Baseball History Podcast

Hilton Lee Smith was born February 27, 1907 in Giddings, Texas. Smith was an outstanding pitcher for the Kansas City Monarchs of the Negro American League. He had an excellent curveball and used a variety of pitches intelligently.

Richard Hirschfeld Williams was born on May 7, 1929, in St. Louis, MO. Williams’s intense competitiveness and versatility earned him 13 years as a major league utility player. He parlayed those strengths into one of baseball’s most successful managerial careers.

arold Arthur Trosky, Sr., born Harold Arthur Trojovsky and nicknamed “Hal”, was born November 11, 1912 in Norway, Iowa. The first baseman’s career reached its apex in 1936, when he led the American League in runs batted in with 162, but he has been consigned to relative obscurity because his career overlapped the trio of Hall of Fame first basemen Jimmie Foxx, Hank Greenberg, and Lou Gehrig.

John Tortes Meyers, nicknamed “Chief”, was born July 29, 1880 in Riverside, California. Meyers was a member of the Cahuilla tribe, also called the Mission Indians. On the field, the strong but slow-footed Meyers was almost certainly the best offensive catcher of the Deadball Era.

Baldomero Almada, nicknamed “Melo”, was born February 7, 1913 in Huatabampo, Sonora, Mexico. He moved to southern California with his family at the age of one in 1914, amid the political and business turmoil of the Revolution in Mexico. He made history by becoming the first Mexican baseball player to play in the Major Leagues.