A 30-year search for a long-lost baseball player comes to an unexpected end: ‘I could finally exhale’

SEVEN HILLS, Ohio — For four years, the snifter sat untouched on the second shelf of Randy Kula’s dining room cabinet. He wiped away the dust with a kitchen rag and then rummaged through his fridge for a beer.

No luck. Kula hadn’t prepared for this celebratory swig. He was convinced it would never happen.

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He finally emerged from his basement with the only brew in his house: a Conway’s Irish Ale, from the Cleveland-based Great Lakes Brewing Co., a fitting find for a toast to an elusive Irishman who, for decades, kept Kula puzzled and possessed.

Kula snapped off the lid with a bottle opener fashioned from a seat at old Cleveland Stadium, where the Indians played for more than 60 years. He poured until the copper liquid and layer of foam covered the sentence on the side of the glass, seven words that have vexed him all these years.

Where in the world is Shorty Gallagher?

Kula refused to christen the glass until he could answer that riddle. In a navy Cleveland baseball polo, he sipped his beer and beamed as a 35-year journey culminated in this moment.

In the ’90s, Kula set out to collect a photo of every player to appear in a game for the Cleveland franchise, a charter member of the American League in 1901. He located photos of club cornerstones and of little-known part-timers, of Gen X sluggers with tobacco lodged in their cheeks, and of pre-World War I pitchers in wool jersey tops. He found photos of household names like Bob Feller and Albert Belle, as well as old-timey characters like Braggo Roth and Bris Lord.

Over the years, he whittled his targets from more than 2,000 to a few hundred, to 50, to 20, to a handful, and then, for the last 21 years, just one: Charles William “Shorty” Gallagher, who spent one afternoon in the majors on Aug. 13, 1901.

Shorty has hidden in baseball’s shadows ever since.

Kula began his pursuit in his 20s, and for a long time, the chase — even the