Our Eagle Field (1950) is Now Called Japonica Park.
The Pecan Park Eagles were real. Back in 1950, we played on an East End site in our neighborhood that we called Eagle Field. We played other places too, but this was our turf, our home field, our hatchery for every baseball dream that any of us ever knew. We had no lights at this sacred ground, but we didn’t need them. At a time in our young lives when summers meant we owned the place from from dawn to dusk, we didn’t need night baseball. Besides, night time was Houston Buffs time, a time for all of us to either be at Buff Stadium in the Knothole Gang, or else, to be listening tight to Loel Passe broadcasting the games over AM radio station KTHT, 790 on the dial.
What none of us knew back there in those innocent days of our young lives seems simple now. No matter what any us accomplished from there, some things would never get any better than they already were back in the summers of 1947 through 1952. Those years, especially the summer of 1950, were the seasons of the Pecan Park Eagles, and Eagle Field is where we all yielded our hearts and best playing efforts to the game of sandlot baseball. Nothing ever, in any form, yielded more pure joy to any of us than those treasured moments in the sun that we Eagles shared with each other on that hallowed turf.
Unfettered by normal adult responsibilities and the kind of cultural cynicism that now seems to ooze from every loose seam in the talking heads media, and also from every social network site on the Internet, we simply lived out the days of 1950 living in the moment of acting out our grandest dreams on a field that was tailor made by God for bare-feet running, heavy sweat bat-swinging, and rag-tag ball catching with hand-me-down gloves on a makeshift diamond that just happened to be available to us at the place where Japonica bleeds into Myrtle Street, one block over from Griggs Road and about two blocks east on Griggs from the Gulf Freeway.
The old place is still there in 2009, but it’s sadly now cluttered with playground equipment that we would’ve hated and probably destroyed sixty years ago. These things would only get in the way of a good game. Sadly too, today’s kids of my old neighborhood don’t seem to need that good game as once we did. They also don’t seem to either need the playground swings, etc., that the City of Houston has so thoughtfully constructed for them. I usually check out the old place about once a year – and I’ve never seen a kid playing there anytime I’ve driven by my oldest and strongest early haunt.
Driving slowly past Eagle Field, I sometimes stop and walk out upon it again, just to note all the landmarks that still remind me of what it was like to play ball there. The telephone pole in deep center field appears to be the same one that was in place all those many decades ago. There’s a big mixed breed dog in Mrs. McGee’s fenced backyard that now barks at me as though it would eat me alive if it could. I can still look over to the front porch of Randy Hunt’s old house. It seems that my presence on the “The Lot” (it’s other name) would bring Randy bounding out the front door to join me with a ball and glove, as it once did, but that never happens these days.
I never leave the place without saying something to Eagle Field like, “Goodbye, old friend, until next time!”
If I really have to explain why my personal sandlot was so joyful, I guess I can’t do it. Just know that some loves never end. And this was my big one.
Tags: Baseball, culture, History, Pecan Park, Personal
The Pecan Park Eagle 
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