The Dog Days, Literally

The Dog Days, Literally (1886)

Chicken Wolf drove one to deep center against Cincinnati with the game tied. Abner Powell ran it down, and a stray dog asleep by the fence woke up, sprinted over, and locked onto Powell's trouser leg. He could not get the ball back in. Wolf circled the bases with the winning run. Powell became a respected manager and owner, and Connie Mack once wrote that he had done more for baseball than any man alive. History remembers the dog.

Connie Mack Takes Philadelphia to Court (1926)

Pennsylvania's blue laws dated to 1794 and still banned Sunday ball. But the Sesqui-Centennial Exposition was open Sundays and charging admission, so Mack figured the A's could too. The mayor threatened to send police to lock the gates. Mack went to court, got an injunction, and Philadelphia saw its first Sunday game. Lefty Grove beat the White Sox, 3 to 2. Mack said he was gladder that nothing happened anyone could call a breach of the peace. The courts undid it within a year. Legal Sunday baseball took until 1934.

Mr. Cub Goes Up the Pole (1982)

The Cubs had been playing since 1876 and had never retired a number. Then they retired 14. Ernie Banks came to Chicago out of the Kansas City Monarchs in 1953 and never played for anyone else. Nineteen seasons, 512 home runs, more games than any Cub who ever lived, and not one postseason inning. They made his jersey into a flag and ran it up the left field foul pole, where it still flies on game days.

Yeah, I Can Pitch (2000)

Colorado and Atlanta went to extras tied at six, and the Rockies ran out of arms. Buddy Bell asked his catcher, sidelined by an injury and unable to swing a bat, if he could pitch. Brent Mayne said yes. He had never pitched at any level in his life. He threw a scoreless twelfth at 83 miles an hour, shook off his catcher, and won it when Adam Melhuse singled in the bottom half. First position player to get a win since 1968, the year Mayne was born.