Welcome to the windswept plains, lakeshores, towns, and church ballfields in the heart of the Midwest. In this issue of The National Pastime, we barnstorm through Indiana, Iowa, and Wisconsin, as well as several stops in Illinois, both in Chicago and in towns just a train ride away.
The last time the SABR convention was in Chicago, in 2015, the focus was very much on the urban center. So when we found out SABR would be returning to Chicago for the 2023 summer convention, we wanted to broaden the horizon of the publication to see what interesting stories could be discovered if we included not just Illinois but its bordering states.
SABR members responded with a plethora of tales. Some of them do concern favorite Chicago topics like beloved Bill Veeck and bedeviled Buck Weaver, and both Smiling Stan Hack and Hack Wilson, Cap Anson and Ken Holtzman, but we’ll also meet a Mexican women’s baseball team based in East Chicago (Indiana), minor league teams from Michigan City (also Indiana) and Wausau, Wisconsin, some baseball-savvy politicians (like Col. Frank Leslie Smith), a card-collecting magnate (Larry Fritsch), and hear all about the Negro Leagues teams who barnstormed through Iowa on a regular basis—often playing each other in league play.