Hall of Fame Major League Baseball Player. Born John Dwight Cheesbro in Houghtonville, a village in North Adams, Massachusetts. He was the fourth of five children of Chad Brown Chesebrough, and Martha Jane Fralensburgh. In 1892, Jack began playing for a sandlot ball team in Houghtonville. He worked in 1894 as an attendant at the Middletown State Homeopathic Hospital in Middletown, New York in order to play for the Asylums, the team representing the mental hospital. There, an inmate gave him the nickname "Happy Jack", due to his pleasant demeanor. Jack began his career in the Minor Leagues, moving a lot within the minor leagues due to leagues folding or disbanding. During his minor league career he played for Albany Senators, Johnstown Buckskins, Springfield Maroons, Roanoke Magicians, he pitched the remainder of the 1896 season in Cooperstown, New York for the Cooperstown Athletics. There, the local newspaper shortened his last name to "Chesbro" so that it would fit in the box score. From 1897 to 1899 he pitched for the Richmond Bluebirds. In July 1899 he made his Major League debut with the Pittsburgh Pirates. He recorded a 6–9 win-loss record for the 1899 Pirates. After the season, in December, 1899, Jack was traded to Louisville Colonels for Honus Wagner, Fred Clarke, Bert Cunningham, Mike Kelley, Tacks Latimer, Tommy Leach, Tom Messitt, Deacon Phillippe, Claude Ritchey, Rube Waddell, Jack Wadsworth, and Chief Zimmer. The Louisville club dissolved that offseason, and Chesbro, Fox, Madison and O'Brien were assigned to Pittsburgh in March as the National League (NL) reduced from 12 to eight teams. After going 15–13 for the 1900 Pirates, Jack won 21 games for the 1901 Pirates, while leading the National League with six shutouts. He went 28–6 with a 2.17 earned run average (ERA) for the 1902 Pirates, leading the National League in wins and shutouts. The Pirates won the National League pennant in 1901 and 1902. At the end of the 1902 season, the upstart American League (AL) began to entice National League stars to join their league by offering competitive salaries. Jack agreed to sign with a new AL franchise, the New York Highlanders (presently known as the New York Yankees), for the 1903 season. Jack pitched the Highlanders' first game. He finished the 1903 season with a 21–15 record. He began throwing a spitball in the 1904 season, which he learned from Elmer Stricklett, the inventor of the spitball. Jack also began working on a "slow ball". That year, he started 51 games and finished 48 while posting a 1.82 ERA, striking out 239 batters, and recording 41 wins and 48 complete games over 454 innings pitched, setting MLB records for wins, complete games, and innings pitched in a season. That year, no other pitcher in the league won more than 26. Jack won 14 straight games from May 14 through July 4, a New York franchise record that stood until Roger Clemens broke it in 2001. His 239 strikeouts remained a team record until Ron Guidry struck out 248 in 1978. On the last day of the season, in a game against the Boston Americans (now known as the Boston Red Sox), he threw a wild pitch in the top of the ninth inning, allowing the winning run to score from third base and causing the Highlanders to lose the pennant to Boston. The ruling on this play was very controversial. He started 51 games, completed 48 and was the victor in 41 while hurling 455 innings. From 1901-06, he won 154 games, averaging 25 per season. Hurling for pennant winners in Pittsburgh and New York, Jack was a league leader in winning percentage three times; wins, appearances and games started twice each; and once each in complete games, innings and shutouts. Jack returned to Massachusetts during the 1910 Major League Baseball season, along with his wife Mabel Suttleworth whom he married in 1896, where he worked on a farm in Conway, Massachusetts that he purchased a decade prior. Jack was inducted into the National Baseball Hall of Fame in 1946 by the Veterans Committee. He passed away suddenly from a cerebral hemorrhage at his farm in Conway, Massachusetts, at the age of 57.