Decatur Commodores

The Decatur Commodores were a professional minor league baseball team based in Decatur, Illinois that played for 64 seasons. The Commodores are the primary ancestor of today's Kane County Cougars. They played, with sporadic interruptions, from 1900 to 1974 in a variety of minor leagues, but spent the majority of their existence in the Illinois–Indiana–Iowa League (the "Three-I" League), later joining the Mississippi–Ohio Valley League (1952 to 1955) and the Midwest League (1956 to 1974). While they spent most of their years as an independent without formal major league baseball team affiliation, their primary affiliations were with the St. Louis Cardinals and later the San Francisco Giants, with isolated affiliations with the Detroit Tigers, Chicago Cubs and Philadelphia Phillies. They played home games at Fans Field, the 5,200-seat grandstand of which was demolished when the team moved to Wausau, Wisconsin in 1974 and became the Wausau Timbers. The field is still in use as a softball field.

The nickname Commodores refers to Stephen Decatur, for whom the city is named. The team was often called the "Commies" for short, from a time before that became a slang term for "Communist". In their final years, they wore hand-me-down Giants uniforms, although still called the "Commodores", leading some fans to call them the "Commodore Giants".

Playoffs

• 1928 – Illinois–Indiana–Iowa League Champions
• 1952 – Mississippi–Ohio Valley League Champions
• 1953 – Mississippi–Ohio Valley League Champions
• 1957 – Midwest League Champions

Notable former players & managers

• Bob Hartsfield (1974 MGR)
• Johnnie LeMaster (1974)
• Bob Knepper (1973) 2 x MLB AS
• John Montefusco (1973) MLB AS; 1975 NL Rookie of the Year
• Ed Halicki (1972)
• Butch Metzger (1972) 1976 NL Rookie of the Year
• John D'Acquisto (1971) 1974 NL Rookie Pitcher of the Year
• Larry Milbourne (1971)
• Ed Figueroa (1970)
• Steve Ontiveros (1970)
• Gary Lavelle (1969) 13 MLB Seasons
• Gary Matthews (1969) MLB AS 1973 NL Rookie of the Year
• Elias Sosa (1969)
• Ron Bryant (1966) 1973 NL Wins Leader
• Tito Fuentes (1963)
• Ollie Brown (1962-63)
• Hector Torres (1962, 1965)
• Don Bryant (1961)
• Jim Northrup (1961)
• Johnny Groth (1961 MGR)
• Mickey Stanley (1961) 4 x GG
• Jim Rooker (1960)
• Jack Hamilton (1957)
• Morrie Arnovich (1949-1950 MGR) MLB AS
• Bud Byerly (1941)
• Dick Sisler (1941) MLB AS
• Dib Williams (1941 player/MGR)
• Clyde Klutz (1940-41)
• Max Surkont (1940)
• Buddy Blattner (1939) Future Sports Announcer; Member Missouri Sports Hall of Fame (1980)
• Oscar Judd (1939) MLB AS
• Emil Verban (1939) 2 x MLB AS
• Tony Kaufmann (1938-39 player/MGR)
• Murry Dickson (1938) MLB AS; 171 Career Wins
• Eddie Lake (1938)
• Bob Scheffing (1938)
• Jimmy Outlaw (1935) Starting OF: 1945 WS Champion Detroit Tigers
• Frank MCCormick (1935) 8 x MLB AS; 1939 NL Runs Batted In Leader; 1940 NL Most Valuable Player
• Dutch Leonard (1932) 4 x MLB AS
• Skeeter Newsone (1932) 12 MLB Seasons
• [[Claude Passeau] (1932) 3 x MLB AS; 1939 AL Strikeouts Leader
• Odell Hale (1930)
• Hal McKain (1928)
• Carl Hubbell (1927) 9 x MLB AS; 3 x NL Wins Leader (1933, 1936-37); 3 x NL ERA Leader (1933-34, 1936); 2 x NL Most Valuable Player (1933, 1936); Baseball Hall of Fame (1947)
• Pinky Whitney (1925-26) MLB AS
• Tom Oliver (1925)
• Denny Sothern (1925)
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• Ray Benge – 1926

• John Edward Clay – 1941 Pitcher
• Bob Clear – 1947
• Rube Dessau – 1928–1931 Manager
• Murry Dickson – 1936–1938 Pitcher
• James Freeman Negro League ballplayer (1952–53)
• Carl Hubbell (1927)

Memorable games

• May 30, 1909 – The Commodores win a 26-inning, 5-hour marathon over the Bloomington Bloomers 2-1. The 26 innings stays the record for the most innings in a completed professional game in the United States for 57 years.^[2]
• August 18, 1960 – 18-year-old, left-handed pitcher Bob Sprout of the Commodores pitched a no hitter against the Waterloo Hawks. In that game, Sprout struck out 22 hitters, which stands as the MWL single-game strikeout record.^[3] The Commies won by a 3-0 score.

In fiction

The Commodores appear in Harry Turtledove's Worldwar series, an alternate history in which aliens invade Earth in 1942 and the Second World War turns into an interplanetary war. Members of the team are on a train which is attacked by the aliens at the beginning of the invasion. One ball player is kidnapped by the invaders and is eventually taken by them to China, while another player and the team's manager escape and join the forces fighting the invasion. A considerable part of the series is described from these three characters' points of view, in which their baseball background plays a significant role in a number of ways.

References

1. ↑ http://www.baseball-reference.com/register/park.cgi?id=IL018
2. ↑ "The Marathon Game: Endless Baseball, its Prelude, and its Aftermath in the 1909 Three-I League". baseball-almanac.com. Retrieved 7 July 2012. .
3. ↑ "Sprout emerged as strikeout king in 1960". milb.com. Retrieved December 28, 2013. 

External links

• Decatur Commodores at baseball-reference.com
• The Decatur Commodores in the Midwest League
• One Glorious Season: How Baseball Helped to Integrate Decatur, Illinois