Baseball History Podcast

Welcome to the Baseball History Podcast: Featuring This Week in Baseball History, baseball dictionary and a tour of baseball cities.  I’m your game announcer Bob Wright.

This is game 05 of the 2009 baseball season

In the first inning let’s take a look at This Week in Baseball History for the 4 week of January.

January 29

1957 Due to the start of coast to coast travel, major league baseball considers a plan creating a player pool to be used in the event of a plane crash.

Walter Fenner Leonard, nicknamed “Buck”, was born September 8, 1907 in Rocky Mount, North Carolina.

Smooth-fielding, sweet-swinging first baseman Walter Buck Leonard was the backbone of the Homestead Grays’ dynasty of the late 1930s and 1940s.  Even-tempered, modest and loyal, the left-handed hitting Leonard was a model of consistency and one of the best pure hitters to play in the Negro leagues.

He played in a record 11 East-West All-Star games, and his remarkable 17-year tenure with the Grays is the longest term of service with one team in Negro leagues history.

Leonard left school at the age of 14 because no high school education was available for blacks in his hometown.  He worked in a textile mill and as a shoeshine boy at a railroad station, the latter being typical of the economic situation for many African Americans at that time.

Leonard is the only Negro League first baseman enshrined in Cooperstown.  A lefthanded power hitter, he teamed with legendary slugger Josh Gibson to lead the Homestead Grays to nine consecutive Negro National League championships from 1937 through 1945.  The duo was dubbed the “Thunder Twins” by the black press.

Leonard was called a black Lou Gehrig, Gibson a black Babe Ruth.  While Gibson slugged tape measure home runs, the pull-hitting Leonard, who feasted on fastballs, demonstrated his smooth, powerful stroke by hitting line drives off and over the walls.

Leonard was equally smooth and consistent at first base.  His sure-handed glove work was compared with that of Hal Chase and George Sisler.  He was a smart fielder who always made the right play.  Dependable and respected by his teammates, he was a steadying influence on the Grays.

Leonard began his career in 1933 with the semi-pro Elks and Black Swans in his native Rocky Mount, NC, after he lost his job due to the Depression.  After being picked up by the Portsmouth, VA Firefighters, he was soon signed by the Baltimore Stars.  When the Stars broke up later that season, he finished with the Brooklyn Royal Giants.  The next spring, he was recruited by former Homestead ace Smokey Joe Williams for Cum Posey’s Grays.  For the next 17 years, Leonard was the Grays’ first baseman.

Beginning in 1942, when Leonard hit 42 Home Runs, the Grays appeared in four consecutive Black World Series and won championships in 1943-44.  Leonard tied Gibson for the 1944 Home Run title, and in the Black World Series he batted .500.

He hit .375 in 1945, finishing behind Gibson in the Home Run race.

Leonard tied for the Home Run lead and won his third batting title with a .395 mark in 1948.  Under Leonard’s inspirational leadership, the Grays won their 10th pennant that year and a record third Black World Series.

Years before Branch Rickey brought Jackie Robinson to the Dodgers, Senators owner Clark Griffith approached Leonard and Gibson about playing in the majors.  But Griffith backed down, deciding not to disturb the status quo.

In 1952, Leonard was offered a major league contract, but he believed that at age 45 he was too old and might embarrass himself and hurt the cause of integration.  He may well have underestimated his own longevity, however, since he batted .333 in 10 games in the Class B Piedmont League the following year, and played in Mexico through 1955.

Leonard compiled a lifetime .341 average in the Negro National League and a .382 mark in exhibitions against major leaguers.  He made a record 12 appearances in the annual East-West all-star game, hitting .317 with an all-star record three Home Runs.

After the Grays disbanded, Leonard played in Mexico from 1951 to 1955.  He liked the warm climate, having spent winters on the diamonds of Cuba, Puerto Rico, and Venezuela.

After retiring permanently as a player in 1955, Leonard worked as a truant officer, a physical education instructor, and the vice-president of a minor league team in his birthplace of Rocky Mount, a team of which he was also a board member.

He was one of Negro League baseball’s foremost ambassadors.

Buck Leonard was inducted into the Hall of Fame by the Committee on Negro Baseball Leagues in 1972.

He died November 27, 1997 at age 90 in Rocky Mount, North Carolina.

In this inning we’ll open up the Baseball Dictionary

Under the letter: A

arm

1. A player’s throwing or pitching arm.

The 1st Use comes from an 1863 New York Sunday Mercury clipping.

2. Throwing ability, usually applied to a fielder who makes fast, accurate throws.

3. A euphemism for a pitcher; for example, “Any baseball team can use a good arm.”

4. A euphemism for a fielder with ability to throw a baseball a long distance and with accuracy; for example, “Smith is a good arm from right field to third base.”

And now for the ninth inning…

Continuing our trip around baseball cities…

This segment comes to you compliments of listener Marty Merritt

In his email to me, Marty wrote:

Bob,

Here’s another from my series of Texan ballparks.   I mentioned the Colts and Colt Stadium briefly in my Astrodome article, but the sweltering, mosquito-laden swamp that was Colt Stadium deserves its own profile.    Thanks for creating the Baseball History podcast and for all the research you do.   And thanks also for using my earlier submissions.

You’ve done yeoman work in highlighting interesting players both famous and forgotten, but have you done a biography of Pete Reiser?   The hugely talented Brooklyn outfielder was considered the equal of Willie Mays until his numerous injuries from crashing headlong into outfield walls finally took their toll.  Legend has it that he was once so badly injured that he was given last rites at the ballpark.

Thanks,

Marty

Colt Stadium, Houston, Texas

The National League owners granted Houston an expansion franchise beginning with the 1962 season, no doubt excited by the futuristic domed stadium that the Houston Sports Association promised.  But the great Dome would be years in construction, and where would the new team play in the meantime?

Judge Roy Hofheinz, the majority shareholder of the Association, was unwilling to have the new team play in Houston’s well-regarded minor league Busch Stadium so he financed the construction of a temporary stadium within view of the Dome’s construction site.

For those three pre-Astrodome seasons of 1962 through 1964, the team was known as the Houston Colt .45s and their home, Colt Stadium, was perhaps the worst stadium ever in the modern era of major league baseball.

Colt Stadium held approximately 32,000 sweltering souls in a single-deck configuration.   There was no grandstand and no canopy of any kind to protect fans from the direct sunlight.   Worse still, the stadium site had originally been a salt marsh and the area was home to tremendous swarms of mosquitoes.

Although Hofheinz’s budget didn’t even allow for the visiting clubhouse to be air conditioned, his imagination still ran wild.  In an era when most stadiums were mostly a drab green, he specified box seats in alternating sections of flamingo red and burnt orange, with upper seats similarly alternating between chartreuse and turquoise.  This so-called “Rainbow Sherbet” color scheme was duplicated on the tickets.  Bright colors adorned the staff, too.  Ticket takers wore 1880s garb with straw hats and striped blazers while parking attendants wore white jump suits with orange Stetson hats and blue neckerchiefs.

A Dixieland band roamed the aisles between innings and there was a real saloon, the Fast Draw Club, where season ticket holders could buy beer and liquor shots after having paid the $150 yearly membership fee.   In those days in Houston, alcohol could only be served in these so-called “private clubs.”

For a short time, Hofheinz even tried to force the players to wear powder blue western suits and cowboy boots while traveling on road trips.   During a series against the Dodgers, one player claimed his suit went missing when the dry cleaners delivered it to Disneyland by mistake, and the whole effort quietly petered out as the suits met with various travel mishaps.

The players of that era had nothing good to say about the stadium, especially the outfielders.   Players carried small spray bottles of mosquito repellent in their pockets.   The outfield required such a steep slope for drainage that batters were only visible from the waist up.   The lights were the minimum the league required, and the light-colored seats made it easy to lose fly balls in the rainbow of colors.

The biggest complaint, of course, was the 90-degree plus heat.    Players would frequently lose several pounds in sweat during a homestand.  An afternoon double-header against the Dodgers in 1963 saw 78 fans and one umpire treated for heat exhaustion.   After that, the National League granted special permission for Sunday night games.

Although Colt Stadium was used for only three seasons, it still saw a couple of unique firsts.  Pitcher Ken Johnson pitched a nine-inning no hitter against the Reds on April 23, 1964, only to lose 1-0 after two Colt errors and a fielder’s choice in the top of the ninth allowed Pete Rose to score.

Umpire Jocko Conlon called the June 30, 1962 game due to fog in the seventh inning because the outfielders couldn’t see the ball or even the batter.    The coastal fog had cleared completely by the time the fans had left the park.

The Colts won their first game at Colt Stadium, beating the Cubs 11-2 on April 10, 1962. A footnote to the Colts first season was the quiet desegregation of major Houston hotels in anticipation of the arrival of visiting black stars such as Henry Aaron and Willie Mays.

The last game in Colt Stadium, on September 27, 1964, saw Bob Bruce win a twelve-inning pitcher’s duel against Dodger ace Don Drysdale and reliever Ron Perranowski.  General Manager Paul Richards said “We won our first and our last here at ol’ Colt Stadium.  I just wish we’d won a few more in between.”

The 1965 season saw the long awaited opening of the Dome and a new name for the team: the Astros.  Colt Stadium languished, its bright hues painted battleship gray, in a corner of the Dome’s parking lot.   Discarded equipment was stored there and Astros players occasionally braved rattlesnakes to run and train in the heat, but Hofheinz wanted it gone.

After a tax dispute with the county, Hofheinz sold the galvanized steel structure, wood, and light standards to a Mexican League team in Torreon around 1970.   Today no trace remains of Houston’s colorful early major league past.

This article draws heavily on the wonderful book A Six-Gun Salute by Robert Reed, which documents the beginnings, the larger-than-life personalities, and the first three seasons of Houston’s big-league franchise.   Additional material comes from Wikipedia and from the illustrated historical stadium survey Take Me Out To The Ballpark by Josh Leventhal.

Thank you Marty, and as promised “You get the credit.”