The Pecan Park Eagle

It’s a beautiful book. Rigorously researched and fact-checked for three-years, 2011-2014. Edited and organized by our SABR chapter team  for broad and specific treatment of Houston baseball history in an exhaustive reach for the inclusion of good and accurate information about the flow of adult amateur, organized baseball for children,  semi-pro, women’s, and black baseball in the greater Houston community in parallel to the professional game that was taking hold of the future. It started with the city’s creation in 1836 by developers from New York, one of the principal states that was tinkering with the new “base ball” game when our gulf coast Texas giant first opened his eyes to find that his “creators” had brought a bat and ball mentality with them to the Southeast Texas plains and marsh lands.

A number of people in the SABR family, including Editor Mike Vance, Chapter Chair Bob Dorrill, SABR members Mickey Herskowitz, Marsha Franty, Tony Cavender, Joe Thompson, Patrick Lopez, Harold Jones, Herb Whalley, John Watkins, Tom Murrah, Tom Trimble, yours truly, Bill McCurdy,  plus non-SABR members Darrell Pittman, Susan Pittman, Steve Bertone, Lance Carter, Story Sloane, and Sumner Hunnewell, – all these people, plus all the others who gave us help from within the systems of information we sought from archivists, employees of libraries, universities, and baseball organizations, – all these people aided in our determined deep-dredge search for the truth

The writers of the manuscript included Mickey Herskowitz, Mike Vance, Bob Dorrill, Joe Thompson, Marsha Franty, Steve Bertone, and yours truly, Bill McCurdy.

Patrick Lopez is responsible for the beautiful watercolor graphics that depict baseball in 19th century Houston.

Mike Vance was the editor and procurer of most photos used in the book – and he was most responsible for the beautiful final layout, with the assistance of the fine production crew at Bright Sky Press.

The former Buff Jim Basso family contributed a previously unpublished photo of Ernest Hemingway with their father for use in our book.

National writer and pure-blood Houstonian Mickey Herskowitz wrote the important factually-bound “Afterword” section that bridged the gulf on how Houston transitioned from minor league town to major league city.

In summary, “Houston Baseball, The Early Years: 1861-1961” is now a template for all other communities who choose to write their own stories about how baseball came and thrived in their own communities.

And, as I’ve said and written often in the past two months, our book is now one for the ages. It belongs to all of us who brought it to life as the fine work of social research it is in fact. It is our shared legacy that we have put in motion a piece of important Houston history that would not have existed, had we each not done, all we could. There are no small contributions on a performance stage this important to history. If you only feel you showed up  to listen, out of caring, your presence alone empowered someone else on the  team to do something different that proved positively critical to the final product.

Thank you. Our shared legacy is forever. And who knows what it may inspire us to do next as either individuals or a group?

Have a nice Memorial Day Weekend, Everybody!

“Buffalo Watching”
~ an original work of art
by Patrick Lopez

This entry was posted on May 23, 2014 at 2:52 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.