History of baseball in Texas
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Like many other states in the United States, Texas has a long history with the game of baseball.
The Houston Base Ball Club was formed in 1861, shortly before the start of the Civil War, though baseball had previously been played in Galveston and other Texas locations. The club's purpose was to promote the game in the same way that Alexander Cartwright had during the 1840s with the Knickerbocker Base Ball Club in Manhattan.[1] The growth of the game was interrupted by the Civil War,[2] during which it was played mostly by Yankees. A humorous story by Texas-based Union soldier George A. Putnam told of a baseball game interrupted by Confederate gunfire. Putnam stated:
Suddenly there was a scattering of fire, which three outfielders caught the brunt; the centerfield was hit and was captured, left and right field managed to get back to our lines. The attack...was repelled without serious difficulty, but we had lost not only our centerfield, but...the only baseball in Alexandria, Texas.[3]
On April 21, 1868, the first occurrence of a baseball game was taken into account by the Houston Post.[4][5] At the San Jacinto Battlegrounds near Houston, where General Sam Houston led Texas to triumph in the War of Independence from Mexico in 1836, a baseball game took place on the anniversary now celebrated as San Jacinto Day. The Houston "Stonewalls" defeated the Galveston "Robert E. Lees", 35–2, that rivaled the result of what originally happened on the same site.[6]
Baseball spread throughout the state in the next two decades as a popular amateur game. The influence of what the Houston club had done in the early 1860s, along with those who acquired the nuances of the game from Civil War travels and immigrants who moved to Texas during the Reconstruction Era, helped in organizing the sport and bringing more attention to the game in the state. Scarcely a generation after the state's first recorded game in 1868, Texas fielded 100 minor league clubs—more than any other state.[7]
The acceptance of baseball had greatly expanded throughout Texas by the end of the 19th century. Houston Base Ball Club was a founding member of the Texas League in 1888 and also won their first league pennant the next year. The Houston ballclub went by the nicknames of Babies, Red Stockings, Mud Cats, Magnolias, and Wanderers[8] before the Houston Buffaloes name became permanent around the turn of the 20th century.