(L>R): 1861 Houston Mayor Will Hutchins. Major Abner Doubleday, Darrell Evans, J.H. Evans, CSA Capt. Dick Dowling, CSA Gen. Robert E. Lee, Glen McCarthy, 1st Houston Base Ball Club Board President F.A. Rice, Ike Clanton, Bat Masterson, Doc Holliday, & William H. Bonney. (J/K. The rest of the article is for real.)
1861 was a pretty tough, but dynamic year for the 25-year old City of Houston. The town was growing hard and fast as in inland port city and railroad transportation depot. At the same time, the winds of secession and civil war were blowing hard in the face of progress.
Local hero and city namesake Sam Houston stood strong and fast against the idea of Texas seceding from the Union that it fought so hard to join and then defend, but his was a voice of the minority in a struggle that seemed to most Houstonians as a battle between state rights versus federal authority – or more practically – the right of southern and new states to continue building their good fortunes on the backs of slave labor versus the national outcry against the hypocrisy of our American words in the Declaration of Independence and Constitution.
On the local level, Houston’s interest in the game of base ball kept on growing, in spite of the heavy hand that was about to fall on the future of all America. Houston had been founded by the Allen brothers of New York and it had been attracting settlers from the east coast region that already knew and loved the game before they arrived in Houston.
On April 16, 1861, just four days after the first shot of the Civil War had been fired at Fort Sumter in South Carolina, a core group of Houstonians met in a second-floor room above J.H. Evans’s store on Market Square for the purpose of organizing the first official “Houston Base Ball Club.” Mr. F.A. Rice was elected to serve as the club’s first Board President, but it took a while to actually get things going for actual play. Base Ball’s competition for manpower with the rapidly forming Confederate Army would effectively delay regular play until after the Civil War’s conclusion in 1865. By then, the influx of new base ball fans from migrating Union soldiers and the return of Confederate military men to Houston had sweetened the pot of local talent.
For quite a few years, the flavor of Civil War sympathies continued to pour through the naming of local area amateur teams. On Texas Independence Day, April 21, 1867, the Houston Stonewalls defeated the Galveston Robert E. Lees in what has to be one of the great lopsided base ball games of all time. The final score was Houston 35 – Galveston 2.
One of our local SABR Chapter research goals is to confirm the exact site of the 1861 J.H. Evans store on Market Square. Regardless of what is there now, the site alone is certainly deserving of a plaque that notes the location as the birthplace of baseball in Houston. It’s time to get the job done now before this quiet, but important Houston historical fact slips through everyone’s fingers from here to eternity.
Note: In case you have not figured it out by now, or simply had no way of knowing, the folks in the gag photo above are really members of the Houston Babies, a reincarnation of the 1888 first professional baseball team in the Bayou City.
Have a nice Thursday, Everybody!
The Pecan Park Eagle 
June 26, 2011 at 2:16 pm |
How can this be image from 1861, it looks allmost “modern”
Is it faked?
June 26, 2011 at 2:56 pm |
Hans:
There was no intent to deceive. The players in that photo are real, all right. They just happen to be the 21st century version of the Houston Babies, a 19th century professional club. The modern Babies play vintage baseball, according to 1860 rules. In fact they just won a doubleheader yesterday. See today’s column for more on that little venture.