Ford Christopher Frick (1894-1978), the 3rd Commissioner of Major League Baseball, was a Noble County native who later attended Fort Wayne’s International Business College and lived there while on the staff of the Fort Wayne Journal Gazette as an office boy and police reporter. He attended DePauw University, where he played baseball and ran track. Following a stint as a school teacher, he turned to journalism and broadcasting in New York, where he soon befriended (and later became a ghostwriter for) Babe Ruth.

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Some highlights of his career in baseball include:

•  President of the National League from 1934 to 1951 and was tapped to be Major League Baseball Commissioner in 1951, a position he held with great honor until his retirement in 1965. 

• Oversaw a period of huge growth in baseball. Both leagues expanded from eight to 10 teams, with new ball clubs established for the first time on the nation's West Coast.

• Negotiated the first league television contracts that brought unprecedented revenue and visibility to the game.

• Was the driving force behind establishing the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum in Cooperstown, NY. He was elected into the Hall of Fame in 1970

• ​Played a key desegregating baseball, as all major-league players had to be approved by the respective league president before they were allowed on the club roster. The only person other than Brooklyn Dodgers president Branch Rickey who could formally block Jackie Robinson from crossing the sport's color barrier, except, perhaps under the “best interests of baseball” clause, was the National League president –  Ford C. Frick. This he steadfastly refused, despite tremendous pressure from both inside and outside the game to do.

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