Where famous baseball players grew up and lived

Babe Ruth1895–1902

📍 Babe Ruth Birthplace, 216 Emory Street, Baltimore, Maryland, USA

I was born on the 6th of February 1895 at 216 Emory Street in Baltimore, in a two-storey rowhouse in the Pigtown neighbourhood — a working-class area near the B&O Railroad yards where my…

Derek Jeter1978–1992

📍 Kalamazoo, Michigan, USA

Derek Jeter was born in New Jersey in 1974 and moved with his family to Kalamazoo, Michigan, when he was four. His father, Charles, was a substance-abuse counsellor who had played shortstop…

Hank Aaron1934–1951

📍 Toulminville, Mobile, Alabama, USA

I was born in Mobile, Alabama, in February 1934, the third of eight children of Herbert and Estella Aaron, and in 1942 my father bought almost two acres of land in Toulminville, a rural…

Ichiro Suzuki1973–1991

📍 Toyoyama, Aichi, Japan

Ichiro Suzuki was born in Kasugai, near Nagoya, in October 1973 and grew up in Toyoyama, a small town in Aichi Prefecture on the edge of Nagoya, close to the airport. His father, Nobuyuki…

Jackie Robinson1922–1939

📍 121 Pepper Street, Pasadena, CA 91103, USA

I was born in Cairo, Georgia, in January 1919, the youngest of five children of a sharecropper family. My father left when I was a baby, and in 1920 my mother, Mallie, took us west by train…

Jim Thorpe1917–1923

📍 Jim Thorpe House, 706 East Boston Avenue, Yale, OK 74085, USA

I was born in 1887 in Indian Territory, near Prague in what is now Oklahoma, a member of the Sac and Fox Nation; my Indian name, Wa-Tho-Huk, means Bright Path. I grew up on the prairie…

Lou Gehrig1910–1925

📍 Washington Heights, Manhattan, New York, NY 10033, USA

I was the only one of my parents' four children to survive infancy, and my mother poured all her love and hopes into me. Heinrich and Christina Gehrig were German immigrants, and I was born…

Mickey Mantle1935–1949

📍 319 South Quincy Street, Commerce, OK 74339, USA

Commerce was a mining town, and my dad, Mutt, spent his days underground in the lead and zinc mines. He loved baseball more than anything and named me after his favourite catcher, Mickey…

Roberto Clemente1934–1954

📍 Barrio San Antón, Carolina, Puerto Rico

I was born in August 1934 in Barrio San Antón, a poor, close-knit neighbourhood in the town of Carolina, east of San Juan, Puerto Rico, the youngest of seven children of Melchor Clemente…

Shohei Ohtani1994–2012

📍 Ōshū, Iwate, Japan

Shohei Ohtani grew up in Mizusawa, now part of the city of Ōshū, a quiet farming town of rice fields and cold, snowy winters in Iwate Prefecture in northern Japan. He was the youngest of…

Willie Mays1931–1948

📍 Fairfield, Alabama, USA

I was born in Westfield, Alabama, in May 1931, a company town built by the Tennessee Coal and Iron Company outside Birmingham, where the steel mills glowed day and night. My father, William…