The Pecan Park Eagle

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

Eddie Knoblauch
1947 Houston Buffs

Lefty hitting Eddie Knoblauch was one of those Buffs that always made me wonder: How did the guy miss getting so much as a single time at bat in the big leagues? I mean, the guy knew the strike zone as well as anyone I ever saw. He could draw walks like the great Eddie Yost and run the bases and handle the outfield with the best of them. He had no power, but he was a great contact-hitting table setter for 15 years as a mostly high level club minor leaguer. (1938-1942, 1946-1955: 2,543 hits, 20 HR, and a .313 career batting average.)

Houston fans enjoyed and suffered from a love/hate relationship with Eddie Knoblauch. He was a Buff  for 5 years (1942, 1946-1949), but then went over to the dark side in 1949 in deals that saw him also play for two other Texas League clubs at Dallas and then Shreveport. Eddie finished the last 7 seasons of his career (1949-1955) bedeviling the Buffs for teams at Dallas. Shreveport, Tulsa, and Beaumont several times over by becoming the guy who could beat your club in the 9th with either a 2-run bloop single or a bases loaded walk. – It was “pick your poison” time when Eddie Knoblauch came to bat in a late game pinch.

Eddie was the uncle of Chuck Knoblauch, who enjoyed both some good and some haunted seasons with both the Twins and the Yankees. He was also the brother of Ray Knoblauch, the long-time successful baseball coach at Bellaire High School in Houston.

Eddie Knoblauch died about 25 years ago, but neither I nor Baseball Reference.Com remembers the date. In fact, the outstanding Internet source even seems to think that Eddie Knoblauch is still alive, which he is not. When I am able to confirm the exact time and place of his death, I will include it here. I do remember that we was buried somewhere in the rural Austin-San Antonio area.

Oh, yes. Back to the question of why Eddie never got a shot at the big leagues, but I think we all know the most probable answers. For one thing, there were still only 16 MLB clubs back in the late 1940s and 1950s. For another, Knoblauch played the entire first half of his career, his prospective years, as either a farm hand in the talent rich Cardinals organization, or else, doing military duty in World War II. It wasn’t an easy time for all cream to find the top. The big league clubs owned all the player options through the reserve clause. Good players could either take what the clubs decided for them – or go home. Eddie Knoblauch, like a lot of other players from those spike-free negotiating days, did just that. He took what he could get and stayed in the game as a career Texas Leaguer.

Thanks for what you did, Eddie. You made the game an exciting thing to watch.

Eddie Knoblauch, OF, Houston Buffs, 1942, 1946-49 (15 Season Total Minor League Career, 1938-1955).

Eddie Knoblauch is always a guy I come back to write about. As a kid, he was one of my first heroes with the Houston Buffs and a longtime productive player for the Buffs and several other clubs in the Texas League. With a career batting average of .313 and 2,543 total base hits, Eddie only banged only 20 career homers, but his speed on the base paths and on defense and his rather formidable throwing arm made him a major threat for run-and-gun offensive teams.

Many people today simply don’t realize how tough it was to even grab a cup of coffee in the big leagues back in the days of on only 16 big league clubs and reserve clause controlled farm systems through which clubs like the Cardinals and Yankees could stockpile and control which players would even get a chance. Knobby never got his shot. He most certainly would have during World War II, but his two plus years of military service during the quickly put him in the same boat with those who were being taken away. So the chance never came.

At 5’10” and 180 pounds, Eddie had a muscular appearance that combined with his speed to make him look something like a runaway train engine on the base paths. As a lefty all the way, Knoblauch also was a master of placing “Punch and Judy” hits to left that played into doubles against defenses that weren’t prepared to play against his flexible batting style.

The Knoblauch family sprang from a strong baseball gene. Brother Ray Knoblauch spent time as a minor league pitcher and then moved on to a long-term as the very successful baseball coach at Bellaire High School in the near southwestern Houston suburbs. Ray’s son, and Eddie’s nephew, Chuck Knoblauch, of course, later attended Tex A&M on a baseball scholarship before moving on to a major league career with the Twins, Yankees, and Royals (1991-2002).

Eddie Knoblauch also played some winter ball in the Latin American countries, highlighted by a 1950 Caribbean Series starting appearance with Navegantes del Magallanes. He lived and worked in Houston for years following his playing career before retiring to the Hill Country, He died in his home at Schertz, Texas of heart trouble on February 26, 1991 at the age of 73.

Hope you’ve found your eternal Field of Dreams, Eddie. That surprise opposite field pop into the corn rows down the left field line ought to be hard to defend against.

PS: Uniform Fashion Note. If the Astros could come up with a traditional and simple uniform design like the one Eddie is wearing in our feature story photo, that would be great too. The heart-side breast-plate circle could be used to hold that orbiting logo around the dome, or a giant “H” – or whatever the club decides to use as the new star logo. (All in orange & blue, of course.)