62. Les Mann
Football, Track & Field, Baseball, Basketball / Lincoln / 1893-1962
QUICK FACTS:
Played for: Lincoln High, Springfield College, Nebraska City Foresters, Boston Bruins, Chicago Whales, Chicago Cubs, St. Louis Cardinals, Cincinnati Reds and New York Giants
Best athlete from Nebraska played with or against: Win Noyes. Although the two may have never met while in Nebraska, Mann and Noyes played their rookie seasons with the 1913 Boston Braves. Noyes was a pitcher from Pleasanton and four years older than Mann.
Best moment as an athlete: The Boston "Miracle Braves" became the first team to sweep a World Series, defeating the Philadelphia Athletics in 1914. With Game 2 tied 0-0 with two outs in the ninth, Mann singled in the winning run.
If Les Mann wasn't such a good baseball player, he might have swept the 1911 state track meet.
He won the 220 at state as a sophomore, but his performance at the Lincoln High interclass meet his junior year gave a glimpse of what could have been. He scored 41 2/3 points, winning the discus, 100, 200, 220, 400, low hurdles and broad jump. He took second in the pole vault and shot and tied for third in the high jump.
Mann missed the state meet that year because he was playing in baseball's MINK league with the Nebraska City Foresters. He never got another chance on the track after signing with the Boston Braves before his senior year of high school.
"Les did everything well. He was tops at football, basketball, track and baseball. He would have been equally great in other sports," Mann's close friend Scott Dye said in a newspaper account following Mann's 1962 death in a car accident.
Even though he didn't graduate from high school, Mann in the off-season attended Springfield College in Massachusetts, where he played football and received All-America honors.
He played his first game with the Braves in 1913. The next year Boston won the World Series. His pro career spanned six major league teams and 16 seasons. He retired in 1927 with a career .282 average, 44 home runs and 503 RBIs. But Mann's lasting impact on the sport came after he hung up his cleats.
He was manager of the first baseball team to play an exhibition game in the Olympics. Although no other countries participated, the U.S. team split to demonstrate the American sport to more than 125,000 fans in the 1936 Berlin Olympics.
Mann later coached basketball at Rice and Springfield and founded the National Amateur Baseball Association.
-- Doug Meigs
QUICK FACTS:
Played for: Lincoln High, Springfield College, Nebraska City Foresters, Boston Bruins, Chicago Whales, Chicago Cubs, St. Louis Cardinals, Cincinnati Reds and New York Giants
Best athlete from Nebraska played with or against: Win Noyes. Although the two may have never met while in Nebraska, Mann and Noyes played their rookie seasons with the 1913 Boston Braves. Noyes was a pitcher from Pleasanton and four years older than Mann.
Best moment as an athlete: The Boston "Miracle Braves" became the first team to sweep a World Series, defeating the Philadelphia Athletics in 1914. With Game 2 tied 0-0 with two outs in the ninth, Mann singled in the winning run.
