The reincarnated second coming of the Houston Babies will quietly hit the 9th anniversary year of their first game on October 25, 2017. Playing by 1860 rules, the club is actually a rebirth of the 1888 Houston Babies, our city’s first fully professional base ball club.
The original 1888 Houston Babies of the brand new 1888 Texas League. (See if you can pick out the original Bob Dorrill look-alike player from that first Houston Babies team.)
The Barker Red Sox showed up to play the Houston Babies in the late morning first game of a scheduled Texian Days doubleheader at the George Ranch on Saturday, October 21, 2017. (We are still looking for the manager Bob Copus look-alike figure among the early arrivals from Barker.)
Sadly, it wasn’t to be. The Houston Babies and the Barker Red Sox reportedly had a rousing good time scoring plenty of runs in the first game of their scheduled doubleheader at the George Ranch Texian Days celebration near Sugar Land on Saturday, October 21, 2017, but greater hopes were to go unfulfilled on a day destined for rain. A heavy down pour wiped out the second game and surely also tampered with all other outside activity at the celebration, so the valiant gladiators of the old bat and ball game went home to watch college football on TV as they awaited Game 7 and the eventual joy of watching the Houston Astros take out the New York Yankees, 4-0, for the American League pennant and an all expenses paid trip to play the Los Angeles Dodgers of the National League in the 2017 World Series.
The vintage game will rise again to play and charm the world in our area. All it needs to stay healthy is enough players to have experienced the sandlot fun of the game on a day at George Ranch in which the weather there looked like this bucolic scene from the same field of dreams back in the spring of 2012:
We’ve already built it.
Won’t you come join us?
For further information on how you may get involved in vintage base ball play, please contact either of our two current club managers:
Bob Dorrill of the Houston Babies, bdorrill@aol.com
or
Bob Copus of the Barker Red Sox, rcopus@qclabs.com
In the meanwhile, have a great and peaceful day of the mind.
********************
Bill McCurdy
Principal Writer, Editor, Publisher
The Pecan Park Eagle
The Pecan Park Eagle 
October 23, 2017 at 1:21 pm |
As always, great sportsmanship and much fun between the two teams. Observers loved it as well and were asking many questions about the rules and our league.