Carson Bigbee: The Pirate of America’s Pastime

In a time when America was on the brink of modernization, Carson “Skeeter” Bigbee emerged from rural Oregon to become an embodiment of national transformation. Born to working parents in 1895, Bigbee’s life as a multi-sport athlete, a baseball star with the Pittsburgh Pirates, a World War I enlistee, and a World Series hero, intersected with America’s Progressive Era, the electrification of society, the First World War, and the onset of the Great Depression. His story, from hitting the decisive run in the 1925 World Series to managing in the American Girls Professional Baseball League, is a poignant reflection of ambition, patriotism, and the resilient spirit of an ever-changing nation in the early 20th Century.