New Castle Nocks
The New Castle Nocks played in New Castle, Pennsylvania, in the Ohio-Pennsylvania League from 1907 through 1912. The nickname was a shortened form of Neshannock, the creek and township on the city's northern edge, making it one of the few minor league names in the state drawn from local geography rather than local industry.
Neshannock Creek gave its name to more than the ballclub. In the early 1800s, on a farm in the same county, the brothers John and James Gilkey developed a new potato variety from cross-pollinated stock and named it the Neshannock after the creek. It became the standard commercial potato in the United States for much of the nineteenth century, was shipped to Ireland in quantity during the Famine of the 1840s, and was gone by the century's end. Pennsylvania put up a historical marker for it in 1948.
A period listing of the circuit's nicknames for the coming season put New Castle down as the Nocks alongside Erie's Sailors, McKeesport's Tubers, and East Liverpool's Potters. Several others on that same list never took hold. Sharon was to be the Medicine Men and Akron the Tip Tops, and neither name survives anywhere in the statistical record.
Professional baseball in New Castle predated the Nocks by more than a decade. The Quakers played in the Interstate League from 1895 through 1898 at Pearson Park in Neshannock Township, a ballfield that survives today as a public park. The Outlaws followed for a single season in 1906, going 73-67 with a roster that carried an unusual number of future major leaguers for a Class C club.
The Nocks sent several players to the majors themselves, including pitcher Harry Camnitz in 1907 and 1908 and outfielder Ody Abbott, who reached the St. Louis Cardinals. The franchise was never stable. In August 1911 the club relocated to Sharon, where it finished the season as the Travelers at 35-101-1, one of the worst records in league history. A New Castle team returned for 1912 and disbanded on June 18, the same day the Connellsville Cokers folded.
Organized baseball came back to New Castle after the Second World War, when the city fielded Middle Atlantic League teams from 1948 through 1951 under three different names in four seasons. New Castle also produced Chuck Tanner, who managed the Pittsburgh Pirates to the 1979 World Series title.
