[BillyCoxDodgers3B]

This is one of the most jaw-dropping baseball facts I ever personally unearthed:

While researching a bunch of players during a very hectic week of going over the Heilbroner Baseball Bureau information cards when they were together in their entirety for the final time, I took thousands of photos of cards of interest. These cards all had the players' home addresses on them from when they first started in pro ball.

There was a gentleman named Rollie Miller whose MLB career consisted of 2 IP for the 1941 Senators. He grew up in a tiny house in St. Louis.

I have this curiosity about certain blighted US cities in relation to former addresses of ballplayers. If I'm dealing with cities like St. Louis, Baltimore, Detroit, and the like, I hop on Google Streetview to see if the house still stands and what the neighborhood looks like in the present day. I did this with Rollie Miller's childhood home. It was in shambles, and was at the time listed for some paltry sum of $14 or $19K. Its most memorable feature was this green metal awning over one window which had a white letter monogrammed on the front.

Time goes by. Maybe a few weeks, maybe a few months. I'm still poring over these photos I took of the Heilbroner cards. Another MLBer with a St. Louis address comes along in my research. Again, I type the address into Streetview. It's the exact same house as Rollie Miller's! Same green monogrammed awning, same asking price. Rollie Miller was white. His parents must have sold the place and at some point the neighborhood transitioned from white to black, and this later, black player's family moved into the Rollie Miller house and spawned a Major Leaguer of their own!

Unfortunately, I can't for the life of me recall who this player was, but have a recollection that he debuted in the late 1950's. That, coupled with his ethnicity and living in St. Louis definitely narrows it down, but I can not locate the photo I took of his Heilbroner card with the same address. It will turn up again when I'm researching something unrelated.

Just think of that! This has to be the only case of two completely unrelated Major Leaguers being raised in the same house, a generation apart. This is something that nobody would have ever known if it wasn't for my unrelated interest in blighted neighborhoods.