Editing Roger Connor (section)

==Early life==
Connor was born in [[Waterbury, Connecticut]]. He was the son of Irish immigrants Mortimer Connor and Catherine Sullivan Connor. His father had arrived in the United States only five years before Roger's birth.<ref>Kerr, p. 8.</ref> The family lived in the Irish section of Waterbury, known as the Abrigador district, which was separated from the rest of the city by a large granite hill. Connor was the third of eleven children born to the family, though two did not survive childhood. His younger brother, [[Joe Connor (baseball)|Joe]], also played in the majors over several seasons from 1895 to 1905. Connor left school around age 12 to work with his father at the local brass works.<ref>Kerr, p. 9.</ref>

Connor entered professional baseball with the Waterbury Monitors of the Eastern League in 1876. Though he was left-handed, Connor was initially a [[third baseman]]; in early baseball, left-handed third basemen were more common than they are in modern baseball.<ref name=Group>{{cite news|title=Group Remembers Roger Connor|url=https://news.google.com/newspapers?id=WydHAAAAIBAJ&pg=2742,203726|access-date=November 3, 2013|newspaper=The Evening News|date=February 2, 1976}}</ref> In 1878 he would transfer to the minor league Holyoke Shamrocks, where he became known for hitting home runs across the field into the Connecticut River. This so impressed Springfield baseball boss Bob Ferguson that he signed Connor onto the [[National League (baseball)|National League]] (NL) [[Troy Trojans (MLB team)|Troy Trojans]] when he bought them out in 1880.<ref>{{cite book|title=The Irish and the Making of American Sport|last=Redmond|first=Patrick R|page=255|publisher=McFarland & Company, Inc.|location=Jefferson, North Carolina|year=2014}}</ref>