Long before Xavier graduate Ryan Sweeney put Cedar Rapids back on the map by making it to the major leagues eight years ago, three men with local ties created baseball stories that few may remember but most will agree worth recounting.

All three were Cedar Rapids high school products – Dick Rozek from Immaculate Conception, and Cy Slapnicka and Earl Whitehill from the local public school system. All are now buried in local cemeteries, but their stories live on.

Rozek has the distinction of having a 1-0 career major-league record. An outstanding all-around athlete at I.C., he pitched in 29 games for the Cleveland Indians alongside Bob Feller and Bob Lemon (1950-52). In the last game of the 1952 season, Rozek was the winning pitcher against the Detroit Tigers.

The lefthander went six innings, allowing five hits and one run in an 8-2 victory. Rozek spent the last two years of his career pitching for the Philadelphia Athletics.

Rozek’s story is similar to another local product, Hal Trosky Jr. of old St. Patrick’s High School in Cedar Rapids, where he hit .667 as a senior. Trosky also had a 1-0 career major-league record, winning with two innings of relief for the White Sox against Kansas City in the last game of the 1958 season.

Trosky’s father, Hal Sr. of Norway, played 11 major-league seasons and in 1936 averaged .343, hit 42 home runs and drove in a league-leading 162 runs for the Cleveland Indians. Inexplicably, he finished 10th in the American League most valuable player voting.

Rozek went on to have an excellent business career, founding molding company Centro Incorporated in 1970. His son, Gary, now chairman of the board of the company, is a former Midwest Conference Tournament golf medalist at Coe College and a Cedar Rapids City Amateur champion.

Dick Rozek died in 2001 at age 74. He is buried at St. John Cemetery in Cedar Rapids.

I KNEW DICK ROZEK mainly because his son and I were teammates at Coe. But years ago I talked to Dick about his playing career, once writing a column about that 1-0 career record. As far as Slapnicka and Whitehill, I’m relying on conversations I had about them with former Cedar Rapids Gazette sports editor Gus Schrader and other biographical information.

Slapnicka is perhaps most famous for signing Hall of Fame pitcher Bob Feller for $1 and an autographed baseball. Feller, turning professional at 16 years old in 1935, once had a Legion battery mate named Nile Kinnick.

Slapnicka pitched only two major-league seasons and, strangely, they were seven years apart. Like Rozek and Trosky, Slapnicka had only one major-league pitching victory, that with the Pittsburgh Pirates in 1918. He also hurled for the Chicago Cubs in 1911.

Slapnicka went on to become the general manager of the Cleveland Indians (1935-40) and signed numerous major league players. Among his many discoveries aside from Feller were Rozek, Lou Boudreau, Herb Score, Bob Lemon and Amana’s Bill Zuber. Slapnicka died in 1979 in Cedar Rapids at age 93.

ANOTHER OF THE PLAYERS he discovered was Earl Whitehill, a fellow Cedar Rapids high school product.  Whitehill had a near-Hall of Fame career in 17 seasons, 10 of them with the Detroit Tigers. The lefthander had a 218-185 career pitching record and, incredibly, racked up 226 complete games. His best year was in 1933, when he had a 22-8 record and 3.33 earned-run average with the Washington Senators.

They were defeated in the World Series by the New York Giants, 4 games to 1, but Whitehill had the only win. He hurled a 5-hit shutout in Game 3, holding Hall of Famers Mel Ott and Bill Terry to a combined 0-for-7.

Whitehill was known for his curveball but also for having a fiery personality and somewhat famous wife. Violet Oliver Whitehill is thought by some to be the original model for
the Sunmaid Raisins box, although the company disputed it. She became a close friend of Clare Ruth, whose husband Babe hit 11 home runs off Whitehill during his career.

Pitching inside in 1932 to Lou Gehrig, who was in the midst of setting a record for consecutive games played, Whitehill hit Gehrig with a pitch and knocked him unconscious. The next month, Whitehill found himself in the middle of a melee during a game with the New York Yankees.

A Whitehill pitch in 1934 also struck Trosky Sr. in the ribs. But they later became good friends back in Eastern Iowa.

Whitehill died in 1954 at age 55, 10 days after his vehicle was struck by a car in Omaha. Slapnicka and Whitehill both are buried at Cedar Memorial Cemetery in southeast Cedar Rapids.

(Mark Dukes is former sports editor of the Cedar Rapid Gazette. He is co-host of The Gym Class radio show weekdays from 3-4 p.m. on KGYM-AM 1600 and FM-106.3.)