Dovydas Neverauskas Is The First Of His Kind

Dovydas Neverauskas made his big league debut for the Pirates on Monday and pitched two innings of relief with two hits and one run allowed and a strikeout.

The 24-year-old righthander’s debut was particularly notable because he was born and raised in Lithuania, a decidedly non-traditional baseball country. With the outing Neverauskas became the first player who grew up in Lithuania to play in the majors.

But was he the first player born in Lithuania to play in the majors? That was a source of controversy. The Pirates’ press release and previous news articles cited Joe Zapustas, who played two games for the 1933 Philadelphia Athletics, as the first Lithuania-born major leaguer. (He grew up in Boston).

However, as a few astute readers pointed out, Zapustas’ birthplace is listed as Liepaja, Lativa, on Baseball-Reference.com.

So which is it? Was Neverauskas the first Lithuania-born player to reach the majors? Or was it Zapustas?

Major League Baseball spokesman Mike Teevan contacted league historian John Thorn at the request of Baseball America, and on Monday night sent the following email clarifying the situation:

“Zapustas was born in Liepaja, today a major city in part of Latvia, in 1907. But when he played with the A’s in 1933 he lied about his age AND his birthplace, saying he was born in Boston in 1911. This error persisted in all the reference works from the 1951 Turkin-Thompson encyclopedia through all the editions of Total Baseball! It still stands at the SABR’s BioProject website, where his birthdate has been corrected but not his birthplace.

Zapustas was ethnically Lithuanian but was born in neighboring Latvia. At the time of his birth neither Latvia nor Lithuania existed as independent nations. When Zapustas was born in 1907 both were a part of the Russian Empire, and then after Russia collapsed in 1917 Latvia became part of the German Empire and was known as Libau. After WW I both Latvia and Lithuania became independent.

Bottom line: Dovydas Neverauskas may be the third ethnic Lithuanian to play in MLB (must count Eddie Waitkus, though he was born in Cambridge, MA … and there may well be others), but he is the first to be born there.”

So there we have it. Neverauskas has, in fact, become the first player born in Lithuania to play in the major leagues.