• Card series: Pioneer Portraits II: 1875-1899
• City: Boston

Michael “Nuf Ced” McGreevy (1865-1943) was the leader of the Royal Rooters, Boston’s premier baseball and drinking club, based at McGreevy’s Third Base Saloon “1200 steps from Fenway Park.” When arguments of Braves vs. Red Sox (Americans) broke out, he ended the fight by shouting “Nuf Ced!” An ardent crank of the Boston Beaneaters for nearly two decades, McGreevy appears to have pledged his allegiance to the Red Sox for two primary reasons: Jimmy Collins, his favorite Beaneater, jumped to the Boston Americans in 1901, the inaugural season of the American League; and Ban Johnson’s new league offered cheaper tickets, enabling McGreevy and his patrons to attend more games. This switch had an enormous impact on the fortunes of professional baseball in Boston, perhaps positing McGreevy as the true Father of Red Sox Nation and foreshadowing the (Beaneaters) Braves’ move to Milwaukee 53 years later.

• Opened in 1894, the Third Base Saloon got its name to designate it as “the last stop before home”
• McGreevy was an avid collector who decorated his saloon with wall-to-wall cabinet cards, photographs and game used memorabilia
• In his SABR bio on McGreevy, Peter Nash called the Third Base Saloon, “baseball’s first true museum”
• When prohibition forced the closure of his saloon, McGreevy donated his collection to the Boston Public Library