Madeline Gearheart | July 5, 2022

Who in your state played their professional sport for the longest time?

The Major League Baseball (MLB) has been around for decades, and in turn, featured many players with careers ranging from very short to very long. Those longer than average careers caught the eye of the team at USDISH: We wanted to find out which athlete played the longest amount of time or the most amount of games in baseball from each state.

Even with player and owner lockouts in baseball’s history, baseball athletes managed to put in significant years on the diamond. When the average length of a baseball career amongst our list was nearly 21 years, you know some players exceeded that tenure. From Cap Anson of Iowa to Nolan Ryan of Texas, who both played for 27 years in the majors, check out which baseball athlete in your state played the most in America’s National Pastime.

Methodology

USDISH used pro-reference from major U.S. sports to get information about the length of each athlete’s professional career in time as well as how many games they played.

• https://www.baseball-reference.com/bio/

Some states might be missing, meaning there was no athlete from that state that met the criteria, or no information was available on the reference pages.

Interesting Findings

• Twenty-seven years was the longest of any player across all four major sports, and baseball had two of them. From 1871 to 1897, Cap Anson of Iowa played for the Chicago White Stockings, even when they rebranded to the Chicago Colts. Nolan Ryan of Texas played from 1966 to 1993 and stayed close to home, playing for the Houston Astros and Texas Rangers most of his career.
• On the other end of the spectrum, Dick Ellsworth of Wyoming played for 13 years from 1958 to 1971, the shortest career on our list of longest careers per state. He only had 15 other players from the Cowboy State to compete with, the smallest number of baseball players coming out of a state.
• 32 of the 70 players on our list were inducted into the Hall of Fame. Some more recognizable names include Babe Ruth (Maryland), Willie Mays (Alabama), and Ricky Henderson (Illinois). 
• No state produced more long-tenured athletes than Alabama with four, including Mays, Henry Aaron, Don Sutton, and Early Winn—all 23-year careers, all Hall of Famers.

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