Here is a fun little data wrangle, with birthplace and date of player debut culled from the wonderful Lahman Baseball Database. For each “debut decade” from 1900 on, here are the five most popular cities of birth for MLB players.
Of course, with no west coast baseball, the early 1900s were dominated by east coast cities, with San Francisco being the first west coast city to crack a list, in the 1920s. Los Angeles made its first appearance in the top five in the 1940s, and appeared each decade from the 60s to the 90s. New York City or Brooklyn showed up in each decade from 1910 through 1960, then disappeared. California was represented by three different cities in the 70s (L.A., Oakland and Sacramento). The 1980s gave us the first top five showing by the Dominican Republic, and Santo Domingo has been the birthplace giving us the most MLBers in each of the three most recent decades. 1990 and 2000 were polar opposites of the early days, with no east coast cities making the leaderboard.
| Debut Decade | Birthplace | COUNT |
| 1900 | Philadelphia, PA, USA | 28 |
| 1900 | Chicago, IL, USA | 24 |
| 1900 | Cleveland, OH, USA | 24 |
| 1900 | St. Louis, MO, USA | 24 |
| 1900 | Cincinnati, OH, USA | 17 |
| Debut Decade | Birthplace | COUNT |
| 1910 | Chicago, IL, USA | 67 |
| 1910 | St. Louis, MO, USA | 32 |
| 1910 | Philadelphia, PA, USA | 30 |
| 1910 | Pittsburgh, PA, USA | 26 |
| 1910 | New York, NY, USA | 24 |
| Debut Decade | Birthplace | COUNT |
| 1920 | Chicago, IL, USA | 33 |
| 1920 | San Francisco, CA, USA | 30 |
| 1920 | St. Louis, MO, USA | 29 |
| 1920 | Philadelphia, PA, USA | 26 |
| 1920 | New York, NY, USA | 24 |
| Debut Decade | Birthplace | COUNT |
| 1930 | Chicago, IL, USA | 42 |
| 1930 | San Francisco, CA, USA | 24 |
| 1930 | Philadelphia, PA, USA | 18 |
| 1930 | St. Louis, MO, USA | 17 |
| 1930 | New York, NY, USA | 16 |
| Debut Decade | Birthplace | COUNT |
| 1940 | Chicago, IL, USA | 34 |
| 1940 | St. Louis, MO, USA | 28 |
| 1940 | New York, NY, USA | 21 |
| 1940 | Brooklyn, NY, USA | 20 |
| 1940 | Los Angeles, CA, USA | 19 |
| Debut Decade | Birthplace | COUNT |
| 1950 | Brooklyn, NY, USA | 26 |
| 1950 | St. Louis, MO, USA | 24 |
| 1950 | Chicago, IL, USA | 23 |
| 1950 | San Francisco, CA, USA | 19 |
| 1950 | New York, NY, USA | 17 |
| Debut Decade | Birthplace | COUNT |
| 1960 | Los Angeles, CA, USA | 34 |
| 1960 | Chicago, IL, USA | 21 |
| 1960 | Detroit, MI, USA | 20 |
| 1960 | Brooklyn, NY, USA | 18 |
| 1960 | St. Louis, MO, USA | 17 |
| Debut Decade | Birthplace | COUNT |
| 1970 | Los Angeles, CA, USA | 44 |
| 1970 | Detroit, MI, USA | 21 |
| 1970 | Chicago, IL, USA | 17 |
| 1970 | Oakland, CA, USA | 17 |
| 1970 | Sacramento, CA, USA | 17 |
| Debut Decade | Birthplace | COUNT |
| 1980 | Los Angeles, CA, USA | 39 |
| 1980 | Chicago, IL, USA | 25 |
| 1980 | Cincinnati, OH, USA | 18 |
| 1980 | Houston, TX, USA | 16 |
| 1980 | San Diego, CA, USA | 15 |
| 1980 | San Pedro de Macoris, San Pedro de Macoris, D.R. | 15 |
| 1980 | Tampa, FL, USA | 15 |
| Debut Decade | Birthplace | COUNT |
| 1990 | Santo Domingo, Distrito Nacional, D.R. | 38 |
| 1990 | Los Angeles, CA, USA | 26 |
| 1990 | Houston, TX, USA | 22 |
| 1990 | San Pedro de Macoris, San Pedro de Macoris, D.R. | 22 |
| 1990 | Cincinnati, OH, USA | 21 |
| Debut Decade | Birthplace | COUNT |
| 2000 | Santo Domingo, Distrito Nacional, D.R. | 52 |
| 2000 | Houston, TX, USA | 35 |
| 2000 | San Diego, CA, USA | 31 |
| 2000 | San Pedro de Macoris, San Pedro de Macoris, D.R. | 24 |
| 2000 | Caracas, Distrito Federal, Venezuela | 20 |
| Debut Decade | Birthplace | COUNT |
| 2010 | Santo Domingo, Distrito Nacional, D.R. | 41 |
| 2010 | Houston, TX, USA | 20 |
| 2010 | Miami, FL, USA | 16 |
| 2010 | Valencia, Carabobo, Venezuela | 14 |
| 2010 | San Diego, CA, USA | 13 |
| 2010 | San Pedro de Macoris, San Pedro de Macoris, D.R. | 13 |
this is cool, but Brooklyn is a part of New York City since 1898. It would be interesting to see NYC (Manhattan, Brooklyn, Bronx, Staten Island, Queens) as a whole, with the 5 boroughs broken out as well. Having a NY category and a Brooklyn category makes no sense. One is a borough, one is the whole city. They each borough is its own county, but manhattan is NY county, and brooklyn is kings county.
similar for Los Angeles which is 88 cities and towns in the county. Places like Arcadia, West Covina, Lakewood and Long Beach (and others) are areas in the L.A. metro area that are well known for being MLB pipelines and if total LA is counted as one, it would be largest in U.S draftees
It would be cool to see HOFers by birthplace. The Mobile (AL) Bay Bears have a neat monument to all five of theirs. For a small city, that’s impressive.