Henry Eugene "Gene" Bearden (September 5, 1920 - March 18, 2004) was a left-handed knuckleball pitcher in Major League Baseball who completed a remarkable rookie season by closing out the Cleveland Indians' last World Series championship in 1948. Bearden was born in Lexa, Arkansas [1]. His boyhood idol was Lou Gehrig and he learned baseball on the Tennessee sandlots. In the minors, he played for manager Casey Stengel with the Acorns when the team was the property of the New York Yankees. The Yankees traded Bearden to Cleveland after the 1946 season.