The goal of every young and upcoming Houston Buff from 1923 through 1958 was to play well enough in the Texas League to either move up the following season to AAA ball, or even better, to do so well that that they went straight on up to the roster of the St. Louis Cardinals. I’m bracketing the era as 1923 through 1958 for one simple reason: That’s the time period in Buffs history in which the Cardinals either controlled or owned the futures of all ballplayers who passed through Houston professional baseball.
In our featured photo, shortstop Don Blasingame (far left), outfielder Russell Rac (center), and outfielder Rip Repulski (far right) were certainly no variants from that common aspirational goal. In this picture, from what most likely is the spring of 1955, the three eager Buffs shown here pause together for their own “raring-to-go” pictorial on baseball ambition. Two of the three young men shown here would play on to see that dream come true.
Don Blasingame enjoyed a 12-year MLB career (1955-66) as a middle infielder for the the Cardinals, Giants, Reds, Senators, and Athletics, one that was highlighted by a 1961 World Series appearance with the Reds. Rip Repulski hit .269 with 106 homers over nine seasons (1953-61) with the Cardinals, Phillies, Dodgers, and Red Sox.
The third man, Russell Rac, never got a single time at bat in the big leagues in spite of some pretty good hitting and fielding success with the Buffs in seven of his eleven season (1948-58) all minor league career. He began in Houston in 1948 – and he left as a Buff ten years later with a .312 season average, 12 homers, and 71 runs batted in for 1958. Few, if any, other players spent as many seasons as an active member of the Houston Buffs roster. Russell Rac went back to Galveston and into business from baseball following the 1958 season, where he continues to live in retirement as a man whose heart still belongs to baseball.
Once upon a time, Russell Rac also had a moment in Latin American winter ball that few hitters ever have, anywhere. He hit four home runs in a single game. I know he did because he told me he did once at a baseball dinner reception and I have no reason to doubt the word of this very good man. If I can ever recapture the details of where, when, and for whom he performed this rarest of baseball feats, I promise to report the whole story here on WordPress.Com in a fresh article about what had to be the most amazing day in the career of former Houston Buff Russell Rac.
Russell Rac was certainly good enough over time to have earned an opportunity to play in the big leagues, but the breaks simply weren’t there for him in the crowded talent pipeline that once was the St. Louis Cardinals farm system – and during an era in which there were only sixteen major league clubs, not the thirty separate organizations that exist today.
Many of the older players who remain with us from the 1940s and 1950s will tell you. – You had be both good and lucky to make it to the big leagues back in the day. – You also had to play hurt. A former Houston Buff, the late Jim Basso, once put it to me this way: “You take a day off to heal a sore arm or a leg cramp back then and some other guy’s going to be wearing your jock strap and sitting at your locker when you come back!”
Another former player from the Dodger organization, Larry (now Lawrence) Ludtke, told me the same thing in these words: “I pitched for the big club down in Florida until my arm fell off. When it finally didn’t heal, I just had to look for another line of work. That’s how things were back then. You tell them your arm hurt back then and they would just look behind you in line to the next guy and holler out, ‘Next!’ ” Ludtke may have caught his career break right there in 1956 when a damaged arm forced him off the pitching mound and out of baseball. He went on from there to become Lawrence Ludtke, a Houston-based, world renowned sculptor.
God’s Grace through serendipity works things out in it’s own curious, but always amazing way – and that’s a truth that lands on all of us, not just professional baseball players. We only need open eyes to see it working in all things. If we don’t see it, it’s just because we are still in the painful lessons tunnel and haven’t yet come to the light on the other side of whatever the big obstacle mountain may be.
Tags: Baseball, culture, History, Houston, St. Louis Cardinals
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