Yesterday I wrote about the three major villains of my Houston Buffs during the post World War II years. I also pointed out that all or any of the three bad guys, Russ Burns, Les Fleming, or Joe Frazier, could’ve been wiped clean of that dark designation had they simply done one thing – that is, to have signed or been traded to the Buffs for the sake of finishing their careers as Houston Hometown Heroes. – It didn’t happen, not with these three guys.
There was a fourth villain in this group, however, and he was far worse than all of the others because of his prodigious ability to slam monster-like Ruthian home runs, blows that exploded local hope like one of those mushroom cloudy atomic bombs we’d all witnessed in wild-eyed fear in the movie theatre newsreels.
And his name was Jerry Witte.
Jerry Witte had cracked out 46 homers at Toledo in 1946. The “46 in ’46” had landed him a late season call up by the parent club St. Louis Browns, but that didn’t work out too well for Jerry at age 31. After another bad start with the Browns in’47, Jerry found himself back at AAA Toledo for the balance of the season.
After the ’47 season, Witte was dealt to the Red Sox, who assigned his contract to their AAA Louisville club. Owner Dick Burnett of the Dallas Eagles then acquired Jerry Witte as one of the veteran bonecrushing players he pulled together for his ’49 Dallas Eagles.
The ’49 Eagles broke fast from the gate, crumbling every foe that came up on the schedule until a couple of things began to happen. – Their veteran players ran out of gas – and their pitchers failed miserably. The club of villains fell miserably Still, in 1949, Jerry Witte crushed 50 home runs in the Texas League and, to me at least, it seemed as though he hit them all against our Houston Buffs. Our ’49 Buffs had little hope, anyway, but what they did have was quickly stomped into the dirt beneath the grass at Buff Stadium by a predictable barrage of homers that flew off the bat of the slugging right handed hitting first baseman.
After the ’49 season, Dallas sold the contract of JerryWitte to the St. Louis Cardinals, who in turn then assigned the former Eagle AAA Rochester. Due to an overstocking of younger first basemen at Rochester and Witte’s desire to play in a warmer climate, Jerry was reassigned to play for the ’50 Buffs on June 11, 1950. As I said in the 2003 book on his life and career that we wrote together, “A Kid From St. Louis,” learning in the Houston Post the next morning that Jerry Witte was now a Houston Buff was roughly the emotional equivalent to me of learning that Darth Vader suddenly had been dealt to the forces of the light. My favorite enemy had been instantly transformed into my biggest life hero.
Jerry Witte and I wouldn’t really connect personally until the September 1995 Last Round Up of the Houston Buffs, but we quickly made up time for all the years we lost. Jerry Witte and his wonderful wife Mary are both gone now, but I shall both love and miss each of them forever. They were like second parents to me – and their seven lovely daughters became like seven sisters, as well. There’s nothing I would not do for any of them, if it were in my power. They are all just such good souls – the kind we need more of in our harvest of American people.
Jerry and Mary Witte were both down-to-earth midwesterners who retired in Houston after Jerry’s three seasons with the Buffs (1950-52). All seven of their lovely daughters are quite accomplished people professionally, but all have retained that basic one-two punch of integrity that once flowed so readily from their mom and dad: (1) say what you mean, and (2) do what you say.
May the memory and the values of Jerry and Mary Witte live on forever in the middle of our everyday lives. Such is the stuff of real heroes – that the practice of love for and loyalty to others always outweighs all ambitions to use other people for selfish personal gain. You don’t befriend people because of how useful they may be to you. You befriend people because it’s the right way to be – in a world where heroes really aren’t just determined by the names on their uniforms, but by the actions of the people who wear them.
First of all, allow me to make one fact perfectly clear. I love Lance Berkman as a baseball player, and especially as a Houston Astros baseball player. He’s one of our guys, one of our Houston heroes in a game of local loyalty that cries out for the constant presence of both good guys and bad guys.
Les Fleming, as you can readily see from the old Cleveland cap he is wearing (far left), got some big league time with the Indians. He sort of looked like the Bluto/Brutus character from the Popeye cartoons. In fact, I think that’s why I became a big Popeye fan as a kid. When Popeye was beating up Bluto for Olive Oyl, I felt he was also beating up on Les Fleming for all of us Buffs fans. – The third guy, however, was unquestionably my most hated Buffs bad guy enemy. Joe Frazier approached the plate in the late innings pretty much in the style that his nickname suggests. He just slithered up there as Buff fans hissed their contempt for his presence on our turf.
’51 Houston Buffs Manager Al Hollingsworth wasn’t exactly your shy and retiring type. When something happened on the field that caused Al to take exception with an umpire’s ruling, Buff fans could count on Hollingsworth to walk (or rage) out of the dugout and go make his own personal opinion abundantly clear to the men in blue.
When my University of Houston Cougars roared back on the road yesterday to defeat the No. 5 ranked Oklahoma State Cowboys, 45-35, in their own house, I wondered how long it would take for us to hear from the wolves of other universities who may be interested now in hiring away our gifted second year head coach, Kevin Sumlin.
a brief time in high school, when I flirted impractically with the idea of going to Notre Dame, UH was always my school. I was going to have to work to get through college and UH was the one school back then that seemed to cater to students in my circumstance. And it worked for me too.
“Little Joe” Presko didn’t have much trouble with his height while he was toiling in vain as a righhanded starting pitcher for the hapless 1950 Houston Buffs. The Buffs made it all the way to the Texas League cellar that year in spite of people like “Little Joe” and his 16-16 record with the 3.14 ERA. Joe also hit with some authority for the ’50 Buffs, slamming 3 HR on the season, a rare feat for any Houston pitcher back in the day. All the while he was here, however, Presko’s reported height and weight stood firm at a constantly reported 5’9″ and 165 lbs. Iconic Buffs radio announcer Loel Passe even called him “Little Joe” – and that description sure worked for me. At age 12 during the 1950 season, I noticed that Presko was one of the few Buffs who stood barely taller than me. I only reached 5’11” at full growth, eventually, but I achieved most of that height very early.
Presko enjoyed his best season in the big leagues in his rookie 1951 year. He won 7, lost 4, and posted a 3.45 ERA over 12 starts and 3 relief jobs. In his four seasons with the Cardinals, he won 24 and lost 36. His two seasons with Detroit would later add only one win and one loss to his career MLB record.
Joe Presko pitched one more minor league season following his last year as a major leaguer with the 1958 Tigers. He pitched for two AAA clubs in that 1959 season. He was 4-5 at Charleston and 0-3 at Toronto.
The great 1931 Houston Buffs will always be remembered as the club that served as Dizzy Dean’s showcase and launching pad to his Hall of Famous baseball career with the fabulous Gashouse Gang, the 1934 St. Louis Cardinals. Dean (far left) posted a 26-10 record with a lights out 1.57 ERA with the ’31 Buffs.
By the time the young man from Sancti Spiritus, Cuba arrived here in 1951 as a member of the Houston Buffs pitching staff, the 26 year old righthander was already drawing favorable comparisons to the great big league Cuban hurler of the 1920s, Adolfo Luque of the Cincinnati Reds. Rubert had stormed onto the scene in 1946, going 13-6 with a 1.72 ERA for the Class C West Palm Beach club. – He then bettered that mark with the same team in 1947 by pumping his record up to 23-12 1ith a 1.76 ERA. Want more? Rubert went over to Class C Tampa in 1948 and pulled off a 22-7 record with a 2.11 ERA.
That’s “Black Mike” Clark and the bust of Eddie Kazak showing up in this cropping from a team photo – and they were just two of the guys who helped Octavio Rubert and the ’51 Buffs make their day in the baseball sun a mostly happy one. The party was only spoiled by Houston’s six-game loss to Birmingham in the Dixie Series. Our excuse? A mysterious stomach illness hospitalized Vinegar Bend Mizell and made him unavailable for the Buffs’ Series cause at crunch time.
The goal of every young and upcoming Houston Buff from 1923 through 1958 was to play well enough in the Texas League to either move up the following season to AAA ball, or even better, to do so well that that they went straight on up to the roster of the St. Louis Cardinals. I’m bracketing the era as 1923 through 1958 for one simple reason: That’s the time period in Buffs history in which the Cardinals either controlled or owned the futures of all ballplayers who passed through Houston professional baseball.
The third man, Russell Rac, never got a single time at bat in the big leagues in spite of some pretty good hitting and fielding success with the Buffs in seven of his eleven season (1948-58) all minor league career. He began in Houston in 1948 – and he left as a Buff ten years later with a .312 season average, 12 homers, and 71 runs batted in for 1958. Few, if any, other players spent as many seasons as an active member of the Houston Buffs roster. Russell Rac went back to Galveston and into business from baseball following the 1958 season, where he continues to live in retirement as a man whose heart still belongs to baseball.
Houston, Baseball, & Other Musings.
The Pecan Park Eagle 