The Pecan Park Eagle

Pelican Stadium in New Orleans with an insert shot of the great Mel Ott.

A friend in New Orleans has sent me a baseball history clipping that unfortunately contains no news source or publication date, something I’ve patiently learned to almost expect from the scrapbooks of many former ballplayers. Players, or their book-building wives, often save big game and personal accomplishment reports without saving the source or date from the clippings on the floor. After all, they know where and when they read the keeper and see no need for this other documentation until …. sixty years later you are viewing the same material with one of their surviving adult children and the best answer to time and date comes back as “sometime in the late 1930’s in either Savannah or Memphis or, maybe, St. Paul.

This interesting piece wasn’t that hard to figure. I’d give my guess, based upon the other items and time references, that it was taken from the New Orleans Times-Picayune in either June or possibly May. The data it contains, although limited and incomplete, was too good to pass by without notice. It’s only a short two column history synopsis by Matt Farah of baseball in New Orleans as it is now being remembered by The New Orleans Collection group.

Here’s how the article reads by scan:

Although I make no claim of expertise on the history of baseball in New Orleans, one error of omission jumps out at me from the above synopsis and it was noted in our recently completed three-year SABR study (2011-14) and publication (2014) of “Houston Baseball, The Early Years, 1861-1961.”  The article neglects to mention that New Orleans was under consideration for membership in the 1888 inaugural Texas League season, but that they elected to remain with the Southern Association group. Then, when the Southern Association briefly collapsed around New Orleans in the same 1888 season, the team joined up temporarily with the 1888 Texas League for the sake of meeting their mutual needs for games to play.

PELICAN STADIUM, 1957.

All I’m saying is this. – If one ever takes on the history of New Orleans baseball on the level of high research standards, they will most probably find both their missing pieces, their lingering mysteries, and more than a few myths that fail to bear up as provable facts. It’s what makes the effort sometimes difficult, but always fun. Along the way, there are many assassins of the truth in any unexamined history – and many of the myth makers were the same people who drove large parts of  fundamental change in the subject of study.

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DON’T FORGET THE WEST END PARK HISTORIC PLAQUE DEDICATION THIS SATURDAY, JULY 12, @ 10 AM.

Don’t forget the West End Park Dedication! This Saturday, July 12th, at 10:00 AM, a plaque will be placed at the original site of West End Park. The site of the ceremony has now been changed to Antioch Park at Allen Center at the corner of Smith and Clay in downtown Houston. Please pass the word to any friends you know who are coming – and please make plans to be there. Mike Vance of HAM and our SABR chapter has worked long and hard to get this done and will be our MC for this victorious moment. As I’ve said previously, these kinds of days are always a moment of dual celebration – of an important memory of Houston history that is being saved for the ages, even when the wrecking ball of time and other priorities have wiped all physical evidence of its being from our sight.- and in appreciation for our fellow Houstonians who work so hard to make sure that important historical places are not lost to the bad memory of Father Time.

Unfortunately for me, a little home accident probably is going to keep me away on the “DL” Saturday, All the more reason for me asking of you: Please sign and send me your own photos and/or brief reports on the day. Do that much and I promise to make all contributors of my second-hand coverage of “Remembering West Park” the group co-authors of this story in The Pecan Park Eagle.

Just e-mail your WEP Ceremony pix and comments @ houston.buff37@gmail.com