Stanley Stein ranks as one of the top left fielders and hitters of the 30s and 40s. He started playing softball at seventeen and quickly made a name for himself. He was the leadoff man for North Shore Congregation (a Hall of Fame team honored in 2005), Judge Shillers and the legendary Windy City Teams
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According to fellow members of the Pioneer era, Anthony Ross was one of the best left fielders who ever played the game. He had two abilities that gave him one of the deadliest arms of his era, he would spin in the air as he made the catch so he was ready to throw when
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Charles Miceli was known to his teammates and opponents as Mississippi, but that was too long for a nickname, so it was shortened to Missy. Over his five-decade softball career as a shortstop and pitcher, he was truly one of the great players of the Pioneer era. In the early 1940s, the Boston Red Sox
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Thomas J. Curran was born and raised at 46th and Union in the Canaryville neighborhood of Chicago. He attended Tilden Technical High School where he was a member of the basketball team that captured the 1946 City championship. He got his start in 16″ softball playing with the Gaels Athletic Club, winning the 1944 and
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Julio Sachetti was the youngest of six children in an Italian immigrant family and the first of the children to be born in the United States. Growing up in the Italian neighborhoods of Chicago, Julio learned to play softball on the vacant lots and cinder parks of the city. Julio and his teammates from the
Al Kuhn, who grew up on the North Side of Chicago and attended Senn High School, will be remembered as one of the great pioneer of 16″ softball. He played with North Shore Congregation in 1937 with Stanley Stein, Morris Pomeroy, and Hall of Famer Ben Branman. In later years he played with in the
A 1939 graduate of De LaSalle High School where he played basketball and football, Tom Cramsie began his softball career at Horace Mann School at 80th and Jeffrey Avenue on Chicago’s Southeast Side. Like many neighborhood teams, they kept the same nucleus as they battled other Southeast and South Side teams. Sponsored by Aidner Paints,
After graduating from Bowen High School in 1936, Tony Norka was recruited by Dust Motors to play in the Windy City League. He stayed with them for two years before moving on to play with the great LaPota Steelers. Once they disbanded Tony continued his softball career with Joe Higgins, Mel Turner, Baltimore Lumber, and
Like many young men growing up during the Depression, Casey LaRocco faced many hardships. After his parents died when he was fourteen, he joined a Civilian Conservation Corps Camp in Michigan and Wisconsin planting trees and building drainage systems. When a heart murmur kept him out of the service during World War II, he started
A 1943 graduate of St. Rita High School, Emil Flerick played 10″, 12″, and 16″ softball in the Herald – American Tournaments in the late 1930 and early ’40s. Like many men of his era, he entered the Navy but played basketball and softball during his years of service. He was discharged in 1946 and
