Russell highlights Charleroi baseball history in book
By Jeff Oliver
MVI Sports
Not every local story that came out of the COVID-19 pandemic was bad.
A case in point is Steve Russell’s experience.
Russell, the executive chairman of the Mid Mon Valley All Sports Hall of Fame, found himself with plenty of time on his hands while he was quarantining in his home for nearly a year because of the virus.
An avid sports history enthusiast whose specialty leans toward baseball, Russell decided to dig into his archives with the idea of writing a baseball history book.
“I wasn’t sure at first which community to concentrate on because in the early days, every community had a lot going on with baseball. Back in the day, baseball was THE sport in every community in the Mid Mon Valley,” Russell said. “But as I sifted through 35 or 40 years worth of documents and history I have collected, one community kept coming to the forefront – and it was Charleroi. It was uncanny. So, that’s what I went with.”
With the help of a few close associates and resources, Russell went to work putting together Charleroi, Pennsylvania Baseball History, a historic compilation of professional, amateur, American Legion and high school baseball played in the borough and beyond going all the way back to the early 1900s.
The book, which Russell wrote for the MMVASHOF, is loaded with information and old photos from the many fields which were prevalent in the community going back to the early 1900s.
“The deeper I dug, the more fascinating things I found out,” said Russell. ‘One of the big things I found out was how many people who slipped through the cracks and should have been put in our Hall of Fame a long time ago. The more research you do, the more people you find who are very deserving and should be in there.
“We missed a lot of people and the fact is that had we not taken the time to research and put this book together, those names would have been lost forever.”
To read the rest of the story, please see a copy of Saturday’s Mon Valley Independent, call 724-314-0035 to subscribe or subscribe to our online edition at http://monvalleyindependent.com.
