Baseball
Jack Donovan
Jack Donovan won the Jaques Award and Baseball Old-timers Award as Staten Island’s best high school basketball and baseball player, and was an All-Met pitcher at Seton Hall, where he won a record 27 games and pitched the Pirates to the 1971 College World Series. A first-round draft pick of the Anaheim Angels, Donovan pitched five minor-league seasons before finding a second career as a team executive and owner.(Read more...)
Karl Drews
Karl Drews won 44 games in eight major-league seasons, most of them as a reliever with the Yankees, St. Louis Browns, Philadelphia Phillies and Cincinnati Reds, and made two World Series appearances. When the Phillies made him a starter in 1952, Drews responded by throwing 15 complete games in 30 starts, and winning 14 games. His five shutouts were tops in the National League.(Read more...)
Gloria Cordes Elliott
Gloria Cordes Elliott, who wasn’t allowed to play in organized leagues while growing up, was a teenager when she left home to join the All American Girls Professional Baseball league, organized by baseball owners as a hedge against the manpower drain during World War Two. She grew into one of the pitching mainstays of the league, a three-time All Star who pitched 24 consecutive complete games and won 16 in 1952, and was the winning (Read more...)
Frank Fernandez
Frank Fernandez, a catcher with a big arm and home-run pop in his bat, played six big-league seasons with the New York Yankees, Oakland A’s, Chicago White Sox and Washington Senators. A three-sport star at Curtis High School, Fernandez averaged a home run every 18 at-bats in his major-league career, including five pinch-hit blasts for the 1970 A’s, three of them outright game-winners.(Read more...)
Matt Galante
Matt Galante, a 5-foot-5 All-American infielder from the Brooklyn sandlots and St. John’s University, spent a lifetime as a minor-league player and manager, major-league coach, and manager of the 1999 Houston Astros, who he guided to 97 wins and a division title. Galante played and managed 20 seasons in the minors, once hitting .342, before spending 16 seasons as a coach with the Astros and three with the Mets, and managed Team Italy in the (Read more...)