Keene: Oldest living big-leaguer calls Nebraska home

From SABR member Anne Keene at the Lincoln Journal-Star on October 30, 2019:

As another Major League Baseball season winds down, a Nebraskan is in the record books.

Val Heim, who went from the baseball fields to the farm fields outside Superior in the 1940s, is the oldest-living big-leaguer, according to Baseball Reference.

Heim, who was born in Wisconsin and played three weeks for the Chicago White Sox in 1942, is set to turn 99 Monday.

Nicknamed “Stalski,” Heim grew up not in Nebraska, but on the bitterly cold Upper Peninsula of Michigan.

At age 15, his father, a railroad conductor, arranged for him and an American Legion baseball teammate to take the early morning train to Chicago to watch ballgames at Wrigley Field.

Read the full article here: https://journalstar.com/news/state-and-regional/nebraska/oldest-living-big-leaguer-calls-nebraska-home/



Originally published: October 31, 2019. Last Updated: October 31, 2019.