Early Dallas Baseball History

The Dallas Hams won the First Texas League championship in 1888; the nickname did not last for long, but Dallas fielded a team for 69 seasons in the circuit. The Hams played at Oak Cliff Park across the Trinity River from downtown. Later, Dallas teams played at Gaston Park on the State Fair Grounds, about where the Music Hall is today.

When Ted Sullivan revived the Texas League in 1895, he operated the Dallas club. "Sullivan's Steers" hit .305 as a team, won the first half of the schedule, and finished with the best record in the league, but dropped a disputed 13-game playoff with archrival Fort Worth. Dallas led the league in 1898, but the season was halted after just a few weeks of play because of the Spanish-American War, and no pennant was awarded.

Dallas spent the 1899 season in the Southern League, and rejoined the Texas league when it reorganized in 1902 after two years of inactivity. The team president was Ernest Bohne, who ran a saloon. The saloon doubled as a club "office," and players went there to collect their pay--and sometimes to spend it on the owner's whiskey.

In 1903, behind batting champ Harry Clark (.326) and stolen base leader Lon Ury (46), the Dallas Giants (John J. McGraw and his New York Giants had deeply impressed Dallas in exhibition appearances) again finished first and defeated Waco in a 10-game playoff for the flag. Joe Gardner, who had actually operated the 1902 team, was president by 1903--a position he held through the 1916 season. In 1903-04, Gardner's manager was future Texas A & M football coach Charles Moran, and for the next seven years, James J. "Curley" Maloney was player-manager.

Gardner moved the Dallas club from Gaston Park to a new diamond at West Jefferson and Comal in Oak Cliff on the West Side of the Trinity River. Joe Gardner Park, as it was called, adjoined the first ice rink in the South (also owned by Gardner), and streetcar barns were nearby. Out of town fans could ride an interurban to a station across the river from the park, then take a streetcar to within walking distance of the stadium. Gardner sold the team after the 1916 season. The Dallas Submarines (as they were now called) won back-to-back pennants in 1917 and 1918. Snipe Conley, popular star of the Submarines, led the league in strikeouts and victories in 1917--his 27 wins included 19 in a row, and a no-hitter over Fort Worth. The right-handed spitballer was a superb fielder and was the control leader for five consecutive seasons. Snipe pitched for Dallas from 1916-27, and was the manger in 1926-27, winning a flag in 1926.

Joe Gardner Park burned immediately following a double-header with Wichita Falls on July 19, 1924. Riverside, home of black baseball in Dallas, was donated for the next day's game, and Dallas (now the Steers) finished their home schedule at the vast State Fair horse-racing arena. The first game staged there was on August 3rd, against the hated Fort Worth Panthers. The official paid admissions totaled 16,484, which stood as the Texas League attendance record for more than a quarter of a century. Joe Gardner Park was rebuilt across the street and renamed Steer Stadium, a facility seating 8,000 which was destroyed by fire shortly after the close of the 1940 season.

The Steers won the first half in 1929 and defeated Wichita Falls for another pennant. In 1938, George and Julius Schepps purchased a controlling interest in the team, 84 percent of the stock for $150,000 and rechristened the team the Rebels. A decade later, Schepps sold the Rebels to East Texas oilman Dick Burnett for $550,000--the largest total ever paid at the time for a minor league club. Burnett, a baseball enthusiast who had owned smaller franchises in East Texas, changed the name of the team to the Eagles and the name of the 10,500 seat stadium to Burnett Field. The free-spending but competitive Burnett rejoiced in his teams triumphs and despaired at defeats, once hurling a typewriter from the press box to the diamond after a particularly excruciating loss. In 1950, Burnett established a minor league attendance record by attracting more than 53,000 fans to the Cotton Bowl with an opening day extravaganza that featured an all-star team Dizzy Dean, Ty Cobb, Home Run Baker, Tris Speaker, and other baseball greats. Burnett broke the Texas League color line in 1952, signing right-hander Dave Hoskins, who responded with a 22-10 record and a 2.12 ERA, leading the league in victories and 26 complete games in 33 starts.

Before his death from a heart attack in 1957, Burnett had pushed Dallas as a major league site. This enthusiasm was shared by new owners J.W. Bateson and Amon Carter, Jr. In 1959, they moved Dallas up to the Class AAA American Association, and the next year, Dallas and Fort Worth combined resources (splitting the home schedule between their respective parks) for an American Association twin-cities franchise. Hopes for a club in the proposed Continental League collapsed when American League expansion killed the new circuit before it came into existence. After three seasons, the American Association disbanded and Dallas-Fort Worth transferred to the Pacific Coast League.

Fort Worth Businessman Tommy Mercer bought the DFW franchise, intending to keep Dallas in the PCL and return Fort Worth to the Texas League, all the while angling for major league status. By 1965, Turnpike Stadium--seating just 10,000 in its initial phase--was completed in Arlington, and the Dallas-Fort Worth Spurs reentered the Texas League. In six seasons there were only two winning teams, but the franchise drew well, and the Texas League All-Star Game was held at Turnpike Stadium in 1966, 1967, and 1968. In 1971 the Spurs participated in the Dixie Association, attracting over 16,000 fans for one July game at Turnpike Stadium. After the close of the season, the sale of the Washington Senators to Dallas-Fort Worth was announced, and in 1972 the Texas Rangers at last brought major league baseball to the Dallas area.

Early Fort Worth Baseball History

A charter member of the Texas League, Fort Worth was destined to establish the greatest dynasty in loop history. Baseball was being played in Panther City by 1877 (a Dallas newspaper claimed that Frontier Fort Worth's rowdy Main Street was the "noonday lair of the panther"--Fort Worth proudly began to call itself Panther City, and the professional baseball team would always be called "Panthers," or "Cats" for short). From 1888 until 1904, the Panthers played at a 1,200-seat ball park just south of the T & P station in an area known as the "Reservation."

The Panthers finished next-to-last in each of the first four Texas League campaigns. In 1895, however, Fort Worth placed second and entered a 15-game playoff with archrival Dallas. Al McFarland, with a 34-12 record and a hot bat, was the Panther leader, but the lineup was bolstered with stars from other teams for the playoffs. When the Panthers took a seven-to-six game lead with the playoffs scheduled to return to Fort Worth, Dallas conceded the championship.

In 1904, 1905, and 1906, the Panthers posted consecutive first-place finishes but captured only one pennant. The 1904 Panthers moved into new Haynes Park, located south of Lancaster and seating 1,500. In 1904 the Panthers lost a long playoff series to Corsicana which had liberally fortified its roster with Dallas standouts. Fort Worth took the 1905 flag outright, but the next season conceded the playoffs to a superb Cleburne team. In each of these years Fort Worth was paced by the Texas League's leading pitchers: Charles Jackson, Walt Christman, and Alex Dupree.

A dozen lackluster seasons followed, although the fans offered sufficient support to justify the construction of Panther Park, the Texas League's first steel and concrete ball park. It was located just west of North Main between North Sixth and North Seventh streets along the Cotton Belt Railroad. There were 4,000 seats in the grandstand, bleachers that would accommodate 600 more fans, and the first turnstiles, reserved seats, and rain checks in the Texas League.

From 1910 to 1914, J. Walter Morris, who broke into the Texas League with Corsicana's spectacular 1902 club and who would serve as league president from 1916-1920, was owner of the Panthers. He also played and managed the team during part of his tenure, and was the only man to serve a twentieth-century Texas League franchise as player-manager-owner. In 1914, Morris had infielder Jake Atz manage the Panthers for part of the season. Atz also managed for part of the next two years. In 1917, W. K. Stripling, Paul LaGrave, and others purchased the club; for the next decade Stripling as club president, LaGrave as business manager, and Atz as field manager constructed one of the most overpowering dynasties in all of baseball history.

In the first year of the Strippling-LaGrave-Atz triumverate, the Panthers finished second. For the 1918 season, LaGrave acquired slugging first baseman Clarance Otto "Big Boy" Kraft, second sacker Dutch Hoffman, slick-fielding shortstop Bobby Stow, left fielder Ziggy Sears, and pitchers Joe Pate, Paul Wachtel, and Buzzer Bill Whitaker. Whitaker was a right-handed curveballer who won 24 games in 1919 and again in 1920, then 23 in 1921, while southpaw Pate and right-handed spitballer Wachtel formed the greatest one-two mound combination in Texas League history.

The 1919 Panthers finished first but lost to Shreveport in the last inning on the last play of the last game of a splendid seven game playoff series. LaGrave then acquired a fine southpaw, curveballer Gus Johns (a 20-game winner in 1921, 1922, and 1925), third baseman Dugan Phelan (a former big leaguer who proved to be a dangerous pinch hitter), and the ponderous but steady catcher, Possum Moore. LaGrave solidified his outfield in 1922 with Cuban Jacinto Calvo (a sensational fielder in center who hit .305 lifetime) and Stump Edington (a stocky, powerfully built left-handed right fielder who hit .319 as a Texas Leaguer and who was one of the greatest leadoff men in loop history).

For the next six seasons, 1920-25, these Panthers dominated the Texas League. Except for 1923 (95-56), Fort Worth won no fewer than 103 regularly scheduled games per season. In every year except 1923--when the season was not a split--the Panthers won both halves of the split season, thus capturing the Texas League pennant outright in each consecutive championship year.

The Panthers also captured the heart of Fort Worth, as fans reveled in the off-field antics of their heroes. Atz grumbled that his Cats could "drink any brewery dry at night and beat any baseball team team the next afternoon." One afternoon southpaw Jimmy Walkup struck out Babe Ruth three times during an exhibition game with the New York Yankees. "I'll tell you one thing," growled the Babe as Fort Worth fans razzed him unmercifully, "I'm in the big leagues and he ain't."

In 1920, the first season of Fort Worth's six-year reign, the Dixie Series was organized between the champions of the Texas League and the Southern League. The Panthers beat Little Rock, then defeated Memphis in 1921. The next year, Fort Worth lost to Mobile, but triumphed in the "minor league world series" the following three seasons.

By 1926, there was a new Panther Park, built a couple of blocks east of old Panther Park across North Main. One of the show places of minor league baseball, it was designed to handle the throngs of fans who swarmed to Panther games, and eventually seated over 13,000. The facility was renamed LaGrave Field after Paul Lagrave died in 1929.

When the Panthers moved into the new stadium, many members of the championship combination had won promotions to higher leagues or had retired. In 1929, Jake Atz was replaced at mid-season, but the next year the Panthers won the first half, beat Wichita Falls three games to two to take the 1930 pennant, then whipped Memphis in the Dixie Series.

Six disappointing years passed, but in 1937, behind the league-leading bat of player-manager Homer Peel (.370), the third-place Cats emerged from the playoff series to win another flag. The customary Fort Worth magic prevailed in the Dixie Series as Little Rock fell in five games. The Panthers dropped to last the next season, but in 1939 a fourth-place finish returned Fort Worth to the playoffs. There were no outstanding hitters, but the pitching staff boasted Bear Tracks Greer (22-11, a league-leading 2.29 ERA, and 30 complete games in 35 starts) and former big leaguers Firpo Marberry (13-9) and Raymond Starr (18-7 and soon to return to the National League). After losing the first two playoff games to Houston, the Panthers took three straight, beat hated Dallas for the pennant, then won the Dixie Series from Nashville in seven games. But again the Panthers nosedived to last following a pennant, and there would be no more playoff appearances until after World War

Following the war, Fort Worth, now a member of the excellent farm system organized by Branch Rickey for the Brooklyn Dodgers, appeared in the playoffs for nine consecutive years. From 1946 through 1949, the Cats finished in first place three years out of four, and the second-place standing of 1947 was by just half a game. In 1946, the Cats were 101-53, and in 1949 the record was 100-54, but the 1948 club, although only 92-61 in the regular season, proved to be the only postwar Fort Worth club to win a pennant. The pitching staff was excellent--Carl Erskine (15-7), Robert Austin (17-7), Chris Van Cuyk (14-7)--and catcher Bobby Bragan provided talented leadership as player-manager, but the Cats lost to Birmingham in the Dixie Series.

Credit for the above histories graciously goes to the members of the Hall - Ruggles chapter of the Society for American Baseball Research.