“Home Run” Joe Marshall was born in Audubon, MN on February 19, 1876. He broke into professional baseball in the Red River Valley League in 1897. Despite his 5-foot-8, 170-pound frame, Marshall was one of the preeminent minor league sluggers of the Deadball Era. He led all of organized baseball with 25 (officially) or 26 home runs for the San Francisco Pirates in 1903. For comparison, the Boston Americans’ Buck Freeman led the major leagues with just eight round-trippers that year.
Despite his success at lower levels, Marshall performed poorly in two brief major league stints, first in 1903 with the Pittsburgh Pirates, and again in 1906 with the St. Louis Cardinals.
Terry Bohn wrote about Marshall for the SABR BioProject (click here).
And CLICK HERE for some interesting blog posts by Jeff Bozovsky, author of Divorcees, Barmaids, and Cranks: The 1897 Red River Valley League.
