Rube Sellers

Oliver “Rube” Sellers’s grave lies in a pastoral memorial park, being overrun by the roots of a large tree. If action is not taken, his bronze marker may be surrendered to nature. Sellers will remain in baseball’s record books—although he got into just 12 big-league games, at age 29 with the 1910 Boston Doves. Yet in Pittsburgh’s Monongahela Valley, he will always be remembered as a fleet-footed outfielder whose passion for the game included daring baserunning, barehanded catches, and orchestrated outfield perfection.

Oliver Sellers (he had no middle name) was born on March 7, 1881, in Saltsburgh, Pennsylvania. His parents, Ephraim Sellers (1841-1908) and Fannie (née Parker, 1844-1910) were married in 1862.1 They emigrated to Pennsylvania in 1866 from Ardsley, South Yorkshire, England. Accompanying them were their two eldest sons, Walter (1864-1927) and William (1866-1907). Three more children—Clara (1870-1936), Herbert (1873-1955), and Charles (1879-1947)—were born before the arrival of Oliver.

As the 1870 U.S. Census shows, the Sellers family first settled in Monongahela, Pennsylvania, where Ephraim worked in the coal mines. By 1880, they had moved to Saltsburgh, a mining town in North Versailles Township, directly across the Monongahela River from Duquesne, Pennsylvania.2 For the vast majority of his life, however, Sellers resided in the Homeville neighborhood of Mifflin Township, just a few miles east of Pittsburgh.

Sad to relate, Ephraim Sellers was a troubled man who suffered from what could have been diagnosed as schizophrenia. In 1884, he was incarcerated in the Allegheny County Workhouse3 for brandishing a firearm while threating to kill his wife.4 In 1898, he was institutionalized at the Government Hospital for the Insane in Washington, DC, after he gained access to the White House to confront President William McKinley. Upon being released from the institution in 1903, he again entered the White House, bent on hypnotizing President Theodore Roosevelt.5 He was apprehended, remanded to Pittsburgh, and placed in the Woodville County Hospital in Collier, Pennsylvania, where he passed away in 1908. His body was unclaimed by family and donated to the Pennsylvania State Anatomical Board.6

As of 1900, Oliver Sellers lived with his mother and worked as a laborer in a local steel mill.7 His name first appeared in newsprint in July 1901, when the Pittsburg Post published the box score of a game played by the Homestead Library and Athletic Club Reserves, a local sandlot team.8 The next season, Sellers became a regular for the Homestead club.9 During his tenure, this was one of the premier semipro nines in the Pittsburgh region.

In 1904, Sellers traveled 50 miles south to play for a club attached to Waynesburg College.10 (However, there is no evidence that he was a student at the school.) On March 12, 1905, Sellers entered the professional ranks, signing to play center field for the Homestead Steel Workers of the Class C Ohio-Pennsylvania League.11 He was ready to make his mark on the Monongahela Valley.

Sellers was a right-handed hitter and thrower who stood 5-feet-10 and weighed 180 pounds. On April 28, he made his pro debut as Homestead beat the McKeesport Colts, 6-1. On the mound that day for Homestead was Frank “Pat” Eastley, then 20, whose pro career lasted through 1921 and included at least 186 wins.12 During the season, Homestead teammates included three other future major leaguers: Lee Fohl, Bill Powell, and Hughie Tate.

When Homestead did not field a team in 1906, Sellers took his services to another Ohio-Pennsylvania League club, the Sharon (Pennsylvania) Steels. Appearing in 134 games for a last-place (46-93, .331) club, Sellers put up modest numbers, posting a.254 batting average (121-for-476).

Sellers returned to Sharon for the 1907 season.13 It was then, for some unknown reason, that the moniker “Rube” first appeared.14 Both Sellers and his ball club made marginal improvements over the prior season. Sellers batted .269 (137-for 510), while supplying competent outfield defense (.969 fielding percentage). Meanwhile, the Sharon team, by then known as the Giants, went 55-84 (.396) and inched up to sixth place, tied with Mansfield in final O-PL standings.

Back again with the Sharon Giants in 1908, Sellers continued to play center with aplomb. After a game in May, the New Castle News observed, “Rube Sellers in center, never played a better game than the one yesterday. He was getting them to the right of him and was getting them to the left of him, and by gum he was getting them in front of him. His playing was one of the pleasant features of the game.”15 But his hitting remained status quo—he ended the year with a.262 batting average (109-for-416).

Prior to the 1909 season, Sellers was picked up by the Fort Worth Panthers of the Class C Texas League. In late March, he suited up for an exhibition game against Christy Mathewson and the New York Giants; he singled off Big Six.16 By April 9, however, Sellers was back in the Mon Valley after signing a contract with the O-PL’s McKeesport (Pennsylvania) Tubers.17 Against the backdrop of gray smoke that constantly belched from the stacks of the McKeesport Tube Works, Sellers registered his best offensive season to date in 1909. Despite a broken rib that limited him to 101 games, his batting average climbed to .317 (133-for-420).18

Along the way, Sellers angrily quit the team for a few days in late June after he was fined $20 for making a bad play and being called a “bonehead’ by manager Bill Thomas.19 A season-long desire to pitch became reality on September 8, when Sellers took the box in a lopsided 20-2 loss. The Pittsburg Press observed that Sellers “had a nice curve and his speed wasn’t bad, but it was the same thing all the time.”20 Meanwhile, the Tubers finished the season in third place with a 73-53 record.

Sellers returned to McKeesport in 1910. That June, the Pittsburgh Press declared that he was “conceded to be the best all-around outfielder in the O. & P. League.” He was described as able to cover a lot of ground, having a good throwing arm, and being a first-class base runner.21

Soon thereafter, Boston Doves scout Billy Merritt was dispatched to evaluate Sellers. Merritt subsequently advised Doves skipper Fred Lake that Sellers was a prospect, his .241 batting average notwithstanding.22 On August 10, Boston purchased Sellers’ rights from McKeesport for about $1,500.23

On August 12, 1910, Sellers made his major league debut in a home game at South End Grounds against the Chicago Cubs. As leadoff man, he popped up to second against righty Ed Reulbach in his maiden plate appearance. His next three at-bats also went for naught. But with Boston trailing 5-3 in the ninth, Sellers started a one-out rally against reliever Mordecai “Three Finger” Brown with his first big league hit, a single to center. A single by Buck Herzog and a Bill Sweeney walk then filled the bases, but Brown throttled Boston hopes with game-ending strikeouts of Doc Miller and Ed Abbaticchio.

Sellers stayed in the lineup for four of the next five games (the Doves played three doubleheaders in the span of four days). He got just three hits in 16 at-bats (.188). The club opted to hit the road without him.24 There was talk that he might be sent down to the Lynn (Massachusetts) Shoemakers of the Class B New England League.25

The Doves returned home for a couple of days in early September, then went back on the road until September 15—and Sellers was back in their lineup. He went hitless (with a walk) in a 5-1 loss to St. Louis, which did little to improve his standing. He received his next action on the 24th, making two more starts and three pinch-hitting appearances after that. On October 4, Sellers pinch-hit for pitcher Al Mattern in the second inning and lined out to short. He saw no action in Boston’s final five games.

On April 18, 1911, Boston unconditionally released Sellers, bringing his brief major league career to a close. In 12 games, he posted a tepid .156/.289/.156 slash line, with three runs scored, two RBIs, and a stolen base. In the outfield, however, he made 12 putouts in 12 chances.

Following Sellers’ release, his friend Lee Fohl—manager of the Akron Champs, defending champion of the Ohio-Pennsylvania League—rushed “to sign the big boy.”26 Back in familiar and less competitive surroundings, Rube’s hitting was resurrected. In a mid-May game against the Steubenville Stubs, Sellers had a perfect 5-for-5 day at the plate.27 For the year, Sellers swung the bat at a.306 clip (158-for-516). He added 50 stolen bases as the Champs repeated as league champions.

Akron fans received some disappointing news in March 1912. “The star who many times electrified the local fans by his spectacular baserunning has been shipped to Decatur, Ill, in the Three I League,” the New Castle News reported.28 Playing for the Commodores of the Class B circuit, Sellers demonstrated that he still had a powerful arm in a game against Peoria. “Rube Sellers’ peg to home on Walter] Holke’s hit was a beauty. It had the runner miles from the plate,” the Decatur Daily Herald informed readers. 29 By mid-May, Sellers led the team’s batters with a .366 average and also provided first-rate fielding.30

Thus, it was rather jarring when on July 17, Sellers and James Prosser were traded to the rival Danville Speakers for Danny Blake and $200.31 Sellers commented, “I don’t see why they wanted to get rid of me. I’ve been hitting the ball as well as any other player on the team and I have been leading the league in stolen bases.”32

Rumors circulated that Sellers would not go to Danville and that a trade to Omaha in the Western League was possible.33 Nevertheless, an unhappy Sellers did report to Danville, where his batting tailed off. He finished the season hitting .270 (136-for 504) and tied for second in the league with 40 steals. He was also tied for second among three other Three I League outfielders with a .981 fielding percentage.34

In October came a personal highlight: Sellers married Catherine Baxter (1882-1944), also from the Monongahela Valley.35 In time, the arrival of daughter Clara (born 1917) and son Oliver (aka “Buster”, 1920) completed the Sellers family.

In 1913, the Federal League, an independent minor league circuit, was formed. Deacon Phillippe, former star pitcher for the Pittsburgh Pirates, assumed command of the league’s Steel City entry, the Pittsburgh Filipinos. In center field for the club’s opener in Exposition Park was Rube Sellers. He went 3-for-4 and drove in the first two Pittsburgh runs but the Indianapolis Hoosiers cruised to a 9-5 victory.36

Sellers continued to display fine range in the outfield. In a 4-1 victory over the St. Louis Terriers on August 10, he “pulled off the real fielding stunt of the game. With one on in the sixth and two down (Leo) Jones hit one to left center, going at a mile a minute, Sellers was off at the crack of the willow and after a hard run pulled down the ball with his bare hand,”37

Wins, however, proved hard to come by for the Filipinos—the club wound up in last place with a record of 49-71. Sellers led the team in hits (128) and stolen bases (21) while his .274 batting average was third-best for lineup regulars.

The Federal League declared itself a major league for the 1914 season, with Doc Gessler taking the reins of the circuit’s Pittsburgh entry. Sellers, however, did not make the cut; he was waived by the Rebels in March.38

With organized baseball in the rearview mirror, Sellers wound down his playing career. He signed with a local club in Vandergrift, Pennsylvania, a small town 30 miles northeast of Pittsburgh.39 In 1915, Sellers returned home to the Mon Valley and played for the independent Homestead Steel Works, coming full circle to his origins as a player. That team featured Mon Chung, an early Chinese ballplayer who was touted as a “speedy base runner and a good fielder.”40 Later that year, Sellers sold his services to the local Duquesne Athletic Club.41

According to his 1918 World War I draft card, Sellers and his wife lived at the Terrace community in the Mifflin Township neighborhood of Homeville. He was then employed by Carnegie Steel. As of 1920, the Sellers family still resided in Homeville; Rube worked as a crane operator at the mill.

The last press reference to Sellers on the diamond came in the Pittsburgh Post on July 24, 1921. It mentioned that he was playing first base for the Mechanics of the Homestead Steel League.42

Two decades later, as World War II raged, Private Oliver “Buster” Sellers was killed in action in the Battle of the Bulge. He was just 24. Awarded the Bronze Star and Purple Heart, he was interred at the Henri-Chapelle American Cemetery and Memorial in Belgium.

In his spare time, the elder Oliver Sellers coached the local Homeville Merchants, umpired games, golfed, traveled the banquet circuit, and raced homing pigeons. During World War II, Sellers raised carrier pigeons for the Army Signal Corps.43

Sellers retired from the Homestead Steel Works in 1946. His wife Catherine had died two years earlier. On January 14, 1952, at St. Joseph’s Hospital in Pittsburgh’s South Side, Oliver “Rube” Sellers passed away from cancer of the liver at age of 70. 44 At the time he lived with his daughter Clara at her home in Pittsburgh’s Glen Hazel neighborhood.45 He was buried alongside Catherine at the Jefferson Memorial Cemetery in Pleasant Hills, Pennsylvania, under a spreading honey locust.

Acknowledgments

This biography was reviewed by Bill Lamb and Rory Costello and fact-checked by Larry DeFillipo.

Photo Credits

Sellers as player: https://imageevent.com/jeffintoronto/baseballpostcards.

Sources

In addition to the sources shown in the Notes, the author used the following:

Find A Grave; https://www.findagrave.com/

Retrosheet; https://www.retrosheet.org/

Baseball Reference; https://www.baseball-reference.com/

Ancestry: https://www.ancestry.com/

Newspapers: http://www.newspapers.com/

Email correspondence from Giamatti Research Center, National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum.

Damer, Edward, Thirty-Three in Twenty-Three; The World of Rube Parnham and Other Baseball Stories, Kindle Direct Publishing, 3d ed., 2022.

Notes

1 Doncaster, Yorkshire, England, Church of England Marriages, 1754-1950, Ancestry.

2 1880 United States Federal Census for Ephraim Sellers, Ancestry.

3 “Only a Drunken Spree,” Pittsburgh Daily Post, July 19, 1884: 4.

4 “Brevities,” Pittsburgh Commercial Gazette, June 13, 1884: 4.

5 “More Cranks Are After the President,” Wilmington (Delaware) Morning News, December 3, 1903: 1.

6 Pennsylvania, U.S., Death Certificates, 1906-1972 for Ephriam Sellers, Ancestry.

7 1900 United States Federal Census for Oliver Sellers, Ancestry.

8 “Reserves Come Back Strong,” Pittsburg Post, July 21, 1901: Section 2, 2.

9 “Great Battle Is Looked For at Homestead,” Pittsburgh Gazette, June 27, 1902: 9.

10 Philip Grabowski, “Down the Line,” Pittsburgh Sun-Telegraph, August 13, 1949: 10.

11 “Homestead’s Big Ball Team,” Pittsburg Post, March 12, 1905: II-2.

12 “McKeesport Is Beaten in the Opening Game,” Pittsburgh Gazette, April 29, 1905: 9.

13 “Sharon Players Signed,” Pittsburg Press, February 13, 1907: 14.

14 “Sharon Likes Its Outlook,” Cleveland Plain Dealer, February 25, 1907: 6.

15 “One Little Bingle and No Runs for New Castle in Yesterday’s Contest,” New Castle (Pennsylvania) News, May 16, 1908: 11.

16 “Panthers Score with Christy Mathewson in Rifle Pit,” Fort Worth Star-Telegram, March 28, 1909: Sports-4.

17 “Uniontown in PA.-W. VA. League,” Pittsburgh Gazette Times, April 10, 1909: 7.

18 “O. and P. League,” Pittsburg Press, June 1, 1909: 15.

19 “O. and P. League,” Pittsburg Press, June 23, 1909: 13.

20 “O. and P. League,” Pittsburg Press, September 10, 1909: 23.

21 “Middle Fielder of M’Keesport Giants,” Pittsburg Press, June 12, 1910: Sports-8.

22 “The Pirates Wind Up at Boston Today,” Pittsburg Press, August 10, 1910: Sporting Page-12.

23 “Pirates Gain Four Points on the Cubs,” Pittsburgh Gazette Times, August 11, 1910: 9.

24 “Lake Signs Up for Next Year,” Boston Globe, August 18, 1910: 6.

25 “Pitcher Harrington Signed with Lynn,” Lynn (Massachusetts) Daily Evening Item, August 20, 1910: 7.

26 “R. Sellers Is Signed with the Champs,” Akron (Ohio) Beacon Journal, April 20, 1911: 9.

27 “Champs Win 2 Games-Stubs Easy Victims,” Akron Beacon Journal, May 15, 1911: 7.

28 “Rube Sellers Sold to Decatur Team,” New Castle News, March 27, 1912: 9.

29 “Peoria Secures Opening Battle,” Decatur (Illinois Daily Herald, May 8, 1912: 4.

30 “Rube Sellers Is Leading Hitter,” Decatur Review, May 12, 1912: 5. Article shows Sellers batting .336, but the breakdown of his hitting shows 15-for-41 and .366.

31 “Danville Deal Strengthens Club,” Decatur Review, July 18, 1912: 5.

32 “Mike Breyette May Play Here,” Decatur Review, July 18, 1912: 12.

33 “Mike Breyette May Play Here,” Decatur Review, July 18, 1912: 12.

34 “Decatur Was Far Down in Hitting,” Decatur Review, October 5, 1912: 5.

35 “Marriage Licenses,” Pittsburgh Gazette Times, October 31, 1912: 6.

36 “Filipinos Drop Opening Game to Indianapolis,” Pittsburgh Gazette Times, May 7, 1913: 13.

37 “Fils Develop Batting Streak and Win Series,” Pittsburgh Gazette Times, August 11, 1913: 8.

38 Jack Nye, “Young Heavers Are Husky Lot,” Nashville Tennessean, March 11, 1914: 12.

39 “Magnates-Players,” Pittsburgh Gazette Times, March 17, 1914: 16.

40 “Chinese Player with Homestead Steel Club,” Pittsburgh Post, April 25, 1915: 9.

41 “Amateur Baseball,” Pittsburg Press, June 20, 1915: 26.

42 “Homestead Steel League,” Pittsburgh Post, July 24, 1921: 18.

43 Julius Levin, “Most Everything,” Pittsburgh Sun-Telegraph, December 24, 1942: 14.

44 Various newspaper reports indicate that Sellers passed away on Sunday January 13. According to his death certificate he died at 12:05 AM on January 14.

45 “Obituaries,” Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, January 15, 1952: 11.