Fergie Jenkins

Ferguson Arthur Jenkins Jr. was born on 13 December 1942 in Chatham, Ontario, the only child of Ferguson Arthur Jenkins Sr. and Delores Jenkins. His mother's ancestors had reached Canada from the American South on the Underground Railroad and settled in Chatham. He was a talented all-round athlete at Chatham Vocational High School, excelling in track, hockey and basketball, and played baseball for the Chatham Colored All-Stars, the first all-Black team to win an Ontario amateur baseball championship.

He signed with the Philadelphia Phillies in 1962, but his career took off after the Chicago Cubs acquired him and, in 1967, turned him from a reliever into a starting pitcher. He won 20 games that season and went on to win 20 or more games for six straight years with the Cubs, from 1967 to 1972, averaging more than 300 innings a season.

His best year was 1971, when he went 24 and 13 with 30 complete games in 39 starts, struck out 263 batters and walked only 37, and won the National League Cy Young Award. He was the first Canadian, and the first Cubs pitcher, to win it. Leo Durocher called him one of the best pitchers in baseball, ever.

Over 19 seasons with the Phillies, Cubs, Rangers and Red Sox, he won 284 games and struck out 3,192 batters, and he was the first pitcher in history to finish a career with at least 3,000 strikeouts and fewer than 1,000 walks. He is the only Canadian member of the Black Aces, the group of Black Major League pitchers who have won at least 20 games in a season.

Elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1991, clearing the required threshold by a single vote, Jenkins became the first Canadian inducted at Cooperstown, a distinction he held alone until Larry Walker in 2020. He won the Lou Marsh Trophy as Canada's top athlete in 1974, entered the Canadian Baseball Hall of Fame in 1987 and was named to the Order of Canada in 1979. The Cubs retired his number 31 in 2009, and statues honour him in Chatham and outside Wrigley Field.