The Pecan Park Eagle

The Buffs Called Themselves the Houston Wanderers Back in 1904.

As I hope you could glimpse from the piece I recently wrote here on the start of the Texas League, baseball didn’t exactly get off to a seamless start in Houston or any other Texas city back in 1888. Teams and season schedules sometimes folded like a House of Cards when the going got tough. Unstable lineups led to unstable results; unstable results led to unstable attendance;  unstable attendance led to players not getting paid on time; missed paydays led to teams failing to keep their travel commitments for road games; abruptly canceled games drove fans away; and lost fans meant lost teams. It wasn’t very pretty, especially at the start.

By 1902, the Texas League had recovered sufficiently to reorganize, but Houston was not among the clubs that came together for another go at playing a full season. In 1903, Houston joined with Galveston, Beaumont, and San Antonio to form the four-team South Texas League as competition for the four-club Texas League group of Dallas, Fort Worth, Paris,/Waco, and Corsicana. For the first time in 1903, our local baseball team was known as the “Houston Buffalos.”

The 1903 Buffs were followed by a one-season identity hiccup. The 1904 club changed their name to the “Houston Wanderers” for that single season. By 1905, the club had gone back to “Buffalos” and they never looked elsewhere again for a better moniker. From 1905-1942, 1946-1961, our boys would be known as the Houston Buffs in the South Texas League, the Texas League, and the American Association.

After the 1906 season, the two competing state circuits settled their differences and reorganized the Texas League that continues to exist from 1907 through 2010. The 1904 Wanderers finished with a 66-59 record (.528), or only good enough for a third place spot in a four club league. Claude Rielly was the club owner by this time. The 1904 Houston Wanderers  featured the league’s leading hitter (Bob Edmundson, .340) and the league’s winningest pitcher (Clayton Robb, 26 wins). In fairness, we note that Robb won some of those game for Beaumont before he was traded during the season to Houston. Robb also finished in a tie for most wins with Baldo Luitich of Galveston/Beaumont. Luitich also bagged 26 South Texas League wins in 1904. Add one more local leader. Houston’s Bill Sorrells led the 1904 Texas League in strikeouts with 243.

Yes, Houston club owner (and sometimes manager) Claude Rielly really spelled his name “ie” rather than the conventional “”ei”, but that’s not surprising. The rules that governed the early years of professional baseball had nothing to do with following guidelines like “i after e, except after c”. The early baseball founders made up their own rules and boundaries, sometimes taxing their full faith and credit investment in the public’s trust in the integrity of the game. The only rule they could not suspend is the one that governs the bottom line: If you don’t make money over time, you have to fold your tent and go away.

For Houston, the 1904 Wanderers were simply another step in the right direction. They played all the games they were scheduled to play, and they finished the season without crashing their payroll commitments to their players. 1904 Houston club leader Claude Rielly understood a basic tenet about baseball in particular and business in general. That is, before you can hope to expect profitable “success,” you better be able to spell “infrastructure solvency.”

Tags: History, Houston Buffs

This entry was posted on January 20, 2010 at 1:20 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.