The Pecan Park Eagle

Houston Daily Post, April 9, 1898
Contributed by Darrell Pittman

Thanks to the rapid spread of telephone communication between almost all places during the 1890s, `Manager George Reed of the Houston Buffaloes, with the help of Dean Tompkins and Carl Druesdow, have been able to get Houston to move to the cutting edge of the modern technology by having a live, real-time scoreboard installed at the Travis Street Park at Travis and McGowan.

Now Houston fans shall be able to enhance their enjoyment at Houston’s home games by simultaneously keeping up with the progress of their nearest rivals in league game action played elsewhere. As the article states, live telephone connection to the other parks will now make it possible for Houston fans to find out about runs scored elsewhere in a matter of the seconds or minutes needed to receive and post new developments as they occur.

What will they think of next? Winged vehicles that transport whole teams of Buffaloes to faraway places from Houston for the sake of playing a game tomorrow against a club in Los Angeles? That would be pretty amazing, but an even more amazing development than our now new-found power to telephone people in the colder climates up north to complain about the heat in Houston would be – the appearance of some bright inventor who came along with some kind of device that could actually make our home temperatures cooler. – Maybe a super fan, blowing over a continuous new supply of ice would help condition our Houston air to a more pleasant temperature. And, if that were to work, perhaps some wonderful wizard will someday float into Houston on a hot air balloon and talk us into building an air-conditioned, covered base ball park.

Forget the simple scoreboard, friends. That last invention of a comfortable indoor ball park, indeed, will most truly qualify for the descriptor given it by its promoter, the “Wizard of Awes”!

Indeed, when it happens, it shall surely be Houston’s iconic statement as – “The Eighth Wonder of the World!”

Wake up! – We are not dreaming! – We are humbly clairvoyant! – If you are reading this conjectural statement in a musty old digital file in a future parallel universe version of Houston, and you happen to be living close by on Thursday, April 9, 2015, make sure that you come out to the 50th Anniversary Celebration of the first indoor major league exhibition base ball game at a place called “The Astrodome” – from 6 to 8 PM that evening.

We shall be there with you in spirit – and in our new generational presence.

The Pecan Park Eagle, April 9, 1898.

Tags: a scoreboard fantasy

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