John Kuhel was born in Cleveland and developed his skills on the city’s sandlots.  He played professional baseball for the Kansas City Blues at the age of 19, helping them to the Little World Series title in 1929. He was sold to the Washington Senators for the then-huge sum of $50,000 in 1930 and in 18 seasons with the Senators and the Chicago White Sox he hit .277 and was tabbed one of baseball’s all-time best fielding first basemen. His finest season came as a member of Washington’s 1933 American League champions, when he hit .322 and drove in 107 runs. He went on to manage the Senators in 1948 and 1949, then managed the Blues for two years before entering private business.

Norbert “Nobby” Lewandowski could have served as the poster boy for Cleveland’s lauded amateur baseball program in the mid-20th century. He began competing in the program’s Class F league as an elementary school student in Cleveland’s Slavic Village and worked his way up to the Plain Dealer-sponsored AAA league. Along the way, using the skills he developed on the sandlots, he earned four baseball letters at Benedictine High, which in turn earned him Kent State University’s first baseball scholarship and four more letters there. He pitched in the Pittsburgh Pirates farm system from 1960-1962, then returned to the sandlots in 1963 to start for perennial league champion Wenham Truckers until 1970. During that time he was called “the most dominant pitcher in Ohio amateur baseball during the 1960’s era” by a Plain Dealer sportswriter.