User:Robinbellamy/Steve Chekaluk

Steve Chekaluk was a Canadian born Pacific Coast Leauge baseball pitcher who pitched for the Seattle Indians (Pacific Coast Leauge) during their 1925 season.

Press releases from the Seattle Indians which appeared nation wide in newspapers, including The Police Gazette,claimed Chekaluk was 100% Eskimo in professional baseball. In publicity photographs Chekaluk posed on the pitcher's mound wearing an Eskimo costume. Sportwriters used terms like "wild" to dresribe his style of playing. In fact, Steve Chekaluk was actually Stephen Czykaluk, a Ukranian speaking child of Austro-Hungarian Emprire immigrants. Steve Chekaluk was a Caucasian with rugged Slavic features, similar in appearance to actor Charles Bronson.

On Janurary 9, 1900 Steve Chekaluk was born Stephen Czykaluk in Wostock, Alberta, Canada.

Chekaluk's parents were Michel Czykaluk (b. 1859) and Maria Czykaluk (b. 1861) like his older brothers Niccolas Czykaluk (b. 1887) and Demtrios Czykaluk (b. 1894) were born in the Ukranian portion of the Austro-Hugarian Empire.

At the time of Chekaluk's birth Wostock, Alberta, Canada was a newly established farming settlement made up of immigrants from the Austro-Hungerian Empire provinces of Galicia and Bukovina. Slavic immigrants began settling on Wostock, Alberta, Canada homesteads in 1892.


 * perhaps Bukovina or Galicia.

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