The Team That Forfeited Itself

The Team That Forfeited Itself (1902)

The Orioles arrived on this day without enough players to take the field. National League owners had bought control of the club the day before and gutted it, sending its stars to join the just-departed John McGraw. Baltimore forfeited, and AL president Ban Johnson seized the whole franchise. The next year he planted a new club in New York: the Highlanders, soon the Yankees. Whether the Yankees were born that day is one for the historians. That the Orioles died of desertion is not.

Five Starters, One Milestone (1954)

Needing a left fielder, rookie manager Walter Alston penciled in rookie Sandy Amoros, and Brooklyn's starting nine featured Jim Gilliam, Jackie Robinson, Amoros, Roy Campanella, and Don Newcombe: the first majority-Black lineup in big league history. The Dodgers won 2 to 1 in 11 innings, and a 20-year-old Hank Aaron lined out to end it. Aaron later wrote that if you think that lineup wasn't a big deal, "you don't know anything about the 1950s." Seven years after Robinson stood alone, he stood as one of five.

The Gold Glove Springs a Leak (1969)

Jim Kaat had won the Gold Glove seven straight years, so this one was pure comedy: baseball's finest fielding pitcher booted three balls in one game, gifting Chicago three unearned runs. No matter. The Twins staked him to a six-run first and Kaat wobbled to an 8 to 5 win. The kicker: despite a career-high eight errors that season, voters gave him the Gold Glove anyway. Reputation, it turns out, has soft hands.

Twice Around the Horn, Still Zero (1990)

In the fourth at Fenway, bases loaded, Twins third baseman Gary Gaetti told Wade Boggs the next pitch would be a 5-4-3 triple play. It was. Gaetti to Al Newman to Kent Hrbek, around the horn. In the eighth, the same three men did it again, making Minnesota the only team ever to turn two triple plays in one game. The Twins still lost, 1 to 0. Boggs tipped his cap to Gaetti anyway.