Sac History Happenings: Sacramento baseball's Top 50 players

Sac History Happenings

News and developments in Sacramento and California history

January 31, 2011

Sacramento baseball's Top 50 players

Although Sacramento lacks a major league team, the city has an impressive history of school, college and professional baseball going back decades.

According to BaseballSacramento, a web site dedicated to preserving this legacy, baseball began in the region as early as the 1860s. The city has had a succession of "home teams," called variously "the Senators, the Wolves, Cardinals, and finally the Solons." Sacramento was one of the founding cities in the Pacific Coast League that started in 1903.

BaseballSacramento recently organized a committee to determine a list of the "All-Time Top 50 Professional Baseball Players from the greater Sacramento area over the past 100 years." They selected from individuals who went on to the majors after playing for area school or college teams.

All through January, the web site has been rolling out the ranking culminating with Saturday's unveiling of the number one: Stan Hack, who graduated Sacramento High and played for the Chicago Cubs from 1932 to 1947.

Interestingly, Hack didn't show in the Bee's own top five choices. First was Dustin Pedroia, the Woodland High graduate who currently plays for the Boston Red Sox.

PHOTO CREDIT: 1955 Sacramento Solons spring training, (l-r) Jerry Streeter, John Briggs, Chuck Essegian, Tom Agosta. The Sacramento Bee archive.

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California and Sacramento have a long, rich, vibrant history. And our region is blessed with an abundance of historical resources maintained by museums, libraries, archives and societies. This blog aims to alert readers to the latest developments in local/state historical education and research.

Send tips concerning upcoming exhibits, tours, lectures and meetings, as well as new books, magazine articles and online collections to the blog's contributors.

The Contributors:

Michael Dolgushkin

Michael Dolgushkin is Manuscript Librarian at the California State Library History Section. He is co-author of San Francisco's California Street Cable Cars and is a frequent contributor to the California State Library Foundation Bulletin. Contact him at mdolgushkin@library.ca.gov.

Amanda Graham is a Certified Archivist working in the Sacramento Room of the Sacramento Public Library. She earned a BS in History from Southern Oregon University and a MS in Information Studies with an emphasis in archives from The University of Texas at Austin. Contact her at agraham@saclibrary.org.

Pete Basofin is Director of Editorial Research at The Sacramento Bee. He previously worked at The St. Petersburg Times and Columbia (Mo.) Daily Tribune. Contact him at pbasofin@sacbee.com.

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