Ten Wayne County natives made it to Major League Baseball
Although he's batting here, Wooster native Bob Rhoads (1879-1967), right, was best known for his talents on the mound. Rhoads pitched for seven Major League seasons, mostly with the Cleveland Naps, going 97-82 with a 2.61 ERA in 1,681 innings. In 1908 his no-hitter was the first in the history of the Cleveland baseball franchise.
The Major League Baseball season is now underway, with the Cleveland Guardians ready to host their home opener on April 8.
Over the decades a handful of Wayne County natives have reached the game's highest level and played in the big leagues.
Here's a look at a starting lineup’s worth of area players who have made at least a small mark on baseball history.
Denny Galehouse
Marshallville native and 1928 Doylestown High grad Galehouse won 109 games in 15 Major League seasons, covering four teams. He began his career with the Cleveland Indians and had two stints each with the St. Louis Browns and Boston Red Sox, including his final three before retiring in 1949.
He pitched the one-game, winner-take-all American League playoff in 1948, which the Indians won over Galehouse and the Red Sox 8-3, sending Cleveland to what became its final World Series championship. He also pitched two games in the 1944 World Series, going 1-1 with a 1.50 ERA in 18 innings for the Browns, who lost the series 4-2 to the Cardinals. He died in 1998 in Doylestown.
Irvin Kay “Kaiser” Wilhelm
Born in 1874 in Wooster, Wilhelm appeared in 168 games over seven seasons between 1903 and 1921. Wilhelm pitched for the Pittsburgh Pirates, Boston Nationals, Brooklyn Superbas (eventually Dodgers) and Philadelphia Phillies. The teams he played on were not very good. In 1908, while Brooklyn was losing 101 games, Wilhelm went 16-22 with an ERA of 1.87.
He went on to manage the Philadelphia Phillies in 1921 and '22 and actually pitched in four games in 1921, finishing his MLB pitching career with a record of just 56-105 but an ERA of 3.44. Wilhelm may be best known for a 97-inning scoreless streak, a professional baseball record he still holds. He died in 1936 at 62 in Rochester, New York and is buried in Wooster.
Barton Emory “Bob” Rhoads
A Wooster native born in 1879, Rhoads pitched for seven Major League seasons, mostly with the Cleveland Naps. He had a solid career with a 97-82 record and a 2.61 ERA in 1,681 innings, earning him a spot on the franchise's all-time top 100 list. His career highlight was a no-hitter in 1908, the first in Naps history, against the New York Highlanders. Rhoads died in 1967 in California at the age of 87.
Dean Chance
Chance pitched in 11 Major League seasons. Born in Wooster in 1941, Chance was the 1964 Cy Young Award winner, becoming at the time the youngest to receive the honor. A two-time all-star, he finished his career with a 128-115 record and a 2.92 ERA.
Locally, Chance was known for starring at Northwestern High School, where he had a 52-1 record, which included a 20-win season, 32 consecutive victories and eight no-hitters, all still state records. He died in 2015 at 74.
Steve Rachunok
A Rittman native born in 1916, Rachunok, known as “The Mad Russian,” had a brief pitching career with the Brooklyn Dodgers with two appearances, one of them a complete-game loss, in September 1940. Rachunok died in 2002 in California.
Harold “Hal” Kim
Born in 1898 in West Salem, Kim made four pitching appearances, all in relief, for the St. Louis Cardinals over a nine-day stretch in June 1920, going 0-0 with a 2.57 ERA in his quick seven-inning career. Kim died at age 41 of a brain tumor in 1939 in Columbus, where he is buried.
John Forbes “Scotty” Alcock
Alcock was born in 1885 in Wooster and was buried in Wooster Cemetery after dying in January 1973. Alcock spent most of the 1914 season with the Chicago White Sox, debuting on April 19 and playing his final game on Aug. 2. He had 156 at-bats, collecting 27 hits for a modest .173 average, appearing 48 times at third base and once at second.
Among his teammates were Eddie Cicotte and George “Buck” Weaver, who later were implicated in the infamous Chicago Black Sox scandal in 1919.
Harvey Daniel “Ginger” Clark
Clark was born in Wooster in 1879 and was a real-life Moonlight Graham, the character played by Burt Lancaster in “Field of Dreams” — he was 23 years old when he made his one and only appearance in the big leagues on Aug. 11, 1902. Pitching for the Cleveland Bronchos — the long-ago predecessors to the current-day Guardians — Clark pitched six innings in relief, giving up six runs on 10 hits. He did enough to get the win in a 17-11 victory over the Baltimore Orioles. He also collected two hits in four at-bats, scoring twice. Clark died in Lake Charles, Louisiana in 1943 and is buried in Wooster.
Roger Peckinpaugh
Another Wooster native, Peckinpaugh, born in 1891, moved from Wooster to Cleveland as a boy and attended high school there before being discovered by Lajoie.
Peckinpaugh played for four teams — the Cleveland Naps, New York Yankees, Washington Senators and Chicago White Sox — during a career that spanned 2,012 games, all at shortstop. He finished with a .258 lifetime batting average, scored 1,006 runs, hit 48 home runs and was a member of the Senators’ World Series winner in 1924.
He went on to manage the Cleveland Indians for six seasons. Despite having a record above .500 and only having one losing season, his teams never finished higher than third place. Peckinpaugh passed away in 1977 and is buried in Mayfield Heights.
Mike Birkbeck
Birkbeck, a 1979 Orrville High grad, is the last MLB player to emerge from Wayne County, debuting with the Brewers on Aug. 17, 1986, and finishing with the New York Mets in 1995.
Birkbeck pitched in six Major League seasons, finishing with a 12-19 record over 54 appearances, 51 of them starts, with a 4.86 ERA in 270 big-league innings. He has since gone on to be pitching coach and associate head coach at Kent State, where he's worked more than two decades.