Texas baseball was born in Houston, but it was raised in Sherman.
The first recorded baseball game in the state of Texas took place April 21, 1867. On the 31st anniversary of the Battle of San Jacinto, a local Houston club defeated a visiting Galveston team on the actual battlefield just east of Houston. Former Austin College trustee Sam Houston, an opponent of the Civil War, had passed away just four years earlier. Sam Houston wasn’t the only Texan in opposition to the war. Grayson county had voted against secession as well.
Baseball was a Yankee game, born around New York in the 1840s. Southern soldiers were first introduced to the game during the war, and brought the sport back home after 1865. Hostile, pro-secession areas of the south did so only reluctantly. Places like Grayson county, filled with more ambivalent Midwesterners, embraced this new sport with passion.
Veteran and Sherman resident Charles Batsell returned home from the war, made his fortune, and established a baseball park for the community. Batsell’s park was a permanent fixture in Sherman, and was eventually used for Austin College’s first football game against Texas A&M in 1896. But before that year, Batsell’s park was a home for the growing sport of baseball.
Professional baseball in Houston was born in 1888 with the establishment of the Houston Buffaloes franchise within the first Texas League. The first league was initially comprised of just the largest cities in the state (Houston, Dallas, Austin, San Antonio), struggled, and folded in 1892. The problem was “the jump”, the high costs associated with long travel. By 1895, Texas baseball proponents had a cost-cutting solution: a new Texas League divided between North and South.
The Texas League southern division included Houston, Galveston, Austin & San Antonio. The northern division? Dallas, Fort Worth, Waco, and……….. Sherman, TX. Such was the popularity of Grayson County baseball that league officials considered Sherman worthy of games against the larger cities in the state. Officials in Grayson county successfully argued for Texas League inclusion by pointing to Batsell’s park, high school teams, numerous club teams, and an unofficial team at Austin College.
The Sherman Orphans opened up the 1895 season with wins against Dallas and Fort Worth, and later in the season departed for Houston to take on the Buffaloes. The 1895 Dallas team was owned by Sherman enthusiast Ted Sullivan, who had “discovered” Charles Comiskey and later coined the term “fan” to describe sports enthusiasts. The 1895 Houston Buffaloes squad included sluggers such as Ollie Pickering, whose propensity to turn bloopers into hits eventually led to his teammates referring to them as “Texas Leaguers”. The success of minor league baseball in Sherman helped other teams in Northeast Texas establish their own franchises years later.
The star pitcher of the 1895 Sherman Orphans was a local kid named Cy Mulkey. He was a Texas League journeyman who by 1899 was pitching for the Houston Buffaloes. By 1902, Mulkey was a manager in Corsicana, and became a part of baseball history. When the Corsicana owner demanded Mulkey allow his entitled and inexperienced son to pitch over Mulkey’s objections, the Shermanite started the son and refused to pull him. As Texarkana cruised to a 51-3 victory, Mulkey famously shouted to the team: "His daddy said he's going to pitch, and he's sure pitching, ain't he?" The 48-run loss is still today the worst loss in professional baseball history.
By 1907, Mulkey was done with the Texas League. He headed back home, to manage the Austin College baseball team. At AC, Mulkey presided over a Roo Renaissance on the diamond. His arrival coincided with Austin College’s entry into the TIAA along with the top schools in the state. AC recruited some of the top players in Texas during this era. One of those players was a pitcher named Alex Malloy. In 1908, Malloy and the Roos faced Christy Mathewson and the New York Giants in Sherman during Giants spring training. Roo opponents that year included TCU, A&M, and UT. In 1909, Malloy led AC down to Austin and defeated the Longhorns 5-1. The Kangaroos would defeat UT in subsequent years without Malloy; by then he was already headed for greener pastures.
In the summer of 1909, Malloy was signed by the Houston Buffaloes. His performance in Houston was so strong that year that he began to attract the focus of Big League scouts. The St. Louis Browns were particularly interested, and called up Malloy during the summer of 1910 for the remainder of the season. The highlight of Malloy’s one year in the major leagues came at Sportsman’s Park in St. Louis on September 25, 1910.
Malloy got that call that day on the mound against the Washington Senators. His opponent just happened to be the best pitcher in the history of baseball, Walter Johnson. Johnson was untouchable. He struck out 11 Browns in a 1-hit complete game shutout. His 11 strikeouts got him to within 4 Ks of the all-time single season strikeout record, and he’d surpass that record on his next start. Washington won, 3-0.
But the Roo was up to the task. Malloy also went the distance, striking out 7 and allowing only 6 hits. According to the Washington Herald:
“Malloy, who opposed Johnson, pitched very fair ball, and had he distributed the half dozen hits gathered by Washington a little more effectively, there is a possibility that the teams might have fought on indefinitely without a decision. Malloy forced seven Nationals to strike out – not a bad record for a recruit.”
Today, Walter Johnson is 4th all-time in career complete games (531), second in wins (417), and first in shutouts (110). He was the all-time career strikeout leader with 3,508, until he was passed much later by a Texas native playing for Houston.
Malloy would return to the minors for another 4 years after 1910, and finished his career with the Houston Buffaloes. He was on the roster in 1914, when the Buffaloes met the New York Yankees during spring training at West End Park in Houston. The Park was located in downtown Houston, not far from Minute Maid field. The 1914 Yankee – Buffalo game is known for a famous photo of a home plate slide.
The Houston Buffaloes became the first official farm club of a major league franchise in the 1920s, when the team established a relationship with the St. Louis Cardinals. They were playing good baseball at West End Park that decade, and they were playing good baseball not too far away either. Rice baseball was led by a star SWC pitcher named Eddie Dyer, and was managed by Austin College legend Pete Cawthon. After graduation, Dyer was signed by the Houston Buffaloes, and was later called up to the Majors by the Cardinals. Dyer spent the year 1926 assisting Austin College athletics with Coach Cawthon, and helping St. Louis win the World Series. The town of Sherman threw a parade in his honor that year, and declared the day “Eddie Dyer Day.”
A managerial career within the Cardinals farm system followed Dyer’s playing days, and he skippered the Houston Buffaloes to three first place finishes and one Texas League championship in 1940. This success earned him the manager job of the St. Louis Cardinals in 1946, and Dyer promptly led St. Louis to another World Series title exactly 20 years after his title as a player. The 1946 Series against the Boston Red Sox went 7 games. Enos Slaughter’s “mad dash” gave St. Louis a lead in the eighth, but Boston threatened to tie in the ninth. Down one run with two outs and two on, up to the plate walked Austin College Kangaroo Tom McBride. Former Austin College coach Eddie Dyer walked up to the mound to have a conversation with his relief pitcher, who successfully got a McBride ground out to end the Series. The Red Sox curse would continue for another 58 years after this disappointing loss on the same field where Alex Malloy and Walter Johnson had gone head-to-head.
The city of Houston petitioned for a Major League team for most of the post WW2 years, and the big break finally came in 1962. A group of Houston entrepreneurs received permission for a franchise, if and only if an agreement could be reached with the Houston Buffaloes. Eventually a deal was made, assets, staff, and coaches were transferred to the new Houston team, and the era of big league baseball by the Buffalo Bayou was born.
There have been many highlights since. The eighth wonder of the world was built in 1965. Texas native Nolan Ryan passed Walter Johnson’s career strikeout record as an Astro, and threw a major league record 5th no-hitter in the Astrodome. Mike Scott clinched a division title with a no-hitter. Bagwell, Biggio, & Berkman were one long highlight film. Roos my age are familiar with the thrill and ultimate frustration of 1980 and 1986. Younger Roos can recall the excitement of 2004 and 2005, and the exasperation of that first World Series loss to the White Sox.
We’ve seen losing streaks miraculously end in over the past 13 years. The Red Sox, the White Sox, and the Cubs have all snapped their skids and have brought home championships. In some ways, the longest losing streak in Major League baseball today is……the state of Texas. The Rangers and the Astros have played 113 seasons with zero titles to show for it. That will end one day.
The Yankees that squared off against the Houston Buffaloes in 1914 are now up 3-2 against Houston as the ALCS returns to Texas. But I still believe. Just two wins, and Houston finds itself in the World Series for a second time. It’s been a long and winding road since that day on the San Jacinto battlefield and through the efforts of Mulkey, Malloy, & Dyer, as well as Ryan, Biggio and Verlander. In fact, it’s been exactly 150 years. And maybe a celebration of the sesquicentennial of Texas baseball is just what is needed to finally bring a World Series title to the state of Texas.
150 years is a long time. Heck, it’s almost as old as Austin College itself. Almost.
Go Astros! Beat the Yankees and bring home a title. Let’s do this Houston and Texas.
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