The Morgan clan obviously had the national pastime on their minds when they named this street on their 5 acre property in 1945. Patriarch Stephen W. Morgan (1879-1962) was a carpenter from Missouri; he and his wife Minnie (née Bemoll, 1890-1975), a Kansan, moved to El Monte in 1922 from Kansas City, KS. Not much is known about the couple themselves, but by 1945 their sons Dick (1927-2015) and Tom (1930-1987) were star baseball players at El Monte High. (No such distinction for elder siblings Beverly and Jack.) Dick would spend years in the minors while Tom made it all the way to the big leagues, debuting as a pitcher with the New York Yankees in 1951 and staying with them through 1956 – although he left for a season and a half when the Army drafted him. (He wasn’t shipped to Korea but to Fort Ord, where he pitched for their team.) Tom Morgan finished his career in 1963 as a founding member of the Los Angeles Angels and spent the rest of his life living in Palos Verdes and working as a pitching coach.
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