The Pecan Park Eagle

THE 1950 HOUSTON BUFFS: BACK ROW (L-R) Charlie Kress, Tom Westcott, Johnny Blatnik, Bob Stephenson, DIck Bokelmann, Elroy Joyce, Mel McGaha, Hisel "Pat" Patrick, Jerry Witte, Vern Rapp, and Les Fusselmann. FRONT ROW: Vann Harrington, Joe Presko, Don Stephens, Marty Garlock, Bob Hoch, Pete Mazar, Bud Hardin, Lou Ciola, Fran Haus, and Bennie Borgmann, Manager.

Yesterday I received this wonderful team photo of the 1950 Houston Buffs from Floyd and Sandra Vaughan. It is a late season photo of the guys during the short period they wore shorts to supposedly escape the heat as they also worked through Team President Allen Russell’s brain a new old way to boost attendance. Mosquito bites and cherry bumps from sliding in the dirt soon put an end to the not-so-grand experiment in creative mid-20th century marketing.

1950 just turned out to be one those barrel-scraping years when it came to assignments by the parent St. Louis Cardinals. The Cards had loaded AAA Rochester, New York with talent enough for a first place finish in the International League and Columbus, Oho of the AAA American Association with the studs for a third place playoff qualifier. All Houston could muster was the guys who could take them to a last place, 61-93 finish in the AA Texas League.

Here are close-ups of the players in this photo, starting our way left to right from the back row and then continuing in the front row. I remember most of these like the back of my hand, Two or three of the players featured here were only around long enough to have their pictures taken in short pants. The photo features 20 players and Manager Bennie Borgmann. The active roster in those days was 19.

Charlie Kress, 1B; Tom Westcott, CF; Johnny Blatnik, OF. (Yep. That's the Oshman's Sporting Goods ad hanging over the left field line scoreboard.

Kress was Houston’s lefty first sacker. Jerry Witte joined the club in June 1950 and promptly started pounding out 30 homers with a .249 BA on the season as the Buffs’ righthanded first baseman. Chuck Kress batted .297 with 12 HR; Tommy Westcott was all speed. He batted .222 with 5 HR in 1950., once beating speedy Bob Marquis from Beaumont in a 90 feet dash from home to first in a pre-game race at Buff Stadium that also played to the growing television audience.

Bob Stephenson, 3B; DIck Bokelmann, P; Elroy Joyce, P; Mel McGaha, LF.

Bob Stephenson played in only 59 games, batting .178 with 0 HR. Dick Bokelmann was an ace knuckle-balling relief pitcher with a 6-7, 4.15 ERA. In 1951, “Bokie” would hit a 10-2 mark with a 0.74 ERA with the Buffs that would finally catapult him to a 3-4, 4.90 three-year mark with the parent Cardinals. Elroy Joyce posted an 8-11, 3.34 record as a starter with the 1950 Buffs, but he never saw any big league time. Mel McGaha was  versatile guy who batted .269 with 3 homers at Houston before his 1950 promotion to Columbus. During the 1960s, in addition to some coaching and scouting time for the Astros, McGaha also had a couple of brief managerial treks with Cleveland and Kansas City.

Hisel "Pat" Patrick, P; Jerry Witte, 1B; Vern Rapp, C; Les Fusselmann, c.

Hisel “Pat” Patrick put up a 2-12, 4.80 ERA mark as a starter and never saw the light of day in the majors; Jerry Witte followed 1950 with a 38 HR year for the ’51 Buffs. His 50 HR mark for the 1949 Dallas Eagles remains as one of the highest totals in Texas League history. Jerry saw MLB time with the St. Louis Browns in ’46-’47. Vern Rapp batted .188 with 4 HR as a back up catcher; he later saw MLB managerial service with both the Cardinals and Reds. Les Fusselmann was the first string catcher with a .284 BA and 3 HR.

Vann Harrington, RF-3B; Joe Presko, P.

Vann Harrington, RF-3B, was the guy with magic stick in late innings. In 1950, Vann was the “Steady-Eddie” guy who did his quiet part to keep the fans from giving up on the future. His .296 BA in 145 games flew as “Flag Hope” for better days ahead. “Little Joe” Presko was a right-handed  finesse pitcher who was also all about heart and hope for blue skies over Houston baseball. Presko was the man among our 1950 Buff starters, racking up a 16-16 record and a 3.14 ERA that would get him to the majors by 1951 for a six-season run and a career MLB mark of 25-37, with a 4.61 ERA.

Don Stephens, P; Marty Garlock, P; Bob Hoch, P; Pete Mazar, P.

None of these fellows saw MLB time. Stephens was 2-6, 3.73 in 1950; Garlock went 8-9, 3.28; Hoch was 2-5, 3.31; and “Lefty Pete” Mazar came in at 8-15, 3.73. Mazar got that many losses by being with Presko and Bokelmann, the three best pitchers on the club. The better you are, the more chances you get to win or lose. Mazar had been 15-10 with a 2.53 ERA for the 1948 Buffs.

In a minor league career that spanned from 1941 to 1954, Pete Mazar won 100 games. Now deceased, as is his wife, the descendants of Pete Mazar are in possession a record album that contains the transcription of first Houston Baseball Honors Banquet of 1947.

Bud Hardin, SS; Lou Ciola, P; Fran, Haus, 2B; Bennie Borgmann, Manager.

Bud Hardin, SS, was one of those “good field/no hit” guys. In 143 games for the 1950 Buffs, he batted .221 with 0 homers. His MLB future came down to three games for the 1952 Cubs, 1 hit, and a .143 career MLB BA. Lou Ciola posted a 4-5, 4.59 mark in 47 games for the ’50 Buffs. Ciola came to the Buffs as a WWII (1-3, 5.56 ERA) 1943 pitcher for the Philadelphia A’s. Fran Haus, 2B,  batted .242 with 3 HR for the 1950 Buffs.

Manager Bennie Borgmann was a career .304 minor league hitter. He took over the Houston Buffs early in the year from a fellow named Kemp Wicker.  Maybe WIcker possessed the psychic powers to see what was coming and begged out.  I don’t know. He left so early that I don’t even recall him being there.

1950 also was the season in which well known players like Wally Moon and Danny Gardella passed briefly through the roster turnstile. Lucky for bothe men, neither stayed long enough to be forced into play as short-pants ballplayers.

Hope you have enjoyed a closer look at some of the faces you normally don’t see as well in team photos online. Thanks again to Floyd and Sandra Vaughan for making this little 1950 exposition possible. I will protect and treasure this photo for as long as I live and do all I can to make sure it ends up in the company of other seriously protected historical artifacts.

As a slightly expanded note here. That is another goal I m hoping that our SABR Chapter will pursue in conjunction with the publication of our book on Houston’s early baseball history. We need to develop a plan for the collection and preservation of Houston’s precious baseball artifacts.

Have a nice weekend, everybody. Go, Texans! And Go Sam Houston State!

The 1947 Houston Buffs were my awakening to the game of baseball.

Everything that exists has a start somewhere, even if some of those starts are so subtle and gradual that we don’t even know they are going on until they are completely upon us. Other things, like falling in love for the first time, land like a hurricane, taking over everything and changing how we see the world over night.

That’s pretty much how baseball started for me when my dad first took me to Buff Stadium for the first time back in 1947. I’m not even sure that I knew the world existed in Technicolor until we walked into that place for the first time and I saw that green, green grass and that big flag blowing from right to left from the big flag pole in faraway center field. It was the most beautiful and melodic picture that had ever fallen into my young life view of things. The organ music of Miss Lou Mahan stroked just the right theme for whatever ever was happening in the place, from the ascending scale of a baseball rolling up the protective screen behind home plate to its descending bounce down the scale, Lou was on it, even picking up the bump-tee-bump bounce of the ball as it again reached the ground and rolled into stillness.

I was only 9 years old, but I didn’t miss a thing, and it didn’t take me long to soak in the basic rules of  the game and to pick out my favorite Buff players. Second baseman Solly Hemus, the hustling guy they called “The Little Pepper Pot,” rapidly became my first hero. I loved the way that Solly and Buff infielders chattered up the game back then – and I always wanted to get there in time to watch the club take that pre-game infield practice with such style and enthusiasm. (Contemporary fans need to understand that player back in the post WWII era weren’t as perfect as today’s group. The guys from the old days needed infield practice as part of their pre-game preparation.)

Johnny Keane, Manager (Reprinted with permission from the Houston (TX) Public Library.)

Johnny Keane managed the 1947 Houston Buffs, taking the club all the way to the Texas League pennant and then to a six-game Dixie Series championship over the Mobile Bears of the Southern Association. That was a flat-out big deal back in the long shadow of Houston’s time as a member of the Texas League. Winning the Texas League pennant and the Dixie Series was a major way for any young fan to start their career as devotee of the game in this part of the world. And, for those who grew up in the East End, where Buff Stadium was built in 1928, it was even a bigger deal. Getting to games on our own, even as young kids, was pretty easy thanks to the Buffs’ sponsorship of the cheap-seat “Knothole Gang” down the left field line.

Buffs President Allen Russell didn’t miss a trick when it came to getting games played into the books either. If a rain storm came up prior to a game that would have flooded out any other club, Russell rolled up his sleeves to give God and the weather some help. He would saturate the wet grounds with gasoline and then explode the thing with a thrown lighted match as he ran away in retreat. What a sight that was.

Other Buff stars abounded. Gerry Burmeister (.210) was the Buffs catcher and Johnny Hernandez (.301) played first base. Johnny’s son Keith Hernandez later played a pretty good first base position himself with the Cardinals and Mets.

Tommy Glaviano (.245) was the starter at third base and little Billy Costa (.232) was the gardener at shortstop. Solly Hemus (.277), as I’ve already mentioned, played second base.

Eddie Knoblauch (.275), whose nephew Chuck Knoblauch later played second base for the Twins and Yankees, played left field and good old Hal Epps (.302) was best known as “The Mayor of Center Field,” and Vaughn Hazen (.280) played right field. The club’s top pitchers included Clarence Beers (25-8, 2.40) and Al Papai (21-10, 2.45). Beers could bring it – and Papai was a classic knuckleballer.

The ’47 Buffs had very little power. Hernandez led the club with 17 homers; Glaviano had 13. Nobody else made it to double figures and only three others (Epps 6, Benjamin 4, Angle 2) had more than one home run on the season.

The ’47 Buffs were a typical Johnny Keane-led club, running on situational hitting, speed, defense, and pitching. They had enough gas in the tank to edge out Fort Worth for the league crown and then take Mobile in the Dixie Series, but they will never be confused with the minor league version of the ’27 Yankees.They were more like the 1906 Chicago White Sox, the old dead ball era World Champions, the club they called “The Hitless Wonders.”

They had enough moxie in them to crank my interest in the game and I’ve never gotten enough, even if I failed to understand and appreciate any of the finer points I’m describing here today. The game caught me. Fortunately, the location of Buff Stadium in the East End and the presence of the “Knothole Gang” for kids made it easy for many of us to see a lot of games back in the safer-street days of the late 40s and early 50s.

Tonight, at year’s end, I salute you again, o favored first Buffs of my baseball fancy. Thank you for first attracting me to  the one great consoling constant of almost my entire life over the past 65 years – the game of baseball from age 9 – from here to eternity.

Now come on, Spring Training – hurry up and get here. This staring out the window with the ghost of Rogers Hornsby and waiting for spring is not my style.

Happy New Year, Everybody!