled when I realized that Bobo Holloman’s May 6th, 1953 no-hitter came against the Philadelphia A’s, because it meant I’d have an excuse to write about it. I have always found it to be one of the quirkiest, strangest anomalies in baseball history: a 29 year old rookie becomes the only man to […]
If you tuned into Versus for Game 3 of he Flyers/Bruins series last night a couple minutes late, you missed a new team record…and not the good kind of team record. Just 30 seconds into the game, Zdeno Chara lit the lamp on a one-timer after Kris Versteeg somehow lost the 6’9″ defenseman. Then before […]
Rashard Mendenhall is the latest in a long line of athletes who’ve caught flack for saying some really stupid things. After the killing of Osama (or Usama, depending on which side of the aisle you’re on) bin Laden, Mendhenhall stirred controversy by posting tweets that criticized those celebrating the death and questioned bin Laden’s role […]
Just happened to stumble across this one while looking at Baker Bowl photos. It was just such an incredible photo I figured I had to share. Number 2 is Dick Bartell of the Phillies, trying to complete an inside the ballpark home run against the Cubs at the baker Bowl in 1932. The Cubs catcher […]
With all these playoff hockey games going into overtime (13 of the last 14 nights had at least one), it just seems like we should take a look back at a game in Philadelphia sports history that required extra time. Call us lucky, or call us good; but on this day 38 years ago, the […]
Alert reader Todd pointed me in the direction of this piece in Fangraphs about Vlad Guerrero and Mariano Duncan (If you come across any Philly sports history pieces, please email them to me at johnny@johnnygoodtimes.com or by posting on our facebook wall). The piece, which was written yesterday, talked about how Guerrero hadn’t drawn a […]
They say you see something you’ve never seen before every time you watch a baseball game. I’m sure that fans that attended the May 4th, 1980 game between the Dodgers and Phils at Vet Stadium would agree. (Most of the the info in this story comes from retrosheet.org.) In the top of the first, the […]
Many of you are arriving today from Thrillist. Welcome to the site! The Thrillist piece mentioned a few articles on here but didn’t link to them, so here they are, along with a few more Greatest Hits I think you might enjoy. And if you’re a fan of local sports history, be sure to follow […]
Raul Ibanez has now gone 0 for his last 34 at bats. That is not only bad, that is historically bad. With 3 more fruitless at bats, Ibanez would set a new Phillies record for most at bats without a hit. Considering that the franchise has had some incredibly lean decades with some incredibly lousy […]
