Posts Tagged ‘1960’

Liston KO’s Harris of Cut ‘n Shoot in 1960

January 23, 2014
Sam Houston Coliseum, April 25, 1960: Roy Harris makes a brief upright appearance in the ring with Sonny Liston.

Sam Houston Coliseum, April 25, 1960: Roy Harris makes a brief upright appearance in the ring with Sonny Liston.

 

Sam Houston Coliseum, April 25, 1960: Roy Harris makes a brief upright appearance in the ring with Sonny Liston.

April 25, 1960 seems like yesterday. The old Pecan Park Eagle had his little world by the tail back then. He had an intelligent, beautiful, funny, and talented musician for a girl friend and he was now just a short hop away from graduation at UH with a degree in psychology that strung minors in sociology and radio/tv communications behind it like a kite tail. Prospects for a mental health scholarship to graduate school were good and there were still places around MacGregor  Park to play some pick up baseball and tennis when one could steal the time.

Stealing time was the key. We didn’t have a big “sign-up-for-life” national student loan program for us dollar-challenged students back in the day. We either went to school slower, or we worked ourselves faster. Work was my choice and, because I had taken on the presidency of my college fraternity as a junior, I was now behind in the hours I needed for graduation. My response was to take a full-time, 40-hours per week job at Rockwell Manufacturing Co. while taking 15 semester hours at night and on Saturdays in the fall and spring of my senior year. I was handling the load OK, but I would still need 12 additional semester hours over the summer to get my degree in August 1960.

It was do-able. You just had to commit to being an automaton for the short time it would take to accomplish these goals. Still, every now and then, one had to break out and do stuff that freed the spirit. And, as it turns out, April 25. 1960. ended up feeling like one of those spirit-freedom nights. As a boxing fan from our early TV days, and as an amateur participant in some of the little backyard boxing matches we staged back in our Pecan Park sandlot days, I was very excited about the big heavyweight match that was set to go from the Sam Houston Coliseum in Houston that night. So was my fraternity brother roommate, Irish Bob Murphy, a redheaded kid from rural Minnesota and an accounting major at UH. Bob worked and went to school like me too. Heavyweight Roy Harris of Cut and Shoot, Texas was going up against the brute force of Sonny Liston from Philadelphia in a 15 rounder. We just had to see it. Or so we thought.

The fight was set for 8:00 PM, I think. Bob and I decided to skip everything we were supposed to be doing that night and get ourselves downtown from the UH area by fight time. Trouble was – we made the pick awfully late. We also knew we could not afford the scalp it would take to get into the live fight at the Coliseum, but we felt we could handle the $5.00 tab to watch the fight on closed circuit TV from the City Auditorium. It was a race against time and the speed limits to get there.

After missing all the preliminary matches, we stood in line for tickets at fight time. “Has it started?” We asked. “It’s just about to start!” The ticket man answered.

Oh, well, so what if we miss the first round, we chattered, as we scurried down the long entry to the viewing area. There’s more to a fight than the first round.

Not so this night.

By the time we came into view of the screen, there was Roy Harris, laying flat on the floor. And there was the referee, raising Sonny Liston’s arm in victory.

“In 2 minutes and 45 seconds …. the winner by a TKO ….. SONNY LISTON!

Bob and I slowed to a strolling pace. – No need to even find a seat. – We had each paid five dollars to see a televised picture of the unconscious Roy Harris and a rarely smiling mean man named Sonny Liston.

Then we grabbed a beer on the way back to the house and found a way to laugh off our impetuosity. Even if we missed the fight, the struggle to get there was a lot more fun than what we would have been having with the books as per usual.

Here’s how the Associated Press reported the fight the next day in the Galveston Tribune:

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My ‘Easiest Fight’ Says Liston of Harris Affair

Houston, Tex (AP) – Sonny Liston started with a left and ended with a right and had Roy Harris on the floor four times. It took the big Phi;Philadelphia heavyweight just 2:35 of the first round yo score a technical knockout of the Cut and Shoot schoolteacher before a record Texas crowd and closed circuit TV fans in 10 other cities.

Harris just barely had time to get in three left jabs before he was in trouble.

A left hook was the damaging blow. Harris took an eight-count under the ropes. More of a push than a punch brought another eight count. Then Harris slipped and fell to the canvas and Liston was ready for the kill.

Liston cut loose with a right that caught Harris squarely on the chin.

Referee Jimmy Webb did not take time to start counting. He just raised Liston’s hand.

“It was my easiest fight,” the Philadelphia Negro said after extending his record to 20-1 and recording his 20th knockout.

“He’s a better puncher than Patterson,” said Harris in taking his second defeat of his 30 pro fights.

In 1958 Harris lost a 12th round TKO in a Los Angeles title fight to former heavyweight champion Floyd Patterson.

Harris said he was surprised when Webb stopped the fight.

“But I wasn’t doing anything but getting up and down,” he said as an afterthought.

Both fighters agreed the left hook set up the quick ending.

“Patterson never hit like that,” Harris said.

The Coliseum gate of $70,200 was a Texas record. Liston and Harris each drew about $17,500, plus a cut from income from the closed TV circuit.

… Associated Press, Galveston Tribune, April 26, 1960, Page 7.

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If you want to see the fight, you will see more here at this link than Bob Murphy and I did back on April 25, 1960. It’s only 2 minutes and 25 seconds long:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TYA4qt-LBmA

 

 

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1960: Houston Gets Big League Baseball

December 15, 2013
Monday, October 17, 1960, Houston and New Yoek are both awarded NL baseball expansion franchises. Houston Sports Association Members celebrate (L>R): (1) R.E. "Bob" Smith; (2) Judge Roy Hofheinz; (3) Unidentified; (4) City Councilman Johnny Goyen; (5) County Judge Bill Elliott; (6) George Kirksey; (7) Craig Cullinan.

Monday, October 17, 1960, Houston and New York City are both awarded NL baseball expansion franchises. Houston Sports Association Members celebrate (L>R): (1) R.E. “Bob” Smith; (2) Judge Roy Hofheinz; (3) Co. Commissioner V.V. “Red” Ramsey; (4) City Council Johnny Goyen; (5) Co. Judge Bill Elliott; (6) George Kirksey; and (7) Craig Cullinan.

On Tuesday, October 18, 1960, the following Associated Press story flooded the nation’s newspapers. Here’s how the San Antonio Express reported the news with their own headline and physical presentation:

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National Loop Admits Houston, N.Y.

Chicago (AP) – The National League unanimously awarded franchises to Houston and New York City Monday, expanding baseball’s oldest major league to 10 teams for the 1962 season.

It was the first structural change for the National League since 1900.

The resolution on Houston and New York was by Walter O’Malley who, ironically, had moved the Dodgers out of Brooklyn to Los Angeles in 1957, two months after Horace Stoneham had contracted to take his Giants from New York to San Francisco.

“The resolution was enthusiastically accepted,” said O’Malley. “There was no concerted objection although earlier there had been some feeling that along with Houston, the Dallas-Fort Worth territory might be more feasible than New York.”

League President Warren Giles, who said the club owners’ action will be finalized at the major league’s annual convention in St. Louis in December, termed the addition of New York and Houston as a “giant progressive step toward bringing major league baseball to all four corners of the country.”

“This makes us a very solid league geographically,” he said enthusiastically.

“To all intents and purposes,” Giles added, “we are now a 10-team league, with operations beginning in 1962. There are certain specifications the new clubs will have to meet, but I have no doubt they will meet the qualifications. I don’t anticipate any obstacles.”

Giles pointed out that two points must be cleared to pave the way for New York’s and Houston’ entry. First, a rule must be changed to make New York, currently American League territory, available to the  National League. This the NL expects to do as soon as possible.

Second, the Houston Sports Association, recipients of the Houston franchise, must acquire the (minor league) territorial rights from the Houston Buffs of the American Association.

The syndicate representing Houston numbers 13 and includes Craig Cullinan, Jr., George Kirksey, Judge Roy Hofheinz, K.S. (Bud) Adams, and R.E. (Bob) Smith. Cullinan, Kirksey, and Judge Hofheinz were present at the meeting and presented plans of their newly proposed $15 million dollar (Colt) stadium which they said could be ready by the start of the 1962 season.

The New York syndicate, which includes Mrs. Charles Payson, M. Donald Grant, Dwight (Pete) Davis, Jr., William Simpson, and H.H. Walker, Jr., (who) was not represented.

“The Cullinan group must first indemnify the American Association and the Houston club in the AA,” he said. “I understand they’ve already begun negotiations and they’ve assured us that (settlement) will be no problem.”

“Regarding New York,” Giles said, “Commissioner Ford Frick has assured us if we propose a rule to open the New York territory to a National League franchise, and if the American League should opposes it, he will cast the deciding vote in our favor.”

Giles said, however, he was not certain the American League would oppose the return of New York to the National, of which that city had been a member without interruption from 1883 to 1957.

Asked whether the American League, which is to meet Oct. 26, expects to move into Los Angeles, Giles said he did not know.

“We did not discuss the American League,” he said, “but I understand that the Commissioner feels the same way about Los Angeles as he does about New York.”

O’Malley, owner of the Dodgers, said he would not oppose the AL’s reported move into Los Angeles.

“I don’t think it would be so smart of them to move into Los Angeles right now,” he said, “although I would not oppose it.”

“I believe eventually they (the AL) will go to the (West) Coast, but there are other fine cities that would make fine (locations for) major league franchises (besides Los Angeles).”

… excerpt from the San Antonio Express, Tuesday, October 18, 1960, Page 21.

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Contemporary news reports often give us our only clues about the birth of reality and legend in history. Today’s column data suggests, at least, one example for each category:

Reality: The 1962 NL expansion back into New York City simply fanned the AL fires for placing their own franchises in those two gilded west coast markets that were already in play for the NL in LA and SF. The AL was already well on their way into LA, but the NL move into NYC simply greased the skids by eliminating any technical resistance the NL might have otherwise tried to use.  They already had played that card with the support of the Commissioner. The AL was coming to the west coast, all right, and they would not go first to any of the “other fine cities” that Mr. O’Malley had in mind for them, as in “any other place on the west coast, but LA.”

Legend: Judge Hofheinz apparently didn’t build Colt Stadium as an angry response to his difficult and expensive territorial rights settlement with the Houston Buffs. The HSA already had that $15 million dollar stadium plan in place at the time of their franchise award. The Judge wanted Houston fans to lick their chomps in close up observation of the domed stadium that would be going up near them on the prairie south of the Texas Medical Center in Houston.

Thank You Note: Thank you, AstrosTalk, for identifying our third man in the photograph as Harris County Commissioner V.V. “Red” Ramsey.

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