With a population of just 211,000, you wouldn’t expect Yonkers to hugely influence national sports. While all cities have their famous sons and daughters, it is often concentrated on one particular field unless home to a college team or training camp. Yonkers is different; throughout history, it has contributed to all major sports, from baseball to soccer and boxing to football. Indeed George Wright, born in Yonkers in 1847, played for the world’s first professional baseball team, the Cincinnati Red Stockings, and is considered a pioneer of the sport.
As we enter a new year, we thought it might be a nice time to look at four sporting figures, past and present, who have put Yonkers on the map in a range of different sports.
Ryan Meara
Meara was born and raised in Yonkers, enrolling in Fordham University in 2008. After a spell training with the English soccer team Reading, he returned to the US to play for Fordham Rams. The goalkeeper has since appeared for Long Island Rough Riders, Jersey Express and New York City FC but is now on the books of New York Red Bulls. He played 13 times for the Red Bulls in 2020 but didn’t appear in 2021. He has previously played in the CONCACAF Champions League and the MLS Cup playoff games.
Floyd Patterson
Boxer Patterson wasn’t born in Yonkers, but he has strong ties with the area and lived here during the sixties, at Kings Cross and Wyndcliffe Road in Beach Hill, according to the New York Times. He was a two-time World Heavyweight Champion, beating Archie Moore to win his first belt in 1956. He lost his belt to Ingemar Johansson in 1959, regained it in 1960m and completed a thrilling triple-header against the Swede with a sixth-round knockout in 1961. He dropped the belts to Sonny Liston in 1962, suffering the first of two first-round knockouts back to back. In 1965 he fought Ali, with the fight stopped in the twelfth.
Brian Sweeney
Brian Sweeney had a short career in baseball as a player; he made his major league debut with Seattle Mariners in 2003, moved to San Diego in 2004 and then signed with Japan’s Hokkaido Nippon Ham Fighters in 2007. He did have a minor league contract with the Mets in 2011 and has since moved into coaching. He is the Cleveland Guardians’ bullpen coach and will be hoping to win some silverware as a coach after it eluded him as a player. Their chances are slim; the Guardians are ranked as outsiders to win the World Series in the latest Bwin Sports markets. Still, we may see a star of the future come through under his watchful eye and impact MLB.
Billy Burch
Born at the turn of the 20th century, Billy Burch was another pioneer in his field, like George Wright. Burch played in the NHL for the Hamilton Tigers, New York Americans, Chicago Black Hawks, and Boston Bruins, with notable success. He won the Hart Trophy as the NHL’s most valuable player in 1924–25 and won the Lady Byng Trophy in 1926–27 as the NHL’s most gentlemanly player. In 1974, the Candian American was inducted into hockey’s Hall of Fame. Oddly, as a youth, he played football, acting as quarterback for the Toronto Central YMCA team that won the provincial junior championship.
