James McClure Baseball

The McClure-Stuart family has played such a pivotal role in Lake Forest’s history that it’s difficult to imagine their arrival in town may have hinged on the outcome of a single baseball game. James Gore King McClure was a standout baseball player in the early days of the sport; he played on a team called the Nationals in his hometown of Albany, and for the team at Yale that defeated Harvard 23-22 in 1867. When the Presbyterian elders were considering dozens of possibilities to fill First Church’s pastor vacancy in 1881, one name stood out to Charles Holt, because of that famous baseball game.