When the long day’s done, when nostalgia seaps through, there’s still time left, for a burger and brew, at the one place in town, that’s pulled Houston through – the Depression, the wars, and the freeways.
“Fit for a King,” don’t mean a thing, if it ain’t got that fling, that original sauce bling, that seeded bun sting, that all crisply tells us, “you’re eating at Prince’s tonight!”
From 1934, through the ’80s or so, your good taste in burgers, was all we could know, of a meal that was laid out, quite perfectly so, in a kitchen just this side of heaven.
With rings on the side, as the onions were fried, you charmed us with carhops and Elvis. – We flocked to your gate, and we always stayed late, but the smooching was hard on the pelvis.
On South Main you were royal, to your subjects so loyal, and you soon built a thousand locations. – Then hitting them all, ‘came our gist of it all, as our favorite on-the-go avocation.
You closed down for a while, but you came back in style, with a plan for the new generation. No carhops this time, just burgers sublime, and a dab of the ’50s, in sweet spiritual decoration.
And now that you’re back, with a storefront or two, it’s still nice to taste, a great burger from you, but I still have to ask, ‘fore the clock on me, gently, I hope – just slips me away too:
“Who is that beautiful girl whose carhop cutout figure now hangs on the wall of your Briar Forest place? I remember her from the old days, but I never got her name!”
Dead center field in Buff Stadium was 424 feet from home plate. and the outfield pasture also included a free-standing flagpole of some considerable similarity to the one that now resides in Minute Maid Park. It was located about five feet in from the outer wall, but there was no hill to climb.
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.
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.
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.
I grew up in a Post World War II era of blue smokey haze. Everything I saw, heard, or breathed vicariously into my lungs from the adults in my life said to me: “Smoking is good! As soon as you’re old enough you’ll be able to light up too!” My dad smoked, but so did most of the other dads and quite a few of the moms in our Pecan Park neighborhood in Houston. At Sunday Mass, it was like a stampede at the end as 75 to 100 men herded toward the front door for a post-spiritual firing up of the old Chesterfield and Camel nicotine incense out front. Hallelujah! None of those mamby-pamby filtered cigarettes were strong enough for my dad’s generation. These were real men who smoked only those short full-tobacco blast sticks fromthe “Big C” companies. And why not? “Seven out of ten doctors preferred and recommended Camels for your smoking pleasure!”
Houston, Baseball, & Other Musings.
The Pecan Park Eagle 