The Pecan Park Eagle

Jerry Witte …  Larry Miggins … Frank Mancuso … Solly Hemus! From left to right, that’s the order of these four men in this 1998 photo from the Houston Winter Baseball Dinner. Sadly, two of the men shown here, Jerry Witte (2002) and Frank Mancuso (2007), are gone now on the date of  this 2009 writing. God rest their souls as those of us who loved them keep their memories alive as best we are able.

Those four men could have comprised a carving of my own personal Mount Rushmore of early baseball heroes. During the era of my kid fan days at old Buff Stadium in Houston over the post World War II zenith years of minor league baseball, these were the guys whose play, whose very names, mind you, just worked upon me electrically, drawing me to the ballpark like so many magnets – and as as often as possible.

As I wrote only yesterday, Jerry Witte (Buffs, 1950-52) was the “Darth Vader Comes Home to the light” figure of the group. When Jerry joined the Buffs in 1950, after first slugging the bejabbers out of our pitching staff during his 1949 fifty home run year for the Dallas Eagles, and if there had been a Darth Vader around back then to conjure up as an image, that is exactly how it felt to me as a 12 year old kid when I got the news that June 1950 summer morning of Jerry Witte’s assignment to the Buffs by the parent Cardinals. I was so excited I couldn’t even finish my breakfast. I had to hit it outside to the sandlot, asap, so I could start talking up a trip to nearby Buff Stadium with my fellow members of the Pecan Park Eagles club. We all just knew that that the big righthanded slugging first basemann Jerry Witte was going to turn out to be the Buffs’ version of Babe Ruth – which he pretty much did in 1951 when his 38 homers led Houston to the Texas League pennant.

Larry Miggins (Buffs, 1949, 1951, 1953-54), the hard-hitting righthanded left fielder wasn’t around in 1950, but he returned in 1951 to power-team with Jerry Witte as the duo of sluggers who would pace the Buffs’ offenseive charge on the ’51 pennant. Whereas Witte polled those Ruthian Rainbow shots, Miggins laced those Gehrig Guidewire homers that simply roped their ways over the fence – as they did on 28 separate occasions off the Irish spring wrist action swinging of the Gaelic slugging prince. Miggins was even known to sing prior to some games as part of special event programs at Buff Stadium, warbling out a beautiful Irish tenor version of such classics as “When Irish Eyes Are Smiling.” I consider myself lucky today to include Larry Miggins among my special handful of dearest old friends in the world – and that friendship extends to his lovely wife Kathleen and the whole very large Miggins family.

Frank Mancuso (Buffs, 1953) arrived last as a Buff but he got here first in my mind, long before baseball. You see, we lived just don’t the street on Japonica in Pecan Park from Frank’s mother all the while I was growing up. My mom used to take Frank’s mom shopping with her. So, when someone who was practically a neighbor, vis-a-vis his mother, joined the Buffs, it was almost as though one of our own Pecan Park Eagles finally had made it onto the Buffs roster.  What a thrill it was seeing Frank behind the plate as a Buffs catcher, and not wearing one his former foe uniforms from San Antonio or Beaumont. The fact that Frank Mancuso had only nine years earlier played in the only World Series ever engaged by the 1944 St. Louis Browns simply made his Homeric return home all the merrier. Frank Mancuso went two for three for the Browns as a pinch hitter in the 1944 World Series. How many other clubs in the 1953 Texas League season could brag that they had a .667 career World Series hitter in their lineup for the season? (Frank Mancuso also had an older brother Gus who played more than a little ball as a big league catcher for the St. Louis Cardinals and the New York Giants.) After baseball, Frank Mancuso served the East End admirably for thirty years as a member of the Houston City Council.

Solly Hemus (Buffs, 1947-49) was always special with me from the standpoint that he was the George Washington of my personal Rushmore, my first ever baseball hero when I first ever discovered professional baseball (thanks to my dad) in 1947. They called him the “Little Pepperpot” when he was playing second base for the ’47 Houston Buffs Texas League and Dixie Series champions – and it was his fiery play that led the Buffs to one of the most successful years in their rich minor league history. My early affinity for Solly Hemus undoubtedly fed upon the fact that he wasn’t really any taller than my dad, who had aso been a fiery amateur player in my native Beeville, Texas before our move to Houston during World War II. Dad also threw right and batted left, as did Solly – and it was dad who first took me to Buff Stadium when I was age 9 – just in time to promote my falling in love with Buff Stadium and baseball, ’til death do us part. – When I first had a chance to really meet Solly Hemus at the 1995 Last Round Up of the Houston Buffs, I found him almost quietly shy and reserved, and not at all like the fiesty public personna that he developed as a player and manager, thanks to some differences in his playing character, and with some considerable distorting help from the media about his true character. The more you get to know Solly, and I still do not know him that well, the more you get to see how much good he does for others while also doing everything possible to avoid recognition or get credit attention for his actions. – In my  adult understanding of heroism, Solly Hemus ranks at the head of the hero class, but his other three friends and former teammates in our first photo rank right up there with him in their own personal commtments to right action over recognition-striving as the real goal of genuine philanthropy.

Anytime someone else also wants to carve a monument to these four honorable men, just give me a call. We’ll even add former Buffs President (1946-53) Allen Russell to the center of this mix in the name of fairness and balance. I was just focusing on players today, but Allen Russell belongs up there too for all of his contributions to Houston baseball for decades.

Just get me a rock that’s big enough. I’ve got the tools to get the job done.

Tags: Baseball, Houston Buffs, Personal

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