Cloyd Victor Boyer, Jr. was the eldest of three brothers who all played professional baseball up through the major league level. Born in Alba, MO on September 1, 1930, Cloyd pitched in parts of 14 minor league and 5 major league seasons from 1945 to 1961. Two of those seasons for the 6’1″, 188 lb. right hander included service with the 1948 (16-10, 3.15 ERA) and 1953 (4-2, 2.73) Houston Buff clubs. Boyer was a pitcher with a good variety of variable speed options and fair control. He gave up a lot of hits per game (8.6 per innings, career), but he also was effective in getting batters to put playable outs on the field. Over the course of his entire career, he won 137 games and lost 120, recording a minor league career ERA of 3.52. After his active career concluded, Cloyd managed in the minors on five scattered year occasions from 1963 through 1989. He then retired from baseball to his native area of southwestern Missouri.
Two others among the several rural Boyer brothers also followed older sibling Cloyd down the pro ball trail, and the second of those also passed through Houston on his way to becoming one of the top 3rd basemen in the National League for several years. Ken Boyer (born 5/20/1937 in Liberty, MO) played 15 seasons in the big leagues, mainly for the St. Louis Cardinals, from 1955 through 1969. He batted .287 with 282 career home runs over the major league haul. He also led the 1954 Buffs to the Texas League crown with a pretty good minor league stick (.319 BA, 21 HR, 116 RBI). As a big leaguer, Ken appeared in 11 all star games and also played a critical hiting role in the 1964 Cardinals World Series victory over the New York Yankees. Sadly, we lost Ken Boyer o cancer on 9/07/1982 at the age of 51.
The youngest of these three ballplaying brothers was Clete Boyer, who was born on 2/08/1937 in Cassville, MO. Clete was also a right handed hitting third baseman with superior defensive skills. When Clete and Ken faced off against each other in the 1964 World Series as rival third basemen for the Yankees and Cardinals, it was a mighty big day back in southwestern Missouri. – Clete played most of his career for the Yankees and Braves, finishing his major league career with a .242 BA and 162 HR (1955-71.) He never made it to Houston as a player for the Buffs, Colt .45s, or Astros, but we would have loved having him on our resume too.
Somewhere out there, there must be a few other families with kids who are good enough to do as well as the Boyers. All we baseball fans can hope for is that they aren’t already lined up to pursue careers in football or basketball first. 
Aaron Pointer (Batted Right/Threw Right; Outfield) has to be one of the best examples of how life sometimes arms certain people with talents that could take them in several varied directions, but all the while, these opportunities are rising and falling constantly with how the individual makes and uses the decisions he or she finally decides to take responsibility for putting into motion.
Aaron Pointer batted .402 in 93 games for Salisbury (132 hit for 329 at bats) in 1961 for 19 doubles, 14 triples, and 7 home runs. By breaking the /400 mark, Pointer became the last professional baseball player to exceed that magic mark over a full summer of play. (Rookie League and Mexican League marks are not considered as data on this achievement trail.) At season’s end, Pointer was called up to the 1961 AAA Houston Buffs in time to also hit .375 ( 3 for 8 ) in four games.
We called him our “Lil Perfesser.” We had no idea that second baseman Ben Steiner actually had played a smidgen of games with the real “Lil Perfesser” of the Boston Red Sox, the great Dominic DiMaggio back in 1946. All we knew is the guy seemed to look the part of a really smart middle infielder when he joined the Houston Buffs after the start of the 1951 Texas League season. At a listed 5’11” and 165 pounds, he looked much lighter, like a guy who needed a paper weight to help him hold his ground at second base on those windy gulf breeze nights at Buff Stadium. Part of his scholarly look is abandoned in this crop shot of Steiner from the ’51 Buffs team photo by virtue of the fact he either chose, or was asked, to remove his glasses for the shot. You may be able to see that he is holding them, and with the natural look simply leaving him looking less professorial and a lot more like the 30 year old career minor leaguer he really was by the mid 20th century.
When Cecil Cooper was named manager of the Houston Astros in late 2007, the fact that he’s black was not covered by the current media as even an interesting footnote to the fact that it then had been a little more than fifty-three years since Houston saw it’s first black baseball player take the field to play for a racially integrated Houston sports team. – Think about it. From the time Houston “welcomed” it’s first black baseball player to the time it saw its first black manager in baseball, fifty-three years and three months had passed.
fact that I had just started to drive by that time and needed a good excuse to borrow the family car also factored into the equation. When I borrowed the car, I told my dad why I needed to be there at the ballpark that night. I wanted to see Bob Boyd play for the Buffs as the man who broke the color line in Houston.
2007, the day that Cecil Cooper made his debut as a manager for the Houston Astros, a day for change, but it had nothing to do with race. Cecil just didn’t get here quite as loudly and, for reasons that have nothing to do with race, he also may leave soon, just as quietly, but maybe not. Maybe the Astros won’t unload all of the 2009 Astros’ failures on the back of their skipper.
Following his far better than average baseball career, Bob Boyd returned to his home in Wichita, Kansas, where he worked without complaint as a bus driver until he reached retirement age. Bob died in Wichita at age 84 on September 27, 2004. Today, the man who started his career with the Memphis Red Sox (1947-49) of the Negro Leagues is honored as a member of the Negro League Hall of Fame and also the National Baseball Congress Hall of Fame. Hopefully, we shall always continue to remember and honor Bob Boyd and all others who took the first step toward changing things that needed to change. Bob Boyd did his job with grace, dignity, and tremendously unignorable ability.
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.
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 