The two coasts are hotbeds of MLB talent, but Missouri, Midwest are right in the thick of things

July 2, 12:42 PMKansas City Sports ExaminerCharles F. Rouse III

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Chicago White Sox manager Ozzie Guillen, right, smiles as he talks
to starter Mark Buehrle after being pulled from the game against the
Chicago Cubs during the sixth inning of an interleague baseball
game in Chicago, Saturday, June 27, 2009. The White Sox won 8-7.
(AP Photo/Nam Y. Huh)  

What state boasts the largest number of players to make the Big Show in the history of major league baseball? If you guessed California, Pennsylvania or New York, you’d be well into the money. You wouldn’t think a cold-weather state like Missouri would necessarily be a breeding ground for major league talent. But that’s where you’d be wrong. 

Through the 2008 season, just over 15,000 players born in the United States have made it to the so-called big leagues, according to the noted historical source, Baseball-Almanac.com. This covers 133 years, to 1876, recorded in baseball annals as the official debut of major league baseball with the formation of the six-team National League of Professional Baseball Clubs. Of the 15,000 players that have made it to the Big Show, nearly 600, or 4 percent of the country’s total, have come, by birthright, from the state of Missouri. Over that same time horizon, Kansas has produced 204 major-leaguers born in the Sunflower state. 

Arizona Diamondbacks' Max Scherzer, left, talks with catcher Miguel Montero after
the Los Angeles Angels scored four runs in the fourth inning of a baseball game
Sunday, June 28, 2009, in Phoenix. (AP Photo/Ross D. Franklin)

Missouri ranks eighth out of the 50 states and the District of Columbia in the number of ballplayers who have made it to the major leagues, even if for only one game or part of a single season. Not surprisingly, California tops the list, with 1,898 major leaguers, or 13 percent of the total number of U.S.-born players, reported to have been born in the country’s largest state. Second is Pennsylvania, with 1,348 major league players having hailed from that state; followed by New York, 1,089; Illinois, 999, and Ohio, 979. Rounding out the top ten are Texas, 767; Massachusetts, 642; Missouri, 575; Michigan, 411, and New Jersey, 389.

Kansas ranks 24th on the list, just behind Oklahoma, Louisiana and Iowa but ahead such states as Washington, South Carolina, Minnesota, Oregon and Arizona.

Within Missouri, the Kansas City area has produced 49 of the Show-Me state’s active major leaguers and 19th- and 20th-century alumni. Among the notable names of the game who originally came from Kansas City are the late Bob Allison of the Washington Senators and Minnesota Twins; David Cone won 194 games over a brilliant 17-year pitching career that began with his hometown Kansas City Royals, played 7 years with the NY Mets, 6 with the NY Yankees and shorter stints with the Toronto Blue Jays and Boston Red Sox and pitched a perfect game in 1999 while with the Yankees; Rick Sutcliffe, a tall right-handed pitcher who played 8 years with the Chicago Cubs and 4 other major league teams (Twins, St. Louis Cardinals, Baltimore Orioles, LA Dodgers and Cleveland Indians); and the late, great manager of the dynasty-years Yankees (12 years) and the Mets (4 years), Casey Stengel, the “Old Perfessor,” as he was affectionately called, who also had a 13-year playing career to go along with 25 years as a big-league manager.

Philadelphia Phillies first baseman Ryan Howard reacts after
striking out during fourth-inning interleague baseball game
action against the Toronto Blue Jays in Toronto on Friday,
June 26, 2009. (AP Photo/The Canadian Press, Darren
Calabrese)

The largest concentration of ballplayers from Missouri to make it to the Big Dance, however, come from the eastern side of the state in St. Louis. Two hundred ninety-eight, or 52 percent of the state’s total, started out in St. Louis or its surrounding suburbs. Distinguished names to grace the game from Cardinal country include Hall of fame Yankee catcher and manager Yogi Berra and his boyhood pal, Joe Garagiola, another catcher, who played for the Cardinals; Elston Howard, who played on the great Yankees championship teams in the ‘50s and ‘60s; Norm Siebern, first-baseman for the Yankees and later the Kansas City A’s, and Roy Sievers of the 1950s-early ‘60s original Washington Senators. Current stars from the St. Louis area include Mark Buehrle, ace left-hand pitcher of the Chicago White Sox, now in his 10th year in the league, and Ryan Howard, one of the young, rising stars of the game, with the Philadelphia Phillies, and Max Scherzer, 2006 first-round draft pick out of the University of Missouri, who in his first full season as a starting pitcher with the Arizona Diamondbacks.

Of the 204 big league players who have hailed from Kansas, 22 have come from Wichita, 21 from the Kansas City area and 10 from the capital city in Topeka. Names of note from this group include: Ray Sadecki (Kansas City, KS), whose 18-year major league career produced 135 wins for the Cardinals, the San Francisco Giants and 4 other teams; Mike Torrez (Topeka) won 185 games over 18 years pitching mainly for the Montreal Expos and the Red Sox; David Segui (Kansas City, KS) played 16 years, mostly with the Orioles, and his father played in the 1960s for the Kansas City Athletics, and Steve Renko (Kansas City, KS) was drafted as a pitcher out of the University of Kansas and played for 7 teams in 13 years, including the Royals in 1983. Among active players, Mike Pelfrey (Wichita), drafted out of Wichita State in 2005, is in his third year as a starting pitcher for the Mets.

What should we make of all of this? To begin with, major league talent comes from every state and all reaches of the country – not just the West Coast and warm-weather climates of the U.S., where the game can be played practically year-round. To reinforce this point, seven Midwestern states (Indiana, Illinois, Iowa, Kansas, Missouri, Nebraska and Oklahoma) account for 18 percent of all of the U.S. ballplayers who were good enough to ever play in the major leagues.

One more observation: More than 1,800 of the players who have advanced to the major-league level since records were first kept late in the 19th century (or nearly as many as the cumulative total from the state of California) came from outside of the United States. And this number bears watching, because the number of foreign players continues to grow. Latin America, led by the Dominican Republic and Venezuela , has and continues to be the largest source of foreign-born big-league talent, but we are seeing an increase in the number of players from Europe, Asian countries and as far away as Australia, where cricket far surpasses baseball in local popularity.

For more info: www.baseball-almanac.com/players/birthplace.php