Historical Marker
Earl Webb: Baseball Record Holder
De Rossett, White County · Tennessee
Webb's record came out of coal country. The first coalfield on the plateau opened at Bon Air in 1882, and by 1920 White County ranked sixth in Tennessee coal output. His 67 doubles in 1931 came in a 153-game season, and he finished sixth in the American League Most Valuable Player voting that year. After baseball he worked for the Consolidated Coal Company in Kentucky and managed its baseball team. He died at his home in Jamestown in 1965, back on the plateau where he began.
What the plaque says
Earl Webb: Baseball Record Holder William Earl Webb was born in White County, Tennessee, on September 17, 1897. His family moved to Bon Air and then Ravenscroft, where Earl worked in the coal mines and played baseball for local teams. He began in the minor leagues in 1921, and switched from pitching to the outfield. In the major leagues, he played with five teams between 1925 and 1933. In 1931, while with the Boston Red Sox, the left-handed batting Webb hit 67 doubles, setting a longstanding single-season record.
Where it stands
35.95031, -85.30928 · Directions
Worth the stop nearby
- Burgess Falls State Park — 17 miA day-use park on the Falling Water River, where a short trail passes three smaller falls on its way to a drop of more than 130 feet into a limestone gorge.
- Cookeville Depot Museum — 19 miThe 1909 Tennessee Central Railroad depot in Cookeville's west side, now a museum with a model of the town in 1955 and a steam engine in the yard.
- Cumberland Homesteads and the Homesteads Tower — 19 miThe largest of the New Deal's subsistence homestead communities, a plateau district of Crab Orchard sandstone houses around an octagonal stone tower that now holds a museum.
- Fall Creek Falls State Park — 20 miA New Deal park on the western edge of the Cumberland Plateau, where Cane Creek has cut a gorge and a 256-foot waterfall drops into it.