NILES, Ohio –  Retired math teacher, Warren resident and Harry Stevens historian Nick Spano has been on a mission for nearly three decades to make sure the famous concessionaire and visionary's legacy isn't forgotten.

His fascination  began after reading an article in Ohio Magazine in 1993, about a man he had never heard about—who had lived just one city over from him.

“He was hotdog Harry Stevens, and they really didn't know a whole lot more, which was a shame, because he did a lot for the city of Niles,” says Spano. 

• Niles Ohio in Northeast Ohio is home to an odd nugget of baseball history. Diehard baseball fans may have heard of Harry Stevens, who is said to have invented baseball’s staple, the hot dog, but also the scorecard and even the drinking straw.
• Stevens started out as a steel worker in Niles, marketed his scorecard in Columbus before heading to New York. 
• One historian is pushing for Stevens to be nominated for the Buck O’Neil Award for his contributions to baseball. 

Stevens came to America from England in the 1880s and settled in Niles, where he worked in the steel mills.

A strike in 1887 led him to Columbus where he sold books and in his spare time, began attending Columbus Senators' baseball games.

He fell in love with the game of baseball and began marketing a score card, selling ads...and was told that a man of his talent belonged in New York.

At the time, the game of baseball was still evolving—and ballparks concessions were made up of hard boiled eggs, custard pies and ice cream.

But Stevens' introduced dachshund sausages or “red hots” as a grandstand delicacy on a cold day at New York's Polo Grounds in 1901. The rest is history. 

“He told all of his vendors, put your stuff down, go into the city and go buy all the Vienna rolls and Dachshund sausages you can. Cartoonist Tad Dorgan, a famous cartoonist at the time was in the crowd. And he was trying to draw that picture so he had a Dachshund dog in a bun, writing all kinds of versions of Dachshund and crossing it out, and he just invented the term hot dog on the spur of the moment,” says Spano. 

But Stevens wasn’t just the father of the hot dog. Baseball great Babe Ruth considered him his second father. 

“Babe Ruth as you know, was an orphan and he kind of adopted Harry as a second dad. He ended giving this to Harry Stevens and you can see a picture of all the 60 home runs, the date, the team, who he hit it off of,” says Spano. 

Niles, in the heart of Trumbull county and Stevens’ adopted home, has held an annual festival and parade for the past seven years to honor the man who created part of baseball culture.

The festival is an opportunity for people young and old to not only to indulge in Stevens’ invention, but also to learn more about the man who is arguably Niles' most celebrated resident next to president William McKinley.

“We're still a small town, but he made a big imprint not only on Niles Ohio but this whole country,” says Niles resident and President of The Avenue & Main organization Barry Steffey. 

And you never know who you'll run into at the yearly event.

Lester Stevens never met Harry, but has always been told they’re distant cousins. 

“Lately i've been paying more attention as I get older about who's who. Somebody who's real important to the world because only that one person that really came up with it. You see some of the pictures of the fellow and he kinda of, I want to think so he looks like me,” says Stevens. 

A collage of Steven's accomplishments recently graced the jerseys and memorabilia for the Mahoning Valley Scrappers—a minor league affiliate of the Cleveland Indians and long-time Valley cartoonist Rick Muccio was asked to do the honors.

“With Harry Stevens there was a ton of stuff there because hot dogs and baseball, really, it doesn't get a whole lot better than that. So I was thinking of a marriage type of thing. Animated hot dog and an animated scorecard, and it was like Harry Stevens was the match maker that brought them both together,” says Muccio. 

Some of Stevens’ artifacts are even in the Major League Baseball Hall of Fame, but the man himself is not included among the thousands of bronze statues

For now, Stevens’ legend and legacy continues to live on across the country, at every ballpark from little leagues to the major leagues. 

For more on Harry Stevens, please visit the Niles Historical Society website.