Pete Gray — One-Armed Major Leaguer

The athletic fields along Front Street are a fitting place to remember Pete Gray, one of the most unlikely figures in professional baseball history. Born Pete Wyshner in Nanticoke's Hanover section in nineteen fifteen, Gray lost his right arm in a childhood accident. Rather than step away from the sport he loved, he taught himself to catch and throw with his left hand alone, tucking his glove under his stump in a single fluid motion between catches.

His talent was real. In nineteen forty-four he was named Most Valuable Player of the Southern Association while playing for the Memphis Chicks. The following year the St. Louis Browns brought him to the major leagues, where he played seventy-seven games as an outfielder and batted two hundred eighteen. For thousands of disabled veterans returning from World War Two, Pete Gray's presence on a big-league roster was more than a sports story. It was evidence that an incomplete body was not an impossible one.