Three Hall of Famers Played in Galesburg. One Went 6-for-7. One Nearly Died Here.
For twenty-five years, Galesburg had professional baseball. Between 1890 and 1914 the town fielded teams called the Trotters, the Hornets, the Boosters and the Pavers, playing at Willard Field on the Knox College campus and at Illinois Field on Monmouth Boulevard.
Most of those teams were bad. Several folded mid-season. The whole enterprise ended in 1914 and never came back.
But three men who played in Galesburg are in the Baseball Hall of Fame — and the stories of how they got there include one of the great individual afternoons in local sporting history, a no-hitter by a future 373-game winner, and a tragedy so complete it is difficult to write down.
Bud Fowler, 1890
He was the first Black professional baseball player in American history, and in the spring of 1890 Galesburg bought him.
Fowler had been playing in Evansville, Indiana. Galesburg’s Central Interstate League club purchased his release for $500, with Fowler himself receiving a share of the money. He was thirty-two, and Galesburg was the tenth minor league he had played in across seven years — because every year, somewhere, a team or a league would decide it no longer wanted a Black player.
May 2, 1890
Galesburg’s home opener. Fowler went 6-for-7 with five runs scored in a 31-5 demolition of Peoria.
Six hits in seven at-bats, in the first home game of the season, in front of his new town.
He hit .322 in 27 games for that club. Sporting Life wrote of the lineup: “The visiting club fielders move back when Taylor, Al Weddige and Fowler go to the bat.”
The Central Interstate club disbanded in early June. Fowler caught on with Sterling in the Illinois-Iowa League — and on July 31 that franchise relocated to Galesburg, so he ended up playing in the same town twice in one summer, for two different leagues. He hit .314 across that stretch.
Bud Fowler played ten seasons in organised baseball, a record for a Black player that stood until Jackie Robinson. He died in 1913, largely forgotten.
The Hall of Fame elected him in December 2021 and enshrined him in July 2022 — 109 years after his death. Dave Winfield delivered the induction speech on his behalf.
Grover Cleveland Alexander, 1909
He arrived in Galesburg as a telephone-company lineman who pitched on weekends. He was twenty-two, and the Class D Illinois-Missouri League was the bottom rung of professional baseball.
He went 15-8 with an estimated 1.36 ERA and six shutouts. He also hit .243.
July 22, 1909
At home in Galesburg, Alexander threw a no-hitter against Canton, winning 2-0. He struck out ten and faced twenty-nine batters — one walk, one hit batsman, one reached on an error. Nobody got a hit.
Days later he beat Macomb 1-0 in eighteen innings, striking out nineteen and walking nobody.
And then the throw
Running from first to second, trying to break up a double play, Alexander was struck square in the right temple by the shortstop’s throw.
He was unconscious for somewhere between thirty-six and fifty-six hours. When he came round he had double vision, and it did not clear for months. Researchers at SABR have suggested the blow may have caused the epilepsy that shadowed the rest of his life.
Galesburg sold him to Indianapolis. Indianapolis, apparently wary of a pitcher who could not see straight, sold him on to Syracuse without ever seeing him throw.
At Syracuse in 1910 he went 29-11 with a 1.85 ERA, 217 strikeouts and fifteen shutouts. The Philadelphia Phillies drafted him for $500.
He won 373 games in the major leagues, a National League record he shares with Christy Mathewson. He entered the Hall of Fame in 1938.
It started with a Class D season in Galesburg, and very nearly ended there too.
Sam Rice, 1912
The third Hall of Famer is the hardest story to tell.
Rice signed with the Galesburg Pavers of the Central Association in October 1911 and arrived for spring training in April 1912. He was a pitcher then, not the outfielder who would later collect 2,987 hits. Local reporters called him one of the club’s most promising recruits. He made his professional debut on April 13, 1912, against Knox College.
Eight days later, on April 21, a tornado struck his family’s farm near Donovan, Illinois, while he was playing for Galesburg.
It killed his wife Beulah, his two children, his mother, and his two youngest sisters. His father Charles survived with severe injuries and died of them on April 30.
The storm killed more than seventy people across Illinois and Indiana.
Rice was told by telegraph on April 22 and went home for the funerals. He came back to Galesburg only briefly and then left the team for good. In January 1913 he enlisted in the Navy.
He returned to baseball afterwards, converted to the outfield, played twenty seasons for the Washington Senators and was elected to the Hall of Fame in 1963. He rarely spoke about 1912.
The teams themselves
| Year | Team | League | Record | Finish |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1890 | Galesburg | Central Interstate | 6-22 | moved to Indianapolis in May |
| 1890 | Galesburg | Illinois-Iowa | 8-17 | moved on to Burlington |
| 1895 | Trotters | Eastern Iowa | 13-27 | disbanded June 25 |
| 1908 | Hornets | Illinois-Missouri | 50-67 | last |
| 1909 | Boosters | Illinois-Missouri | 47-83 | last of six |
| 1910 | Pavers | Central Association | 69-67 | 4th |
| 1911 | Pavers | Central Association | 66-63 | 3rd |
| 1912 | Pavers | Central Association | 61-67 | 6th |
| 1914 | Pavers | Central Association | 49-79 | 8th |
Three no-hitters were thrown by Galesburg pitchers in five seasons: Alexander in 1909, J.W. Schultz against the Monmouth Browns in a 2-1 win on June 22, 1910, and John Beach against the Muscatine Wallopers in a 1-0 win on July 14, 1912.
The 1912 team drew 18,000 spectators across the season — an average of 281 a game. Galesburg and Hannibal both folded after that season; Galesburg received $500 in compensation for its players. The Pavers came back for 1914, finished last, and that was the end of it.
Where they played
Willard Field, home to the nineteenth-century teams, sat on the Knox College campus — which means Bud Fowler’s 6-for-7 afternoon almost certainly happened on ground Knox students walk across today.
Illinois Field, on Monmouth Boulevard near the former Admiral plant, hosted the 1908 to 1914 clubs.
Some games were played at Lombard College Field. That site is now Lombard Junior High School at 1220 E. Knox Street.
What is left
No plaque. No marker at Willard Field or on Monmouth Boulevard. Minor league baseball has not returned to Galesburg in 112 years.
What is left is a record book showing that the first Black professional in American baseball went 6-for-7 here on a May afternoon in 1890; that a future 373-game winner threw a no-hitter here in 1909 and was nearly killed by a throw weeks later; and that a Hall of Fame outfielder played his first professional games here in the week his entire family died.
Three Hall of Famers. One Class D town. Twenty-five years.
Research from the SABR Biography Project, Baseball-Reference and minor league records. A note on language: the 1909 Canton club’s official name is a racial slur by modern standards and we have not reproduced it. If you have photographs of Willard Field or Illinois Field, the Galesburg Public Library local history room and the Knox College archives would like to hear from you — and so would we.
