The Pecan Park Eagle

Excerpt from “Your 1948 Houston Buffs, Dixie Champions: Brief Biographies By Morris Frank and Adie Marks (1948).

Allen Russell started with the Houston Buffs as a parking lot attendant back in the mid-1930s, working himself up to top as President of the club from 1946 through 1952. Short on formal education, but long on street-wisdom, vision, energy, people smarts, and a love of the game, Allen Russell did more than other single individual in local history to sell Houston as a future major league city,

Allen Russell
Houston Buffs President
1946-1952

Several seasons of outdrawing the major league St. Louis Browns with the AA Texas League Houston Buffs was just the icing on the cake that front-loaded the serious, specific campaign by others in behalf of Houston’s big league dreams after Russell departed the Buffs following the 1952 season.

Allen Russell was Houston Baseball’s human dynamo. His read on the needs of his Buff Stadium fans was little more than an example of  the empathy he had for the needs of the people. And his ability to anticipate the future comfort needs of fans was simply one of the big reasons that Houston adopted the far reaching state of mind in its plans for baseball and is now playing the game more than a half century later in its second covered stadium.

Thank you, Allen Russell, for taking the breaker shot that set all the balls in motion for baseball success in Houston on so many critical levels at the end of World War II.

Now, if the Astros can only get back to winning more games than they lose by 2015.

Tags: Allen Russell

This entry was posted on May 11, 2013 at 2:36 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.