GOSHEN, Ohio — Descendants of Pittsburgh Pirates pitcher Sam Leever traveled from as far as Long Island and Seattle last month for a personal tour of the township where their ancestor was born, taught school and later returned to farm after a 13-year major league career.
Volunteers Jim Poe, Jane Schmidbauer and Scott Chasteen of the Goshen Township Historical Society hosted the visit July 30 at The Anchorage, the society’s museum housed in a 19th-century stone home. Leever’s cousin, Christine Leever Skrynecki, organized the trip with her sisters, Kathy Leever Gavin and Lorraine Leever Brooks, to celebrate their uncle Louis Leever’s 93rd birthday, according to the historical society’s Facebook post. The three sisters, who drove from Long Island, New York, and flew in from Seattle, wore matching “Leever Sisters” T-shirts commemorating a multi-stop family history tour that also included three other towns tied to their lineage.
Samuel Leever was born in 1871 on a Goshen farm and taught at Goshen schools for seven years before signing his first professional baseball contract at age 25, earning him the nickname “The Goshen Schoolmaster” from his Pirates teammates. He pitched for Pittsburgh from 1898 to 1910, compiling a 194-100 record and a .660 winning percentage that ranks among the highest in major league history, according to the Goshen Township Historical Society. His best season came in 1903, when he went 25-7 with a 2.06 ERA and seven shutouts to help the Pirates win their third straight National League pennant. He later returned to Goshen, farmed 70 acres and served two terms as the township’s postmaster.
The Anchorage museum maintains a permanent display dedicated to Leever’s baseball career, featuring memorabilia and photographs, according to the historical society. During the tour, family members brought their own pieces of Leever memorabilia, including baseball cards, a Domino Discs card and a Sweet Caporal pin, to compare against items in Poe’s personal collection.
The group also visited sites throughout Goshen connected to Leever’s life, including his gravestone, the schoolhouse where he taught, a bicentennial marker at Goshen High School honoring Leever and fellow Goshen native John Voll, a plaque at Jim Brown Stadium and a mural depicting Goshen’s history at The Grind. Volunteers pointed out that former National League umpire Larry Goetz, one of the officials depicted in a well-known Norman Rockwell painting, is buried 54 feet, 6 inches — the distance from a pitcher’s mound to home plate — from Leever’s grave.
“It was a tremendous day,” Skrynecki quoted her uncle as saying, in comments the historical society shared on Facebook.
The information contained in this story was obtained from the Goshen Township Historical Society.