The Pecan Park Eagle

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

Hal Epps (BL/TL) batted .300 with 82 home runs over the course of a 15-season minor league career that included three tours over nine years with the Houston Buffs (1936-39, 1941-42, 1947-49) that somewhere in the mist earned him the much deserved title – The Mayor of Center Field.  The experience also converted Epps to the status of home boy Houstonian for most of his adult 90 years of life – in spite of his sweet background as a peachy native of Athens, Georgia (DOB: 3/26/1914). After his total baseball labor span of years (1934-52), Hal Epps worked as a steelworker in Houston until his retirement.

Epps was a big offensive and defensive star for the 1947 Dixie Series Champion Houston Buffs, teaming with left fielder Eddie Knoblauch and 2nd baseman Solly Hemus as one of the three peskiest table setting hitters in Houston Buffs history.

Hal had a brief spin with the St. Louis Cardinals in 1938 and 1940. He was drafted from the Cards by the St. Louis Browns in November 1942 and made it into the Browns roster for the 1943 and 1944 seasons and their only pennant year, but he was sold to the Philadelphia Athletics on June 11, 1944 and missed the Fall taste of the Browns’ only trip to a World Series. In December 1946, the Cardinals drafted Epps back from the A’s and he spent the rest of his career years back in the minors.

Hal Epps was a shy, modest man who did a lot of quiet, kind things for a lot of people over the years. He lived long enough to participate in the 1995 last reunion round-up of all the living Houston Buffs alumni and he even got to see the dawn of the 21st century before passing away at the age of 90 on August 25, 2004. He was buried in the Houston National Veterans Cemetery.

God Rest Your Soul Forever, Prince Hal. In some of our memories, you are still The Mayor of Center Field.

Tags: Buff Biographies, Hal Epps

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