Maysville’s Early Baseball Team

       Maysville’s Unique Baseball Beginnings

By Ron Bailey

  I know the MLB season is winding down, but as I was driving down East Second Street, I looked over where the baseball park was in yesteryear. Maysville baseball fans rooted on their own team here in Maysville and they were outstanding. In 1895 the Maysville team would play any team, even if they were a pro team. The hometown team played teams from Washington, D.C., Memphis and Cleveland and even played the Cincinnati Reds in a three-game series in the summer of 1895. The Maysville nine beat the Reds two out of three games to win the inaugural series.  The manager of this team was Walter Watson, who was the uncle of W.B. Mathews who worked and retired from the Public Ledger. The one stat that stands out for me as I was researching for this column was that Dennis McGann played for the Maysville squad. He along with four others Major Leaguers holds the record of five stolen bases in one game. McGann played first base for the New York Giants, but he started out his career here in Maysville. The Maysville team was a powerhouse in the Bluegrass League and was always near the top of the standings.

           Maysville’s baseball history was about to change as a baseball Hall of Famer played here in 1910 as the great Casey Stengel played here for one season. Casey was the property of Kansas City and he started out his minor league career with the Shelbyville Blues of the Bluegrass League. The Maysville squad purchased the Shelbyville Club in August of 1910 for 500 dollars. The owners of the Maysville team were local citizens and they were headed up by local businessmen, J.W. Fitzgerald and Preston Wells and the purchase of the Shelbyville team paid off. The team was now called the Colts and they played at League Park on East Second Street and in Casey’s first game in Maysville they beat Paris. I found the lineup for that game and it was: Feber in left, Casey Stengel in center, Rudy in right, Miller at first, Dresel at second, Hogarty at short, Badger at third, Shultz behind the plate and Glenn on the mound. Casey hit .269 in 69 games with the Maysville team and it paid off as at the end of the season, the Kansas City called him up to play for them. As they say, the rest is history as he later became the manager of the New York Yankees and a date with the Hall of Fame. He was elected to the Hall of Fame in 1966. Check out these stats for the former Maysville player as they are mind boggling.  Stengel became the only person to manage a team to five consecutive World Series championships (1949–1953). After the streak ended with the Yankees failing to win the American League pennant in 1954, Stengel and the Yanks continued their dominance, going on to win two more World Championships (1956 and 1958), and five more American League pennants (1955–1958, 1960). In an ironic twist to the Maysville connection and Casey Stengel was when he became the manager of the New York Mets at the end his career, one of his pitchers was Herb Moford of Minerva. One of the greatest baseball managers and Hall of Fame inductee, Casey Stengel will be remembered for his New York Yankees achievements, but in the beginning, he played on East Second Street with the Maysville nine.