Vic Willis
Near Wilmington, Delaware
Newark produced a Baseball Hall of Famer, and this is his hometown. Victor Gazaway Willis pitched in the major leagues for thirteen seasons, beginning in eighteen ninety-eight with the Boston Beaneaters, then the Pittsburgh Pirates, and finally the Saint Louis Cardinals.
He was famous for a sweeping curveball and remarkable durability. Willis completed three hundred eighty-eight of his four hundred seventy-one starts, threw fifty shutouts, and finished with an earned run average of two point six three. After he retired in nineteen ten, he came home to Newark and bought the Washington House Hotel on Main Street, running it himself until his death in nineteen forty-seven. He was inducted into the National Baseball Hall of Fame in nineteen ninety-five, and he is buried close to here in Saint John's Cemetery.
