Baseball on the Prairie:: How Seven Small-Town Teams Shaped Texas League History

by Kris Rutherford, Scott Hanzelka (Foreword)

At the close of the nineteenth century, railroad expansion in Texas at once shrank the state and expanded opportunities, including that of Texas League Baseball. Previously, the major cities monopolized Texas minor-league ball, but with the rails came small-town teams without which the league may have floundered. Sherman, Denison, Paris, Corsicana, Cleburne, Greenville and Temple teams produced some of the Texas League's greatest players and provided unprecedented statewide interest. The 1902 Corsicana Oil Citys was one of the most successful teams of the time, claiming the second-best winning percentage and baseball's most lopsided victory, 51-3 over Texarkana's Casketmakers. In its only year in the league, Cleburne won the league championship and team owner Doak Roberts discovered the great Tris Speaker. Kris Rutherford pieces together the Texas League's early days and the people and towns that made this centuries-old institution possible.

Genres: Baseball

192 pages, Paperback

First published March 23, 2014

Reviews

[Richard Buro]

The short version first.

The Texas League has a long and very inter-esting past. In fact it still exists today, just follow the Texas League hotspots anywhere in this review to get to the current website for the Minor League entity known today as the Texas League. This review is devoted to the historical research and findings by Kris Rutherford . His research is chronicled in Base-ball on the Prairie: How Seven Small-Town Teams Shaped Texas League History. A brief synopsis follows . . . The Texas League has a long and very interesting past. In fact it still exists today, just follow the Texas League hotspots anywhere in this review to get to the current website for the Minor League entity known today as the Texas League. This review is devoted to the historical research and findings by Kris Rutherford . His research is chronicled in Base-ball on the Prairie: How Seven Small-Town Teams Shaped Texas League History. A brief synopsis follows . . .

Most individuals who have never lived in Texas may not be knowledgeable about the Lone Star State and its beginnings. The Texas State Historical Association has a wealth of good information, factual data including the Texas Almanac. Basics about the Lone Star State relevant to Texas League baseball follow:

There was not much time nor inclination to have leisure time activities like baseball much before the 1870's or so, and even then, there were more reasons to work hard to bring the State through Recon-struction after the War Between the States or The Civil War as it is also known. Mr. Ruther-ford points out that until additional efforts for transportation of goods and people, there was again not much use to have leisure time activities other than what groups of people in small towns and villages could devise. Regardless, as the 1870's gave way to the 1880's with the advent of transportation via rail and coach, the way was being paved to include a leisure activity or two to come to the fore, therefore baseball was one of the options for leisure time enjoyment either as players or spectators.

Initially there were more options and likelihood that a baseball team would be able to exist and hope-fully thrive in larger communities such as Dallas, Fort Worth, Galveston, Houston, San Antonio, as the core large cities in the State, as they still are. Railroads crisscrossed the State with several opportuni-ties for communication between the large cities as well as some of the smaller ones as well. The main stumbling point for most start-up baseball teams was the cost for paying for talented players who would play for smaller franchises like those in Texas in the latter third of the 19th Century. The organi-zations that held forth for the festivities primarily were located in the largest cities in the State, but there were also a few smaller cities and towns that felt they might be able to support a minor league team. Some of those smaller towns are the focus for both Mr. Rutherford ’s re-search and report of his findings in his work, Baseball on the Prairie: How Seven Small-Town Teams Shaped Texas League History, the subject of this review.

Mr. Rutherford |4312723]’s historical perspectives are correct and necessarily abbreviated as much of the historical information of interest deals mostly the with transportation as it applied to teams and spectators moving five or six dozen miles or, in some cases, much farther than that; for example, Fort Worth to Galveston, where the closest stretch of railroad would cover over three hundred miles to make the trek to the barrier island city at the mouth of the Houston Ship Channel, namely Galveston. He also notes that there were other considerations that small towns brought to the table as it were. A prime example would be the crude oil discovery in the area around and near present-day Corsicana, TX. This finding resulted in the Spindletop oil discovery with its boost to local economies in several towns in East Central Texas.

Regardless of the motivations or incentives, Mr. Rutherford |4312723] chronicles how various factors and shenanigans worked in concert to bring about the Texas League with both small towns and large cities fielding teams for the purposes of providing all that is considered normal and noble in the actions that occur on the diamond-shaped base paths that were constructed in many places in the Lone Star State. Mr. Rutherford |4312723]’s scholarship and historiography are evident in the breadth and depth of his research which is evident in both his writing and in his citations in both bibliography and indexes, as well as his notations and citations all evident at the end of his book, Baseball on the Prairie: How Seven Small-Town Teams Shaped Texas League History. He refers to primary sources through his book, as well as, bringing images, period artworks, and, in some cases, two-page, landscape photographs of the period. The most intriguing element are his inclusion of team photo-graphs as well as period baseball “cards,” featuring artwork from the period. Couple with recent photography, most of which was contributed with credit to Mr. Rutherford |4312723]’s wife, Karen Rutherford. His decade long interest and devotion to the topic strongly indicate that his scholarship is well-placed, and his writing and discussion about the field are based in excellent research, meticulous coverage of many prime source materials, as well as a tremendous amount of “boots on the ground” field work in gathering images, tracking sources, and discovering the small-towns of Texas from the Gulf of Mexico to the Red River, and in some cases beyond in to the adjacent states of Arkansas, Louisiana, and Oklahoma.

The book has clearly developed and extensive source citations with a good topical index, bibliography with various types of works cited beyond standard and expected texts to include websites, and prime sources in periodicals and newspapers from many local towns and communities both currently and formerly directly involved in Texas League baseball to one degree or another. His study and his find-ings clearly indicate the depth of his knowledge and understanding of the depth and breadth of his research covering the multiple facets of the Texas League, its operations, its teams, and its players, managers, and owners. It was delightfully written with clear attention to detail as well as infused with anecdotal and period specific references and quotations. He also took the time to develop the story beyond the Texas League to show how its teams influenced and made noted contributions to the Major League Baseball teams of the era with some of the Texas League standouts and rascals becoming legends in Major League teams as well. There were even notations about some Texas League members finding their positions and recognitions as members of the National Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, NY.

Recommendations? First of all, Kris Rutherford ’s Baseball on the Prairie: How Seven Small-Town Teams Shaped Texas League History is, clearly, a five-star work of the first order . For a study of a well-honed, meticulously research, and skill-fully crafted writing, his work is also personal both for him and his family as well as for the players of the Texas League teams of the past, and to some degree, present as well. His writing is clear, cogent, and well-edited. It is clear that he used prime sources for his research, backed up with secondary sup-port as needed. This is a clear-cut example of solid historiography with strong attention to detail in the form of prime sources as the basis for his research. Beyond the professional historian’s work, Mr. Rutherford reminds us of a time not-so-long ago, when Texas and Texans were making marks on the tapestry of America, even in the hallowed halls and fields of the national pastime in both Major and Minor League venues. His rich, focused, and detailed research bring the lives of the players, the roar of the crowds, and sounds of steam locomotives and the hum of the Interurban rails of the prairie come to life once more, where one can imagine even hearing the cracks of the bats for the long ball’s flight into the stands of the parks which adorned cities and small towns alike in the late 19th and early 20th Centuries, as much a part of the fabric of the Texas Plains, as the tractors, the oil derricks, and the large agricultural base created as the prairie was tamed and domesticated into the thriving agricultural base that survives to this day in the East and Central parts of Texas. Mr. Rutherford ’s work is the story of Texas growing up from the untouched South Plains to the somewhat tamed, agribusiness sites of today, where the growl of the tractor and combine tend to drown out the crack of the bats and the flights of the hardballs, leaving the park indicating another slugger has scored a home run, clearing bases, while the pencils and erasers mark and correct the scorecards of those greatest of American pastimes, the diamonds and the base paths of America’s National Pastime, baseball. Whether you are a fan of baseball or a reader of great history, you will enjoy this love story told by one who has studied it for over ten years. His story is a good one, a human one, and a sport story that is the best of the historian’s craft as well. Anyone who is interested in the base-ball of yesteryear and how it has evolved into today’s sport will want to see how it all started in one State in a big way with at one time more than the eight current teams playing and traveling, bringing the best game they have to your own local diamond, which might be a short drive from your residence, but also a readily available place to go for a nice afternoon’s enjoyment of baseball, truly an historical tradition of this great democracy we all cherish. Play ball!!!



Review of Kris Rutherford's Baseball on the Prairie: How Seven Small-Town Teams Shaped Texas League History by Richard W. Buro is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
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[Eric Berg · Rating 5 out of 5]

A well written and researched account of north Texas baseball until about 1907.
The author does a nice job of balancing player bios, ballparks, seasons, and executives’ history to bring the reader an excellent reading experience.