John J. McCloskey: Father of the Texas League & 1st Houston Pennant Manager.
As we’ve recently examined on these pages, professional baseball got off to a rough start with the 1888 Texas League season. Ballparks had to be built; patterns of regular game attendnce had to be established; players had to be signed and paid; weather and transportation had to cooperate so that games could be played on time as advertised; and ball club owners had to devise ways of making all this happen without losing money.
How this all happened over time is a total testament to patience, will, passion, and the power of professional baseball to become the first American sport to win over the hearts and minds of the American public. It didn’t come as easy as the “if you build it, they will come” exhortation from the movie “Field of Dreams”, but it happened in Texas too, thanks to numerous pioneers, and none more notable of mention than John J. McCloskey, the man we remember today as “The Father of the Texas League”.
It all started innocently enough.
In the early fall of 1887, the world champion St. Louis Browns of Charlie Comiskey and the New York Giants of John Montgomery Ward toured Texas, mostly playing local amateur town teams that possessed only that “snowball-in-hell” chance of winning. None did.
Another team of younger minor league stars from Joplin, Missouri also came through Texas at this time and just “happened” to intersect with the Giants in Austin. The Joplins were led by a “black-haired lively young Irishman” named John J. McCloskey. In little time flat, McCloskey had arranged for a series of three games in Austin, pitting his Joplins against the Giants for what promised to be the biggest crowds that either team had seen in their separate barnstorming tours.
It was the perfect wild west scenario – a gunfight between the old established gunslinger (the Giants) and Billy the Kid (the Joplins). We don’t know today how much McCloskey played up that angle, but it would be very surprising to learn that he did not. From what we can know of the man, he was a fellow who loved baseball, but one who also possessed that P.T. Barnum huckster spirit for selling whatever angle he could find that would lure crowds to the game.
In spite of three future Hall of Fame members (John Montgomery Ward, Buck Ewing, and Tim Keefe), the Giants quickly dropped two games to the young and spirited men of Joplin. For some reason, weather or travel plan conflicts entering into it, the third game was not played and the Giants left town.
The smoke that lingered in Austin after the Giants-Joplin games included a taste for the blood offerings of professional baseball and the willing guidance of one John J McCloskey on how a Texas League of Professional Baseball Clubs could be put together fairly quickly.
McCloskey and his young Joplin aces gave Austin supporters the nucleus for a good club as “Big John” and his group spread out to all the other larger cities in the state, and as far away as New Orleans, and they recruited participants in the formation of the Texas League.
The Texas League got underway in 1888. The rest is history, shaky history, but successful history over time. The unchallenged, clearest thing about it is that John J. McCloskey, indeed, was the true Father of the Texas League. His baseball DNA is all over every park built for play in the Texas League from 1887 through about 1900.
Tags: Baseball, History, Houston Buffs, Texas League
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