From 1871 to today in nine teammates

In 1871, the first season of organized professional baseball on record, a 21-year-old infielder named Davy Force was playing for the Washington Olympics. In 2026, Kevin McGonigle made his debut. They were born more than a century apart. They’re also connected by a chain of just nine teammate links.

We found that chain by searching every roster in the game’s baseball data: 21,482 players on 3,135 team-seasons, from 1871 to today. Out of everyone who played in that first season, and everyone who debuted in 2026, no pair is closer.

The chain

1. 1Davy Force1871–1886

   teammates on the 1880 Buffalo Bisons

2. 2Arlie Latham1880–1909

   teammates on the 1909 New York Giants

3. 3Rube Marquard1908–1925

   teammates on the 1922 Boston Braves

4. 4Johnny Cooney1921–1944

   teammates on the 1944 Brooklyn Dodgers

5. 5Eddie Miksis1944–1958

   teammates on the 1958 Cincinnati Redlegs

6. 6Vada Pinson1958–1975

   teammates on the 1972 California Angels

7. 7Nolan Ryan1966–1993

   teammates on the 1991 Texas Rangers

8. 8Ivan Rodriguez1991–2011

   teammates on the 2005 Detroit Tigers

9. 9Justin Verlander2005–2026

   teammates on the 2026 Detroit Tigers

10. 10Kevin McGonigle2026

Each step is two players who were on the same roster in the same season. Read down and you travel from the age of the barehanded catcher to the pitch clock.

How it’s possible

The trick in almost every link is the same: a veteran at the end of his career shares a roster with a young player at the start of his. Arlie Latham debuted with the 1880 Buffalo Bisons, alongside Davy Force, and was still around in 1909, when he played a few games for the New York Giants as a 49-year-old coach. On that Giants team was a young pitcher in his first full season, Rube Marquard.

The rest of the chain does the same thing, over and over. Nolan Ryan pitched until he was 46, long enough to throw to a teenaged Ivan Rodriguez in Texas. Rodriguez caught until he was 39, long enough to catch a rookie Justin Verlander in Detroit. And Verlander was still pitching for the Tigers in 2026, when Kevin McGonigle came up.

The other sports

We ran the same search for the other sports in Teammate Chain, from the first season in each sport’s data to the newest debuts. The longer a sport’s history in the data, the more links it takes.

• Basketball: Joe Fulks → Paul Arizin → Tom Meschery → Spencer Haywood → Magic Johnson → Eddie Jones → Kyle Lowry → Johni Broome
• Football: Ken Stabler → Morten Andersen → Matt Prater → Michael Burton → Nik Constantinou
• Hockey: Wayne Cashman → Ray Bourque → Mike Knuble → Dmitry Orlov → Igor Chernyshov
• Soccer: Franco Cordova → Andrea Carnevale → Francesco Totti → Stefano Sabelli → Nicolae Stanciu

How we counted

Two players are linked if both appeared for the same club in the same regular season. The data covers every MLB and major-league season since 1871; every NBA season since 1946-47 (BAA included); every NFL season since the 1970 merger; every NHL season since the 1967 expansion; Europe's top five leagues since 1963-64. Baseball rosters come from the Lahman Baseball Database plus public season stats for recent years. A handful of records where two different players share a name were left out of the search, so a mix-up can’t create a shortcut. Spot a mistake? Let us know.