The New Joe Hunter Field
Coastal Bend College
Beeville, Texas
The Coastal Bend Cougars are a junior college baseball team that plays its home games at Joe Hunter Field on campus at Coastal Bend College in Beeville, Texas — about 180 miles southwest of Houston, down old US Highway 59 or about 50 miles north of Corpus Christi.
Beeville also is my birthplace – and the swarm spot to this day for most of my blood relative McCurdys – some of the most loving and warm-welcoming people in the world, if I do say so myself. It was a Godsend to be there in the family company during the funeral services for my dear sister Margery McCurdy this past weekend. It made the start of our grief easier on the healing side. My brother John McCurdy and I both were glad to be surrounded by all the caring cousins who came to be with us through the services and informal gatherings.
Isn’t that one of the traits we all used to throw in the “that’s what families are for” bag?
Attached as I am to Beeville, Houston is my home. It has been home ever since Dad brought us to Houston on my 5th birthday, December 31, 1942, to take a wartime job as a welder in the Brown Ship Yard out on the channel. Everybody else moved back to Beeville in 1958. By that time I was a junior at UH. Except for some post-graduate work time at Tulane and UT, I’ve been in Houston ever since my 1966 return.
I’m not ready today, but with the research and informational help I get from John Galloway, the baseball-passionate husband of Elizabeth Ann Galloway, a McCurdy first cousin in Beeville, I plan to write an article soon on the revival of college baseball in our little honey-sweet Texas town.
CBC interests have spent a ton of money rebuilding the stadium infrastructure at Joe Hunter Field, and also covering the field with a high-grade turf that now protects games from cancellations that were more common to the old normal turf during the rain. I had no time for personal photos on this trip, but the pictures I’ve found through Google today show the difference pretty clearly from the old.
Here’s the link to an article we did on the original Joe Hunter Field back on February 23, 2010:
https://bill37mccurdy.com/2010/02/23/joe-hunter-field-beeville-texas/
They must be doing something right on the recruitment phase too. Through yesterday, the CBC Cougars had posted a 31-17 record, good enough for a .646 mark and a hope-boost to further attainment in the post-season playoffs at this level.
The BCC Cougars roster of 42 players also showed that 12 of these men came directly from the rich talent region of Greater Houston.
We need to know what the scholarship availability at CBC is to consider the program’s renewed future. As we know so well at every level of the game, winning cannot be sustained for long without money — without a sufficient percentage of full scholarships at play. And we already know the difference-maker between substances that talk and those that walk.
We’ll revisit the subject soon. For now, I’m just trying to get my feet back up and running beneath me again. And I will settle for a pleasant stroll for now. Watching the Astros offensive monster awaken again is helpful to that end.
********************
Bill McCurdy
Principal Writer, Editor, Publisher
The Pecan Park Eagle
The Pecan Park Eagle 
April 23, 2018 at 5:56 pm |
Any team with the name Cougars that play in Joe Hunter Field has my approval.
April 23, 2018 at 7:14 pm |
When rancher Joe Hunter died some 50 years ago, his widow wanted to gift some money to the new junior college they were planning (known originally as Bee County College) in his name. When given the options of the library or the baseball field, Mrs. Hunter quickly found the easy choice: “Put us down for the baseball field. Old Joe never read a book in his life, but he loved baseball and watched plenty of games in his time.”
BTW, unless they brought it in, a home run down the left field line at the original Joe Hunter used to exit at 360 feet.
April 24, 2018 at 2:08 am |
Bill,
Condolences to you on the loss of your sister.
Please contact me via https://www.facebook.com/beecounty/
April 26, 2018 at 11:04 am |
Had several kids that played baseball for me in high school that went on to play at Bee College for Bob Leach … happy for the upgrade ….
February 4, 2019 at 2:35 am |
Who is Joe Hunter.? Why is the feild named after him?
February 4, 2019 at 3:05 am |
Joe Hunter is the late local rancher whose widow donated the money to build the field in his honor. Click on the link inside this article and read more about Hunter and why his widow declined building a library in favor of building the baseball field and stadium. It’s worth the effort.