Baseball • 1900-02, Football • 1899-1900, Baseball Coach • 1921-34

Carl Lundgren served as the Fighting Illini baseball coach from 1921-34, compiling a record of 209-78-14 while winning five Big Ten titles (1921, 1922, 1927, 1931, 1934). The immortal George Huff called him “the greatest of all college baseball coaches.” Lundgren played Major League Baseball from 1902-09, and was a pitcher for the 1907 and ‘08 World Series Champion Chicago Cubs. He compiled a pitching record of 91-55 (2.42 ERA) in 179 career MLB games. Lundgren also coached baseball at Michigan from 1915-20, winning three Big Ten titles and compiling a 93-33-6 record in six seasons. He was a halfback and two-way starter for the football team in 1899 and 1900. Lundgren led the Illini to Western Conference baseball championships in 1900 and 1902. He was the 1902 UI Senior Class President. Lundgren also served the UI as assistant athletics director, and at times as business manager and acting AD. He taught at the “school of coaches” in the College of Physical Education and was the baseball coach who led Illinois on a celebrated month-long tour of exhibition games in Japan in 1928. He died of a sudden heart attack at age 54 in 1934.