The Pecan Park Eagle

HOUSTON SPORTS MUSEUM: Curator Tom Kennedy, Owner/Sponsor Rodney Finger; & Former Buff Larry Miggins, June 9, 2010. Behind these men is the statue of Dickie Kerr, the little Chicago White Sox rookie who won 13 games and both his starts in the 1919 World Series.

For the first time ever, the Larry Dierker Chapter of SABR (the Society for American Baseball Research) held one of its monthly meetings at the newly renovated and reopened Houston Sports Museum inside the also new again Finger Furniture store on the Gulf Freeway at Cullen. Museum Owner/Sponsor Rodney Finger treated our presence there last night, June 8th, with all the gracious kindness of a five-star host. We are especially  grateful to Mr. Finger for his hospitality. As is the trademark of the Finger family, doing things first-class comes naturally to their involvement. It was so with the delicious fajita dinner that Mr. Finger served us. It is true with the newly renovated work on the museum. And it is true with the furniture store that is up and running again. All those many generations of the family know how to get things right.

The Finger famly legacy is their involvement and caring for the City of Houston and their efforts over the years to help preserve what is important about our town’s history.

Rodney Finger addresses the 37 people who attended the June 8th SABR meeting, The “found again” statue of DIckie Kerr seems to be handing the ball to Rodney Finger to say what is on his mind as SABR Chapter Leader Bob Dprrill listens up in the lower left corner.

Rodney Finger spoke from the heart when he delivered his reasons for wanting to make the museum come alive again, For those of you who don’t know, the Houston Sports Museum was started by by Rodney’s late grandfather, Sammy Finger, in the mid 1960s as a way of memorializing the fact that this particular store location had been built on the former site of Buff Stadium, the home of our once proud minor league club, the Houston Buffs, from 1928 through 1961. That venerable old ballpark was abandoned after Houston entered the baseball major leagues in 1962 after nearly being destroyed the previous years by the 1961 coming of Hurricane Carla. When the wrecking ball came, the Finger family was there through Sammy to purchase the property and to do what they could to preserve the history of what had come before them on this hallowed baseball ground. The Houston Baseball Museum was born from that family love for the game and their city. And now it lives again in a restyled presentation of materials that are nothing less than authentic artifacts of Houstoon baseball history.

Dickie Kerr lived out his latter years as a Houstonian in a house located only blocks away from Buff Stadium. Kerr’s heroics in the 1919 World Series were the bright side of an otherwise tarnished fix attempt by arguably all of the eight White Sox players later banned from baseball for their parts in a scheme that delivered the World Series title to the Cincinnati Reds.

Tom Kennedy, Curator, Houston Sports Museum

Much of the museum credit here goes to curator Tom Kennedy, the former Houston Post writer and long-time Houston-based baseball item collector. Kennedy has taken the Rodney Finger commitment to keeping alive the legacy of his grandfather and done all that’s good and possible to make it happen. Tom has put his historical knowledge to work in partnership with just about everyone else in this community that he deemed as helpful to come up with a brilliant use of limited space that tracks the history of professional baseball and early professional football in Houston. There is even a one-page complete history of Houston minor league baseball for every year the game was played as a minor league enterprise  from 1888 through 1961.

Future plans include an ongoing rotation of some items that will always keep what’s on display fresh to the viewing public’s eye. To the extent that refreshing change is possible consistently over time, this one promises to have it.

Kennedy has plans to bring in a group of several well known former players for the June 19th formal Grand Opening of the museum. The facility is open now during normal store hours, but you will want to make the Grand Opening too, if possible. It will be a chance to see and get autographs from some of your all time favorite Houston players and sports personalities.

Bob Dorrill addresses the crowd during our regular meeting. A lively discussion was in place on the blown perfect game call in Detroit last week.

The last time Larry Miggins took a batting position on this spot was 1954 when he hit a home run to beat the San Antonio Missions on his last swing of the stick for the Houston Buffs.

“In behalf of all the artifacts here at the Houston Sports Museum, we’d like to thank all you SABR members who came to see us last night. We’ll look for the rest of you Houstonians to drop by anytime, but for sure on our Grand Opening this coming June 19th!” – Old Buff Figure in Photo.

37 members & guests of SABR enjoyed the evening program & Finger family hospitality.

Curator Kennedy’s words came forth with great animation of genuine caring..

The SABR crowd hung attentively on Tom’s every word.

If you paid attention to some of the materials in the exhibit area, you were swept away with the feeling that even the figures of history were listening to what was happening at the Houston Sports Museum on this special night. This photo features former Houston Buff telecaster Guy Savage, young Buff Larry Miggins, & former big leaguer Gus Mancuso.

Finger’s is ready to deliver the goods again, Houston – and we’re talking loudly and voluntarily here about furniture and local baseball history. I cannot speak for SABR; I can only speak for myself in this matter. Finger’s has my support. Next time I need furniture, they are going to be the first place I look and buy, if they’re anywhere in the ballpark on price. If anyone else out there wants my support for their commercial enterprises, let them first go out and do as much as the Finger family does on a daily basis for the preservation of Houston area history.

What else can I say? Go see the new Houston Sports Museum. It’s the only worthwhile display on the years-deep history of Houston baseball that you will find in our area – and it is well worth your time.

Also, and I’m not paid to say this: Think first about meeting your furniture needs at Finger’s on the Gulf Freeway. If we want the museum to remain alive forever, and  on this special spot, the store has to succeed too. And you can’t move the museum elsewhere and succeed on the same level. It’s already sitting on the only actual site for Buff Stadium that will ever be.

Have a nice Wednesday, everybody!

Baseball Gateway to West Exhibit at St. Louis Arch Held Over through 2010.

The highly successful and attractive baseball exhibit in St. Louis that opened in the Mound City prior to the 2009 All Star Game has been held over for most of 2010 by popular demand. “Baseball’s Gateway to the West” display will continue at the Jefferson National Arch on the Mississippi River through October 31, 2010, sponsored for s second year as a collaborative effort of the St. Louis Cardinals Museum and Hall of Fame in conjunction with the National Park Service at the St. Louis Arch.

If you are planning to be in the St. Louis area on vacation or business between now and Halloween, you owe it to yourself to take in the show. Under the careful guidance of St. Louis Cardinals curator Paula Homan, the exhibit is packed with authentic one-of-a-kind items that are associated with the western expansion of baseball to the hinterlands of all western regions of the country. Three of my own loans to the show all came from items given to me by one of the foremost former Buffs, the late Jerry Witte. These include (1) a home plate from Jerry Witte’s last 1952 season of play at Buff (Busch) Stadium in Houston. I accepted the gift years ago after asking the donor to sign it “Jerry Witte” for the sake of history; (2) A 1951 Houston Buffs Scorecard; and (3) a 1951 Texas League All Star Game Program from the contest played at Buff Stadium that year. All of these items and others from my personal collection of over sixty years will someday be donated to an appropriate museum that can guarantee their protection and appropriate display in perpetuity. As to where that place is, I’m still looking. For now, at least, three of them are doing just fine as artifactual greeters to the thousands of fans still streaming through the Arch.

The Arch is only a few blocks away from Busch Stadium III in downtown St. Louis.

If you’ve never been to St. Louis, you owe it to yourself to visit one of America’s great baseball cities before you die. The place simply reeks with baseball history and people who are capable of talking about same – and there few places finer for watching a game than Busch Stadium III. I prefer the intimacy of Minute Maid Park in Houston, but the vistas of the Arch and downtown St. Louis from the open-feeling Busch venue can’t be beat. Unlike MMP, however, where it’s possible to walk completely around the field of play on the first concourse without taking your eyes off the field, Busch is chopped up into sections that prevent visitors from doing the same in St. Louis.

Either way, both places are about baseball, and the cities of St. Louis and Houston shall be forever joined in baseball history as members of the same family tree. As a top farm club of the Cardinals for the better part of nearly four decades, the Houston Buffs will always be more than just a little bit “St. Louis” like in their baseball bloodlines. Former Buff greats Dizzy Dean, Pepper Martin, Joe “Ducky” Medwick, George “Red” Munger, Howie Pollet, Eddie Dyer, Johnny Keane,  Solly Hemus, Wilmer “Vinegar Bend”  Mizell,  and Ken Boyer are all former Buffs who passed through the Bayou City on their ways to the City of the Mound.

Baseball ties are forever. It’s best we try to remember them with the honor they each deserve. The Arch program is run by people who understand that old-fashioned notion. Give them your support this summer. Check out the show in St. Louis.