A native of West Virginia, Gainer played professional baseball, primarily as a first baseman, for 21 years from 1909 to 1929, including 10 seasons in Major League Baseball for the Detroit Tigers (1909, 1911-1914), Boston Red Sox (1914-1917, 1919), and St. Louis Cardinals (1922). In his first full year in the major leagues, he drew praise for his fielding and was batting .302 when he was struck by a pitched ball and sustained a broken wrist. Gainer suffered from the wrist injury and other injuries over the next several seasons.\n', '

In 1914, Gainer was sold to the Boston Red Sox. He played for Boston teams that won the World Series in consecutive seasons in 1915 and 1916. He had the third highest batting average on the Red Sox in 1915 (a .295 average trailing only Tris Speaker and Babe Ruth) and second highest in 1917 (a .308 batting average second only to Ruth). He had the game-winning hit in the 14th inning of Game 2 of the 1916 World Series. He spent the 1918 season in the United States Navy during World War I and compiled a .251 batting average in two major league seasons following his discharge. In 10 major league seasons, Gainer appeared in 548 games, 444 of them at first base, and compiled a .272 batting average.\n', '

Gainer was born in Montrose, West Virginia, in 1886. As a young man, he worked as a carpenter in Elkins, West Virginia, and played baseball as a shortstop in Elkins.\n', '

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