1965 Golden Eagles High School Baseball Team

Abner Doubleday: Inventor of Baseball was in Brownsville, Texas

1917 Ft Brown 3rd Calvary vs 64th Motor Company (photo) Daily Ranchero 23 October 1969 clipping and inset of Abner Doubleday

While the true story as to who invented baseball is still in question—Abner Doubleday’s name is still associated with the creation of the game in 1839. 

Doubleday was stationed in the Valley with Zachary Taylor’s U.S. Army during the Mexican War—once in Port Isabel (1846) and again at Brownsville’s Fort Brown in 1848.  

It is not known whether Doubleday organized a game while stationed here— but we can always speculate that maybe he did?  Abner was long gone when the game found a diamond in this city…

The first Brownsville amateur baseball team was formed in 1868—this is when the real reporting of the game started in the Brownsville Ranchero. 

It was on a Christmas Day when the inaugural game pitted the Rio Grande Club of this city against Club Union de Matamoros. It was advertised as the championship of the border. 

The boys from the other side of the river put-up 49 crooked numbers on the board with the city squad crossing the plate 32 times. As time progressed, both cities added more teams, but it was not until the turn of the century that baseball became the king of sports in this region.   

The Brownsville Herald credited John D. Hill, who came to the city to get into the rice business, with giving the sport a push in 1903.  Hill’s son, Frank, was a college pitcher at Kentucky, and after watching an Army team take on local civilians, he decided that the family should organize a local team.

By 1904, when the St. Louis, Brownsville and Mexico Railway came into town, a city team was in place.  The squad won all its games that year, including one over a strong team from Corpus Christi, and it declared itself the South Texas champion.

In 1910, Brownsville joined Corpus Christi, Beeville, Laredo, Victoria and Bay City in the professional Southwest Texas League.

Sam Bell was the first manager of the Brownsville Brownies, and local pharmacist W.G. Willman was named the secretary.  One manager who went on to bigger things was also in the league—famed University of Texas coach Billy Disch managed the Beeville Squad.

1910 Brownie

The Brownies won their first game of the season, a 2-1 decision over Corpus Christi on Jacinto day in 1910.  The team finished the year with a 68-47 record, good enough to win the second half and set up a playoff against Victoria.

The teams split their games in Brownsville, then divided the next two in Victoria.  To accommodate large crowds—by some reports, between 8,000 and 9,000 fans, the series was moved to Corpus.

Brownsville took the next two games and the first league pennant.  Among the players on the team was pitcher John Taff, an Austin native who appeared in seven games for the Philadelphia Athletics in 1913.

The Southwest Texas League lasted two seasons, but Brownsville went on to field teams in three more leagues—the Texas Valley (1938), Rio Grande Valley (1949-1950) and Gulf Coast (1951-1953).

1934 ~ Pan American Airways Aviators

reprinted here from South Padre Parade courtesy of Rene Torres

1952 Brownsville baseball - Lions Little League

1952 star shortstop Ernest Weatherford / Brownsville Lions little league. Photo shared by his half-brother Jerry Wall. 

1965 West Brownsville Little League "J & O" team

1928 July 4 Brownsville Tigers

I'm going to begin with the "M" written at the bottom center and say this might indicate photographer Manuel Morales took this photo.  By 1928 Robert Runyon was probably lost in his botanical studies. Morales and Rogers Studio and another called Alex Studio emerged as the next generation of local studio photographers.

This motley crew of ball players are all wearing different uniforms because they had experience playing for other local semi-pro teams; with the exception of maybe the first two players.

I'm going to make a story up about this and since I'm just a folklorist that should keep any snotty historians off my ass for being irresponsible but I'll make it as believable as I can.  There will be some truth to it.

The first player has a uniform with "Snake King" written on it.  What we know for sure is that his last name was Santiago, or was it his first name?  It doesn't matter.  He played ball for the Brownsville High School all-star champs in 1925 and was idolized by the second player wearing his B.H.S. sweater and cap.  That's Joseph King whose adopted Dad was none other than William Abraham "Snake" King.

One day Joseph asked the Snake King if Snakeville could have its very own baseball team.  W.A. King knew nothing about baseball but if there was money or free advertisement to be made from it he was interested.  Joseph relayed how Santiago's heroic playing led his team to the championship in high school and that would eventually lead to big wins for the team if Joe, a ball player himself, was also on the team.  From this photo we can ascertain that at ol' W.A. King shelled out a few bucks to have a tailor made uniform for Santiago.  Joseph and W.A.King Jr (seated) recruited a few players they had scouted the previous season and got them together for this historic photo taken on July 4, 1928.

Note Santiago's uniform says "Snake King" in cross-form rather than "Tigers" or a "T".  W.A. King was better known for selling snakes and other wild animals, most of which were caught locally such as javalinas and horned toads but if you wanted monkeys or parrots he could get that also.  Special orders from Africa bought lions and tigers but no baseball team would do-well to call itself the "Brownsville Snakes" would it?  In the upper valley they already had a team called the "Mercedes Lions" [which would have been their first logical choice if they want to have an intimidating name] so this team ended up with the "Tigers" once it became official and written on the photo.

1922 photo of Mercedes Lions.  Photo credit:  Rene Torres

I'll leave the real history to Rene Torres who contributed the truth-part to this story and adds that this team was sponsored by W.A. "Snake" King into the 1940's and they gave other valley teams a run for their bases.  They were also managed by Adolfo Arguijo who was a draft pick for the Yankees in 1923 but didn't quite make the grade.  Had he been chosen to play he might have been the first hombre with Mexican blood to play with the pros.

* Thanks to Brownsville Station Facebook page member who sent this but whose name I misplaced *