The Pecan Park Eagle

Excerpt from “Your 1948 Houston Buffs, Dixie Champions: Brief Biographies By Morris Frank and Adie Marks (1948).

First baseman Don Bollweg (6’1″, 190 lb.) (BL/TL) would go on from his two years with the Houston Buffs (1948-49) to a five-season MLB career with the St. Louis Cardinals (1950-51), New York Yankees (1953), Philadelphia Athletics (1954), and the latter’s transplanted version as the Kansas City Athletics (1955).

In his ten-season minor league career (1942, 1946-52, 1955-56), Bollweg batted .275 with 215 doubles, 83 triples, and 165 home runs. As a 195-game major leaguer, Don batted .243 with 22 doubles, 7 triples, and 11 home runs. He also had two World Series times at bat for the 1953 Yankees, but failed to hit on either occasion.

Bollweg’s home town of Wheaton, Illinois was more famous known as the birthplace of the great Illinois and early NFL football running back star, Red Grange, the so-called “Galloping Ghost”. Wheaton was so big on football that their high school didn’t even offer baseball as a sports option. Bollweg had to settle for a spot on the softball team until he was old enough to tryout for the Cardinals as a regular hardball player. Don must have been pretty good in spite of his limited amateur experience. He signed as a free agent with St. Louis (NL) immediately prior to the 1942 season.

Born in Wheaton, Illinois on Lincoln’s birthday in 1921, Don Bollweg also passed away in his birthplace home town at the age of 75 on 5/26/96. Regrettably, Don missed the previous year’s Last Round Up in Houston of the surviving Buff players, but his memory was there as his name fell quickly from the lips of those who were counting heads that day of the known still living who were absent. As I recall, Bollweg was among those who claimed in declining their invitations that they weren’t up to the job of a cross-country trip to be here.

Like Johnny Hernandez before him and Jerry Witte and Bob Boyd who came after him, I will always remember Don Bollweg as our big hope for the long ball in 1948-49, even if he did only hit 23 homers during his two-season Buffs tenure. He was a first baseman – and bringing a big RBI bat to the plate was simply what we expected of our first sackers back in the day.

Come to think of it, we Houstonians were just like everyone else when it came down to our offensive expectations of first basemen. “Hit it out of here, Mr. Bow Legs! ~ Make it be gone!”