Les McNeece

Les McNeece played for the USA at the 1936 Olympic demonstration baseball, hitting an inside-the-park walk-off home run to win the game for the World Champions team. McNeece grew up in Florida after his family moved from Nebraska. He played for the semi-pro Fort Lauderdale Tarpons, but retained his amateur status as the family worked out a deal whereby the Tarpons paid his father, and not Les.

In 1935 McNeece was chosen to play with the USA on a Japanese tour, sponsored by General Foods and Wheaties. Shortly after his return from the Berlin Olympics he was signed by the Brooklyn Dodgers and was assigned to their farm club, the Louisville Colonels, turning down a basketball scholarship to LSU. In his first season he was hit in the head with a pitch, and in his second season, with Daytona Beach of the Florida State League, he broke his leg sliding into second, and his baseball career was over.

McNeece settled in Fort Lauderdale, Florida where he married Wynona Gross. They started a dry cleaning business, Wynona’s Cleaners, and ran it for 40 years.