Tris Speaker's .314 Buff BA in 1907 Led the Texas League.
Tris Speaker hailed from Hubbard, Texas. He grew up playing baseball at the turn of the 20th century, a time when great contact hitters and fielders with built- radar screens for flying things did not go nameless for long among the early bush-beating scouts in the boondocks. Add to Speaker’s resume his intelligence, speed, baseball intuition, and quickness of mind and body reaction to events on the field. Speaker had it all.
He played his first season at age 18 for the Cleburne Railroaders of the Texas League. He batted only .268 with one homer in 82 games, but it was a pitcher’s league and a pitching season. Teammate George Whiteman led the league in hitting that season with an average of only .284. On defense, Speaker shone bright and true in the outfield from early on. He could catch anything in the air that was humanly reachable.
In 1907, the Houston Buffs celebrated their return to the Texas League from four years of toil in the South Texas League by signing Speaker for their club. Speaker promptly used the opportunity to become a 19-year old batting champion. His .314 mark led all others. and his 32 doubles and 12 triples shone forth as a preview of things to come. For the time, they were good enough to prompt his sale late in the season to the Boston American League club.
Speaker hit a buck fifty-eight in 19 times at bat for the 1907 Boston Americans, who then turned around and sold his contract to Little Rock in 1908. Speaker responded by hitting .350 in 127 games for Little Rock and the Bostons bought him back near season’s end. He only hit .224 in 31 games as a 1908 Boston tail-ender, but the corner had been turned. Tris Speaker would see the underside of .300 only twice more in his next twenty years of major league play.
He would leave the game with 3,514 hits over 22 major league seasons (1902-1928), a lifetime batting average of .345, and the all time baseball record for doubles at 792. He won a batting championship by hitting .386 for Cleveland in 1916 and he won a World Series as playing manager of the Indians in 1920. He earlier won two World Series as a player for the 1912 and 1915 Boston Red Sox.
As a fielder, Speaker was renown for playing shallow because of his ability to go back and get the long ball. He also holds the record for most unassisted double plays performed by a center fielder over a lifetime career. His 449 career assist also are a record for big league outfielders.
The achievements are two numerous to list. These are the amazing ones to me: (1) the man batted over .380 five times; and (2) he struck out only 220 times in 10,195 times at bat in the big leagues. Tris Speaker was elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1937 – a full two years before the place even opened to the public and became physically prepared to conduct its first 1939 induction ceremony.
Without a doubt in my mind, The Grey Eagle is the greatest former Houston Buff of all time. Dizzy Dean is my choice as second man on that very short, but very special list.
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Tags: Baseball, History, Houston Buffs
The Pecan Park Eagle 
March 20, 2010 at 8:35 pm |
He was elected to the Hall of Fame in 1937, but he wasn’t inducted until 1939, when the first induction ceremony was held.
March 20, 2010 at 10:55 pm |
Dear Cliff Blau:
Thanks for your usual attention to word precision. Although I’m sure most people understood what I meant originally, I have amended the last sentence of the second-to-last paragraph from its original content: “Tris Speaker was inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1937 – a full two years before the place even opened to the public.”
For greater clarity, it now reads: “Tris Speaker was elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1937 – a full two years before the place even opened to the public and became physically prepared to conduct its first 1939 induction ceremony.”
Even though “induction” was a virtual unless-the-world-ends-sooner certainty once his 1937 election was approved, we wouldn’t want people to think that old Tris and his HOF classmates were short-changed the physical ceremony that awaited them as their formal induction in 1939. The Hall had been planning for 1939 to be the first year for inductions to coincide with what HOF founders wanted to believe would have been the 100th aniiversary of Abner Doubleday’s invention of baseball in Cooperstown in 1839.
Keep those eagle-eyes sharp and clear, my friend. Some of us out here make errors.
Regards,
Bill McCurdy