The Pecan Park Eagle

Many historical Buffs signed this Buff scorecard on 7/31/1961. The question is: WHY? What was special about that otherwise ordinary Monday of Houston’s last minor league season?It almost certainly had to be one of those nights in which an Old Timers All Star Game was played in conjunction with the Buffs’ regular season American Association game.

Wonderful fellow SABR member Mark Wernick e-mailed me an overnight gold mine for my kind of baseball column topics this morning. His request came with four attachments of old Buff game programs from 1947 and 1961. The first three pictures came from a 1947 Dixie Series game at Buff Stadium between the host Houston Buffs and the guest Mobile Bears of the American Association. That one featured the cover, plus the scored games pages for both Houston and Mobile of Game One. The Buffs won that game behind knuckleballer Al Papai on their way to victory in a six-game series. Game One also was notable for the duly scored home run by Mobile first baseman Chuck Connors – the same guy who later starred on TV as “The Rifleman,”

Here’s Chuck Connors’ name at the top line of the 1947 Mobile Bears’ game record. Hope you can see the diamond signal for his HR.

The autographs on the cover page of the 1961 Houston Buffs home game program include my identification of everyone who signed it that day – for whatever reason. I was in graduate school at Tulane in New Orleans during the last season of the Buffs and have no recollection of the reason for that gathering of so many greats other than the logical reason that they probably were there to play a gate-pumping old-timers game in the dog days of Houston’s minor league death rattle time.

July 31, 1961 was a Monday game date at home for the Houston Buffs.

Here is our identification of them all in pretty much a clockwork sweep from the upper left hand corner, shown below by their normal positions and playing years with the Houston Buffs. I doubt they all will be discernible to you in the size of the largest photo we can use in these columns:

1) Heinie Schuble: SS-3B (1928, 1936)

2) Eddie Hock: 3B (1928-1933)

3) Al Papai: P (1947, 1951-1953)

4) Tex Carleton: P (1927-1928, 1931)

5) Homer Peel: OF (1924-1925, 1928, 1930-1932)

6) Carey Selph: 2B (1928, 1930-1931, 1933-1934)

7) Jerry Witte: 1B (1950-1952)

8) Solly Hemus: 2B (1947-1949)

9) Ray Dabek: C (1956-1958)

10) Watty Watkins: OF (1925, 1928, 1937)

11) J.C. Hartman: SS (1961)

12) Joe Medwick: OF (1931-1932, 1948)

Wow, Mark! That’s a nice collection of some great autographs from Houston Buffs history. Hold on to these items. Don’t sell them or give them away until Houston finally builds a program that really cares about preserving the artifact collection and rich narrative history of Houston baseball. Museums started on a handshake and run for years without a clear record of whether items are donated as gifts or loans – or protected by a plan for preservation in perpetuity –  is no plan at all. We do not need another private interest museum that eventually feels they are entitled to sell away items that really should belong to the Houston public for the purpose of settling their personal debts.

The St. Louis Cardinals and the City of St. Louis found a way to accomplish the infrastructure needed. If we cannot do something on that level in Houston, shame on us. Non-action on a true baseball museum movement in Houston speaks volumes for one or all of these conditions: We are either too apathetic, too stupid, or too miserly to get the job done.

Soak on that thought, Houston. We are what we are. And who we are is spoken loudly or quietly by what we do – and what we fail to do.

Have a nice hump day, Houston.