April 21, 1898 was a heady day for Bill Duggleby. He was taking the mound for his first ever start in the Major Leagues. Furthermore, when he stepped up to the plate for his first career at bat, the bases were juiced. “Frosty” Bill, as he would come to be known for his lack of […]
Before the Phils’ 4-3 win over the visiting Brewers today, there were two ceremonial first pitches. The first was thrown by a robot from UPenn’s GRASP (General Robotics, Automation, Sensing and Perception) Lab as part of Science Day. Sadly, it wasn’t a success. The robot didn’t reach the plate, and instead bounced a weakly thrown […]
On April 20th, 1920, Phillies right fielder Cactus Gavvy Cravath hit his 119th and final home run. Cravath is the answer to the great trivia question, “Who held the Major League baseball record before Babe Ruth broke it*?” Born with the name Clifford, he got the nickname “Gavvy” when he hit a ball that killed […]
I wanna thank everybody who has taken the time to check us out in our first week. So far we’ve been having a lot of fun, and look forward to keeping the momentum moving forward. Of course, we can’t do it without your help. All we ask is that you help us spread the word […]
The Brewers are in town this week, taking on the Phils. They started play in Milwaukee in 1970. But the genesis of the team lies out west in Seattle, where in 1969 the franchise played a single disastrous season before being bought by a car dealer in Milwaukee named Bud Selig. Probably the best documentation […]
Although the Flyers 2011 playoff run is still in its infancy, there isn’t a shortage of story lines. You’ve got Danny Briere going up against his former team; you’ve got JVR playing in beast-mode; you’ve got Boosh taking over for Bob; and you’ve got Prongs day-to-day with a broken (maybe twice) hand. Then there’s the […]
Ron Artest was certainly not the first NBA player to get into a scrape with a fan in Detroit. In fact, it happened 21 years ago today with Charles Barkley as the culprit. The NBA didn’t freak out and render an absurd knee-jerk reaction to it then. In fact, they almost certainly went too light […]
On April 18, 1987, the 2-8 Phillies were at Three Rivers Stadium facing the Pirates and found themselves down 6-5 in the 9th inning after blowing a 5-0 lead. With 2 on and 2 outs, Mike Schmidt stepped to the plate against Don “Caveman” Robinson and made history: Not only did Michael Jack belt his […]
The Sabres and Flyers met in the Stanley Cup Finals in 1975 (The divisions were quite different then, and there were only 18 teams in the whole league.) They had tied for the most points in the regular season, and the town of Buffalo was so excited about their team they released a terrible song […]
I went out to Valley Forge yesterday to do a little hiking with the dog, and the wife let me duck my head into the Expo, where a baseball card and sports memorabilia show was going on. I was hoping to talk to Dick Allen, who was signing autographs, but there was a long line […]
The mid-60s were a brutal time for Philadelphia sports fans. The ’64 Phillies pulled off one of the greatest chokes in sports history, the Eagles were 16-37-1 between 1962 and 1965, and the Sixers were the victim of the most famous radio call in basketball history. To set the stage, the Sixers were trying to […]
April 15th is a big day in MLB history, and the league does a fine job of honoring it. It was the day Jackie Robinson first stepped on the field as a member of the Brooklyn Dodgers, and thus broke the color barrier in the sport that had been put up 60 years earlier. (He […]
