[2] In 1972, Shuba's major league career was featured in a chapter of Roger Kahn's The Boys of Summer, a tribute to the 1950s Brooklyn Dodgers.

[1] Kahn observed in his book that Shuba earned his nickname, "Shotgun", by "spraying line drives with a swing so compact that it appeared as natural as a smile".

[3][4] Shuba was born the youngest of 10 children to Slovak immigrants in Youngstown, Ohio, a steel-manufacturing town with a strong tradition of amateur and minor league baseball.

[7] As Shuba later recalled, an ear injury sustained while being disciplined by a teacher prevented him from entering the U.S. Army during World War II.

This rigorously observed ritual prepared Shuba to compete in the major leagues,[2] where his powerful line drives later earned him the nickname, "Shotgun".

[2] The New York Times described the historic day: On the afternoon of April 18, 1946, Robinson became the first black player in modern organized baseball when he made his debut with the Dodgers’ Montreal Royals farm team in their International League opener against the Jersey City Giants.

Congratulating a home-run hitter was a commonplace ritual, but Shuba's welcome to a smiling Robinson was captured in an Associated Press photograph that has endured as a portrait of racial tolerance.

[12] In response, Dodgers general manager Branch Rickey complained that Shuba's "power fell off", adding that the team needed "someone who can hit them over that short right-field wall in Ebbets Field".

At the peak of his playing career, Shuba delivered a pinch-hit homer in the 1953 World Series opener, which the New York Yankees won 9–5.

Ultimately, he worked up a career batting average of .259 on 211 hits in 814 trips, with 125 RBIs, 106 runs scored, and 45 doubles and 24 homers.

The couple settled in Austintown, a suburb of Youngstown, where Shuba spent 25 years working in the office of the United States Postal Inspection Service.

In the early 1970s, he was interviewed at his Austintown home by Roger Kahn, who was conducting research for The Boys of Summer, a literary tribute to the 1950s Brooklyn Dodgers.

[1] That same year, Shuba highlighted the event in his memoir, My Memories as a Brooklyn Dodger, which he co-wrote with Youngstown-area writer Greg Gulas.