Baseball player and manager Hugh Ambrose Jennings was the kind of colorful personality who inspired nicknames. Sportswriters called him
Ee-yah
for his famous coaching box cry and
Hustling Hughey
for his style of play. But to the nearly 100 other men from northeast Pennsylvania who followed Jennings from the coal mines to the major leagues, he was known as
Big Daddy,
not for his physical stature but for his iconic status to men desperate to escape the mines. Jennings’ story is emblematic of how the national pastime and the American dream came together for a generation of ballplayers.