Luke Warneke, from 1907 to 1913, was in charge of improving the county roads and, using the newly acquired road graders drawn by eight mules, he made major improvements to the roads throughout the county, transforming them from dirt trails often overgrown by brush, pocketed by mud holes, and punctured by tree stumps, to passable, graded two-lane ( wagon ) roads — although still unpaved.

Warneke mused that he would win " about a half dozen games " during the regular season.

As a converted pitcher in his first professional season, Warneke posted a 1928 combined record for Laurel and Alexandria of 6 wins, 14 losses, with a 5. 32 ERA in 176 innings pitched.

Warneke returned to Alexandria for the 1929 season and posted a 16 – 10 record, with a 3. 09 ERA in 245 innings pitched.

On August 23, just before the Cotton States season closed, the Associated Press carried a story announcing that Warneke had been sold to the Cubs " for $ 10, 000 or more ," the highest price ever paid for a Cotton States League player.

The Cubs had rallied for two runs in the ninth to tie the score 5 – 5 and, having used eight pitchers in the first four games of the season and another two in this game, sent Warneke out in the top of the tenth.

After the 1931 season, Warneke returned home to the family farm in Owley and invested part of his summer pay in 200 feeder cattle at $ 2. 00 a head.

Warneke opened the season with five straight complete game victories, helping the Cubs to a 17 – 6 first-place start to the season.

On August 11, Warneke started, but did not win, a 3 – 2 extra inning victory in which the Cubs leapfrogged over the Pirates into first place, where they remained for the last 47 games of the season.

Major American newspapers of the day called Warneke the outstanding National League pitcher of the 1932 season and The Sporting News ( which had hailed Warneke as " a great pitcher, such as pops up once in a lifetime ") named him as one of two pitchers to its 1932 All-Star team, honors foreshadowing the then non-existent Cy Young Award.

This was the only season in which Warneke and fellow Arkansas phenom pitcher Dizzy Dean were on the same team.

A reporter once asked Alston about his playing record ; he said, " Well, I came up to bat for the Cards back in ' 36, and Lon Warneke struck me out.

Several future major leaguers played for the Keystones, owned by the Chicago Cubs from May 1927 until the end of 1930, including shortstop Bill Jurges and pitcher Lon Warneke.

* " Nephele / PACTs: A Programming Model and Execution Framework for Web-Scale Analytical Processing " -- paper by D. Battré, S. Ewen, F. Hueske, O. Kao, V. Markl, and D. Warneke from TU Berlin published in Proc.

Bonneau competed for the first time on tour outside of Canada in April, at the San Luis Potosí Challenger in San Luis Potosí, losing in the first round in both singles ( to Tomm Warneke ) and doubles ( partnering Burke ).

Lonnie ( Lon ) Warneke ( March 28, 1909 – June 23, 1976 ) ( pronounced WARN-a-key ), nicknamed the " The Arkansas Hummingbird ," was a Major League Baseball player, Major League umpire, county judge, U. S. military serviceman, and businessman from Montgomery County, Arkansas, whose career won-loss record as a pitcher for the Chicago Cubs ( 1930 – 36, 1942 – 43, 1945 ) and St. Louis Cardinals ( 1937 – 1942 ) was 192 – 121.

Warneke pitched for the National League in the first Major League Baseball All-Star Game in 1933, hitting the first triple and scoring the first National League run in All-Star game history.

Warneke pitched in two World Series for the Cubs ( 1932, 1935 ), compiling a record of 2 – 1, 2. 63.

After retiring as a player in 1945, Warneke was an umpire in the Pacific Coast League for three years and then in the National League from 1949 to 1955.

Because of his stature, Warneke played first base for the high school team.

Warneke also played for the Mount Ida Athletics, a squad that played Montgomery County area teams.

Warneke got a job delivering telegrams by bicycle for Western Union.

In Spring 1928, Warneke approached the president of the Houston Buffaloes, a Texas League baseball team in the St. Louis Cardinals organization, and asked for a tryout as a first baseman.

At camp, Buffaloes manager Frank " Pancho " Snyder ( former catcher for the Cardinals and New York Giants ) took a look at Warneke and told the nineteen year old that he had the arm of a pitcher.

After Snyder's evaluation, Warneke was sent off to pitch for the Laurel Cardinals of the Cotton States League.

Despite such numbers, Warneke would never appear in another minor league game ; instead he played at the major league level for the next fourteen years.

Among his teammates on Reading was infielder Billy Jurges, who would play in the major leagues for seventeen years, including six seasons ( 1931 – 36 ) with Warneke as a Cub.

Lon Warneke appeared in one major league game for the Cubs in 1930.

Although Warneke was not sent down to the minors, and never saw minor league service again in his career, he didn't pitch again for the Cubs for two months.

Whatever the figure, Lonnie " Country " Warneke reported to the Chicago Cubs spring training facilities on Santa Catalina Island, California in late-February 1930, a month before his twenty-first birthday.

The Cubs could not make up the deficit and lost 7 – 5, with Bill (" Wild Bill ") Hallahan once again recording the win — and Warneke the loss.

Warneke played in Game 1 of the 1931 Chicago City Series, in which 43-year-old Urban ( Red ) Faber of the White Sox shut out the Cubs 9 – 0 at Wrigley Field before a crowd of 15, 000.

Instead, Warneke led the National League in wins ( 22 ), earned run average ( 2. 37 ), shutouts ( 4 ), and winning percentage (. 786 ), leading the Cubs to the National League Pennant and placing second in Most Valuable Player ( MVP ) Award voting.

From mid-June to late July, Warneke ran off a nine game winning streak, all complete games, in a span of 44 Cubs games in which the rest of the pitching staff went 14 – 21.

On just two days rest, with the Cubs down three games to none, Warneke was called upon to relieve in the first inning of Game 4 ; he departed in the fourth inning with the Cubs ahead.

In October 1936 the Cubs traded Warneke to the St. Louis Cardinals for infielder Ripper Collins and pitcher Roy Parmelee.

Without Warneke the Cubs finished 93 – 61, in second place, three games behind the New York Giants.

The sale was initially denied by the Shreveport organization but then confirmed by telegraph to the Alexandria Daily Town Talk a few days later by Kilduff, although he stated the sales price of Warneke was $ 7, 500.

Warneke slumped to the ground but suffered no serious damage, although he did have to report to the hospital and receive a couple stitches.

Warneke is the only major leaguer who has both played and umpired in an All-Star Game ( umpired in 1952 ) and a World Series ( umpired in 1954 ).

Because the school in Owley went only through " middle school " years, Warneke attended the nearest high school, that in Mount Ida.