The 1899 Louisville Colonels baseball team finished with a 75–77 record and ninth place in the National League.
 Following the season, owner Barney Dreyfuss bought the Pittsburgh Pirates organization and folded his Louisville team.
 Manager Fred Clarke and most of the players moved over to the Pirates where they enjoyed much more success in the coming years.
 The Colonels, a perennial also-ran through their National League run from 1892 to 1899, appeared to be on the cusp of becoming a strong team when the National League contracted from 12 teams to 8 after the end of the 1899 season.
 Louisville started the season with a 15–37 record after 52 games, but then went 60–40 in their last 100 in the first glimpse of what was to become a strong Pirates team in the years to come.
 Many star players, including several Hall of Famers, of the first decade of the 20th Century came from the 1899 Louisville squad including Clarke, Honus Wagner, Rube Waddell, Deacon Phillippe, Tommy Leach and Claude Ritchey.
The posting system (ポスティングシステム , posutingu shisutemu ) is a baseball player transfer system that operates between Japan's Nippon Professional Baseball (NPB) and the United States' Major League Baseball (MLB), or between the Korea Baseball Organization (KBO) and MLB.
 Despite the drafting of the United States – Japanese Player Contract Agreement, unveiled in 1967 to regulate NPB players moving to MLB, problems began to arise in the late 1990s.
 Some NPB teams lost star players without compensation, an issue highlighted when NPB stars Hideo Nomo and Alfonso Soriano left to play in MLB after using loopholes to void their existing contracts.
 A further problem was that NPB players had very little negotiating power if their teams decided to deal them to MLB, as when pitcher Hideki Irabu was traded to an MLB team for which he had no desire to play.
 In 1998, the Agreement was rewritten to address both problems; the result was dubbed the "posting system".
William Jeffrey "Jeff" Johnson (born August 4, 1966) is a former Major League Baseball pitcher.
 He played with the New York Yankees for his entire Major League career.
 Born in Durham, North Carolina, Johnson attended South Granville High School, then University of North Carolina at Charlotte where he played college baseball.
 He was only one of nine people from the University of North Carolina at Charlotte to have played Major League Baseball.
 On June 1, 1988, Johnson was drafted by the New York Yankees in the 6th round (157th overall pick) of the 1988 amateur draft.
 He was listed at 6 ft in height, and 200 lb.
 in weight.
 During his three-year Major League Baseball career, Johnson batted right-handed and threw left-handed.
 He is currently the pitching coach for the West Virginia Power.
Charles Evard "Gabby" Street (September 30, 1882 – February 6, 1951), also nicknamed "The Old Sarge", was an American catcher, manager, coach, and radio broadcaster in Major League Baseball during the first half of the 20th century.
 As a catcher, he participated in one of the most publicized baseball stunts of the century's first decade.
 As a manager, he led the St. Louis Cardinals to two National League championships (1930–31) and one world title (1931).
 And as a broadcaster, he entertained St. Louis baseball fans in the years following World War II.
Aaron Daniel Blair (born May 26, 1992) is an American professional baseball pitcher for the Atlanta Braves of Major League Baseball (MLB).
 Blair attended Marshall University, where he played baseball for the Marshall Thundering Herd baseball team.
 Prior to that, he attended Spring Valley High School in Spring Valley, Nevada and played for the school's baseball team.
 The Houston Astros selected him in the 21st round of the 2010 Major League Baseball Draft but decided to go to college instead.
 The Arizona Diamondbacks selected Blair with the 36th pick of the 2013 Major League Baseball Draft.
 He was traded to the Atlanta Braves by the Diamondbacks as part of a five-player deal announced December 9, 2015.
Joseph D. Cantillon (August 19, 1861 – January 31, 1930), nicknamed "Pongo Joe", was an American manager and umpire in Major League Baseball during the first decade of the 20th century.
 He also was a longtime manager in minor league baseball.
 He was born in Janesville, Wisconsin.
Salvatore Anthony Maglie (April 26, 1917 – December 28, 1992) was an American Major League Baseball pitcher and later, a scout and a pitching coach.
 He played from 1945 to 1958 for the New York Giants, Cleveland Indians, Brooklyn Dodgers, New York Yankees, and St. Louis Cardinals.
 Maglie was known as "Sal the Barber", because he gave close shaves—that is, pitched inside to hitters.
 Coincidentally, he also sported a five o'clock shadow look.
 He also had the distinction of being one of the few players, and only pitcher, to play for all three New York baseball teams then playing in the city (Maglie's playing career pre-dated the 1962 establishment of the fourth New York major league team, the expansion New York Mets, with whom he was never affiliated).
 During a 10-year major league baseball career, Maglie compiled 119 wins, 862 strikeouts, and an 3.15 earned run average.
Charles Louis "Deacon" Phillippe (originally Phillippi) (May 23, 1872 – March 30, 1952) was a Major League Baseball pitcher who played for the Louisville Colonels and the Pittsburgh Pirates.
Dennis Dale McLain (born March 29, 1944) is an American former professional baseball player.
 He was a pitcher in Major League Baseball for 10 seasons, most notably for the Detroit Tigers.
 In 1968, McLain became the last pitcher in Major League Baseball to win 30 or more games during a season (31–6) — a feat accomplished by only 11 players in the 20th century.
Jeared Wells "Bill" Pounds (March 11, 1878 – July 7, 1936) was a pitcher in Major League Baseball.
 He appeared in just two major league games, one each for Cleveland and Brooklyn in 1903, but the only surviving images of him in a major league uniform show him with the New York Highlanders.
 Bill Pounds was born in Paterson, New Jersey, and had a long career as a minor league pitcher.
 His professional career began in 1899 when he pitched for both Binghamton and Paterson.
 After a year out of organized baseball, he played in 1901 and 1902 for two Ilion and Utica in the New York State League.
 After reportedly signing a contract to return to Utica for 1903, he was signed by Cleveland in the American League and was on their Opening Day roster.
 Pounds was brought in to pitch on May 2 in the fourth inning in Chicago when the White Stockings had opened up a big lead; he gave up seven runs (six earned) on eight hits in the 16-6 loss.
 On May 18 he was released by Cleveland and was signed shortly thereafter by the New York Highlanders.
 Pounds was in uniform with the team when the Highlanders visited Chicago for a series May 20–22.
 A photographer from the Chicago Daily News was taking pictures of the players on the teams visiting both the American League and National League ballparks, and during this visit Pounds had his image preserved for posterity.
 Before the end of the month, without having appeared in a game for New York, Pounds was sent back to Cleveland, apparently because he could not come to terms on a contract.
 On June 4 he was signed by Brooklyn of the National League, but he did not appear in a game until June 30.
 With Pittsburg ahead 12-0 after three innings, Pounds was sent in to pitch.
 He allowed five runs (four earned) in six innings on eight hits and two walks in the 17-8 loss, and gave up a long home run to Honus Wagner.
 On July 3, his contract was transferred to Baltimore of the Eastern League, along with that of Hughie Jennings and three other Dodgers.
 Pounds would never appear in another major league game; though his pitching record was unimpressive, he finished with a lifetime batting record of three hits in five at-bats.
 Late in the 1903 season, his contract was purchased by Denver, but it is unclear whether he actually played in Colorado.
 For the remainder of his minor-league career, from 1904 through 1911, he pitched for teams within a couple of hundred miles of his birth—four teams in the New York State League and two in the Tri-State League.
 In the off-seasons he would sometimes pitch for the Paterson Elks team, and he continued to pitch for them after his minor-league career had ended.
 According to The Sporting Life, “Pounds has speed and a rather good assortment of curves.
 He has not the best control in the world.”
 A few years after his career had ended, the Utica Observer described him in this way: “Bill Pounds was the champion sweater of the league.
 He perspired so much that…a miniature lake (formed) around the slab.”
 He died in 1936 in the city of his birth, aged 58.
 Early in the 21st century, the photographic archives of the Chicago Daily News were posted online.
 Although his teammates’ photographs were easily identified, the image of Pounds remained unidentified, or occasionally misidentified as Doc Adkins, for at least a decade.

Question: Which Major League Baseball pitcher was one of the star players from the first decade of the 20th Century?
Answer: Deacon Phillippe