Two Enola-area brothers hit the big time in baseball nearly 100 years ago
Their achievements and stories live on. Meet the Myers boys of Major League Baseball.
By Gabryelle Breski
Knightly News Reporter
gabryelle.breski@mymail.centralpenn.edu
Linwood Lincoln (Lynn) and William Harrison (Billy) Myers were baseball stars from the Enola area who played in the major leagues in the 1930s and 1940s, and who are well chronicled and remembered in East Pennsboro Township, and far beyond.
Photo used with permission Baseball Almanac (https://www.baseball-almanac.com)
The brothers – Lynn born Feb. 23, 1913 (many sports-information sources list 1914, but Lynn’s grave marker pictured on the website Find a Grave, and some other records, have 1913), and Billy born Aug. 14, 1910 – still have family in the area.
One telephone call to the Historical Society of East Pennsboro led to Lynn’s daughter, Barb Holley.
Holley said her dad didn’t speak about his two seasons in the major leagues, with the St. Louis Cardinals, and he typically was more interested in his time in the Twilight League in West Fairview, after he retired from professional baseball, in 1942. Holley also said Lynn was a current-day type of person. He was more concerned about what was happening daily rather than living in the past.
Both brothers enlisted in the military during World War II; however, Holley wasn’t sure what her Uncle Billy did during his time in the service. She did provide some history on Lynn’s service, though. Lynn, for example, played baseball to entertain the troops and he received pay as a soldier. They were both right-handers who played mostly short stop.
The brothers were celebrated in West Fairview, then a borough that later merged with East Pennsboro Township, when they returned home from war and from playing professional ball.
Major League Baseball’s first night game
Billy’s first major-league hit was reported in the article “The Night the Lights Came on in Baseball,” written by a member of the Historical Society of East Pennsboro. That game was played in 1935, in the first major-league night game, at Crosley Field, Cincinnati, against the Philadelphia Phillies. Not only was that hit Billy’s first, but it was the first in that game.
He received some votes for most valuable player in the National League in 1937 and in 1939, according to Major League Baseball.
Before all that glory, though, Billy was traded on Aug. 6, 1934, from the St. Louis Cardinals’ minor-league team. On Dec. 14 of the same year, he was traded to the Cincinnati Reds.
It was with the Reds that Billy played in the 1940 World Series against the Detroit Tigers – a game in which he hit a fly ball that brought the Reds the run that won the team the game (2-1) and the World Series (4 games to 3).
Billy was also one of the first professional baseball players to play on television, during the first televised game, played on Aug. 26, 1939, when the Reds split a doubleheaders with the Brooklyn Dodgers at Ebbets Field, Brooklyn, where he had to dress up in a red suit prior to the game, a requirement he did not like. He ended his major-league career with the Chicago Cubs in 1941.
More about the Myers boys
Billy was going to quit the sport in 1939 due to his pay not going in his favor. He was quoted in a newspaper story titled “Local Boys Make Good” stating, “The guys now make more in meal money than I did in salary.” However, after each home run he hit, he got a free carton of Wheaties.
After he was done playing, he returned home to West Fairview, working on the railroad as a locomotive engineer. He is a member of the Cincinnati Reds Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum and the Pennsylvania Sports Hall of Fame.
This photograph is in the public domain.
Before playing in the Major League, Billy played in the West Shore and Lower Dauphin leagues. He teamed up with another local baseball player, Walter Bashore, to play on the Harrisburg All-Stars Team. During his time before the League, he worked on the Pennsylvania Railroad, which led to a family move to Enola so Billy could continue his work with the company.
Lynn worked on the Susquehanna River, dredging coal onto barges. Both brothers were discovered while they played on local fields by the same scout from Lebanon, Charley “Pop” Kelchner, and they both started in the major leagues with the St. Louis Cardinals.
They kept playing ball
Even after his time in the minors, in the International League, and playing baseball in the Army, Lynn continued to play locally. Lynn worked closely with his brother on the railroad as a fireman and then as an engineer.
Holley, Lynn’s daughter, said people still requested his autograph as he aged.
Lynn died in Harrisburg on Jan. 19, 2000, at 86. Billy died on April 10, 1995, in Carlisle, at 84. The brothers are buried in Rolling Green Memorial Park, Camp Hill.
The Myerses displayed a love for the game more than for the fame of the National League.
The brothers’ story shows their and the nation’s love of the game from early on, and part of the Enola area’s rich baseball legacy.
Breski is president of The Knightly News Media Club @ Central Penn College.
Comment or story idea? Contact KnightlyEditors@CentralPenn.Edu.
Edited by media-club co-adviser and blog editor Professor Michael Lear-Olimpi.
