04/18/1963
El Paso can trace it’s baseball history back to the 1890s when the El Paso Browns were playing what many fans felt was the equivalent of Major League baseball.
Leagues and schedules were sparse then but the El Paso Browns did compete with teams from San Antonio, Houston, Fort Worth, and Dallas.
Mostly they were weekend games, tempers ran high, and everybody’s civic pride was at stake.
It also wasn’t unusual for a few wagers to be made, and the winners were feted far into the night.
In 1891 under the leadership of the late Captain Juan S. Hart the El Paso Browns compiled a remarkable 17-3 record with one tie game.
At the turn of the century the famed old McGinty Club began to field some ball clubs to represent El Paso with, as many old time fans claimed, a beer keg on each base.
Pick-up baseball continued to thrive in El Paso in the early 1900s and probably the highlight of the period was the famed Black Sox scandal which brought many famous ball players down to this area to play ball.
One memorable event was when El Paso was playing Albuquerque in a grudge game. The report goes that Albuquerque showed up with the old Kansas City Blues intact, and they were slightly chagrined to find that El Paso had most of the stars from the old Chicago Black Sox team in El Paso uniforms.
That was a game in which everything in both towns, including city hall, was riding on each pitch.
Many of the famous players of the early 1900s also appeared in El Paso in exhibition games including Rube Waddell, Christy Matheson, Hal Chase, John McGraw, and many others.
Baseball as we know it today began to take shape in the mid 1920s with the formation of the old Copper League. This was the league where both Andy and Syd Cohen started long and illustrious baseball careers.
In 1927 for example Clyde Underwood was the manager of El Paso in the old Copper League and we were competing with teams from Bisbee, Ariz., Chino, N.M. and Fort Bayard, N.M.
In the 1930s Royce (Mule) Washburn took El Paso into the Arizona-Texas League and El Paso spent many years in this loop.
Mule Washburn won the pennant in the Arizona-Texas League in 1931, Jimmy Zinn repeated the trick in 1938, and Elmer (Speck) Williamson did the same in 1940.
World War II took El Paso out of organized baseball for four years, but in 1945 action was resumed with Andy Cohen leading the ball club into the Mexican National League.
Jack Corbett took over the ball club in 1947 and went back into the revived Arizona – Texas League, and in 1949 won he Governor’s Cup play-offs.
In 1950 John Phelan and Art Lilly collaborated to win the playoff in the Arizona-Texas League, and in 1951 they switched to the Southwest International League and set a new attendance mark in El Paso that season with 101,061 fans and another 7000 that attended that All-Star game here that season.
In 1952-53 Tom Love and Paul “Daffy” Dean kept the ball club in the Arizona – Texas League, and in 1954-55 Dick Azar and Syd Cohen had the club first in the A-T League and then in the West Texas – New Mexico League.
After Dick Azar stepped out of the local baseball picture things began to go downhill. First Pat McLaughlin had the ball club in the Southwest League in 1956, and Tom McHugh barely made it through 1957.
El Paso dropped out of organized baseball from 1958 through 1960, and then came back strong with the Sun Kings in 1961. The trend has been upward ever since.
The names of men, past and present, connected with baseball in El Paso runs into the hundreds.
Dan R. Ponder, present chairman of the board of the Sun Kings, was president of the Arizona – Texas League in 1950, chairman of the board of the Southwest League in 1951, a director of the Sophomore League in 1961, and is presently a director of the Texas League.
George Simpson was active in the old City League in El Paso and bought Syd Cohen his first baseball glove.
Manny Ponsford went on to become a top baseball player at the University of Texas and gave up the promise of a Major League career to go into the contracting business here. Bus Gillete was another fine college player, and such men as Lee Saunders, Barry Hagedon, Sims Davis, and Beto Mendez were all connected with the game in El Paso.
Bert Dugan and Seth Peyton, are two names always mentioned in connection with baseball in El Paso, along with John Andreas and the late Herman Andreas who was a fine catcher.
Slam Marshall helped to re-organize the old Copper League in 1927, and while some El Paso youngsters may not know it Judge “Buddy” Ward was a fine catcher.
The names go on and on. Al Adkins, Pete Leyva, Dick Filleman, and Macie Hart were all fine ball players. Jim Hillen played a lot of baseball in El Paso, as did Modesto Gomez in the old City League.
The list would also have to include Art Mills, George Bell, Kinko Alderete, Godwin Ragsdale, Brice Shuller, now a dentist, Chuma Minjares, Charlie Aronson, Billy Krause, County Clerk Wally Fields, Ike Lowenstein, Jim Powell and Dago Hunter.
In this immediate area old time baseball fans will remember Forrest “Sleepy” Sackett, Eddie Crozier, Benny Amato and Johnny Mulcahy.
Local ball fans also still remember Frank “Sag” Shea and Bob Carson from their playing fays.
El Paso does have a long and rich tradition in baseball and new chapters are being added each year.
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