San Antonio Express-News (Sunday)
Reader tracks great-uncle to old S.A. ballpark
I am retracing the steps of my great-uncle George Joseph Burns’ baseball career. He played in the major leagues for 15 years and then did a few years in the minor leagues as a player/manager. His final season was in 1930 when he was player/manager of the San Antonio Bears of the Texas League, and they played at
League Park. I have found on the internet that League Park was located at the corner of East Josephine Street and Isleta Street and am now trying to pinpoint exactly which section of that intersection is where the ballpark once stood. Would you have knowledge of which part of that intersection is where the park stood? What building now sits on that site? I am traveling from New York state to San Antonio for work and want to visit the site and get a photo. Any advice or suggestions of whom I may want to reach out to that may know the answer would be appreciated.
— Mike Hauser
San Antonio’s Texas League team was entering its second season as the Indians when George J. Burns took the helm.
“Farewell, Bruin! Hail Hiawatha!” proclaimed the San Antonio Light, March 31, 1929. “The old name’s a jinx and has been abolished.” The city had fielded Bears — a punning nod to our Bexar County — from 1920 through 1928 and Bronchos from 1906 through 1918. Names often changed with new ownership or affiliation with a big-league club.
To take the curse off a string of losing seasons, the Bears ran a fan contest for a new name. Robert L. MacManus was first of a “goodly number to offer Indians,” chosen by business manager Tom Conner for the branding possibilities it suggested. The new uniforms sported an orangeand-black “warrior’s head” and orange piping on white for a “mean color combination.”
New owners — such as Homer Hammond, who acquired the fair-to-middling Bears in 1929 — “want to put their stamp on things, hence the name change, which was easier than scouting and signing good players,” says David King, author of “San Antonio at Bat: Professional Baseball in the Alamo City” and “Ross Youngs: In Search of a San Antonio Baseball Legend.”
With the new name, new owner and a sequence of new managers, the team kept shuffling
the deck except for one thing — its home ground. League Park, since 1923, was “an allwood structure that was home to major-league spring training as well as the (local Texas League team), located on Josephine Street south of the Brackenridge Park Golf Course,” says King in “San Antonio at Bat.” (A different League Park south of downtown, called Block Stadium from 1913-15 and renamed after a change of owners, was replaced by the newer, larger facility.)
New player/manager Burns, late of the Eastern League, probably had played on at least one of the League Parks during his Major League career (1911-1925) when he was a standout outfielder and hitter for the New York Giants, Cincinnati Reds and Philadelphia Phillies).
When he arrived in San Antonio, Burns recollected some of his experiences as he prepared to take the Indians to spring training at Fort Sam Houston, as he told the San Antonio Light, Feb. 25, 1930. The “quiet but scrappy veteran” said he planned to carry four outfielders on the roster, but that if he could “beat some youngster out of a job,” he would. Having trained in San Antonio before, he had
recommended players who were “carefully selected with an eye on the Texas League and its peculiar demands,” including “men who like to play in hot weather.”
Nor did he expect his new assignment to be a walk in the park. Burns, said the Light, “entertains no illusions about the speed of the Texas League. Many former major leaguers have … lived to change their estimates of the league’s speed.”
He was 40 that year and put himself in only 23 games during his final season, says King. As the season progressed, the undercapitalized Indians kept making cuts; Burns might have preferred to remain a bench manager but may not have had a choice, as he was permitted to sub for injured or absent players.
His name doesn’t appear as a player on the box score published in King’s book for the game played March 31, 1930, in League Park. That was an exhibition game with the New York Yankees, starring the highestpaid player in professional baseball, George Herman “Babe” Ruth, who had been here the year before on a similar series of one-day hops among Texas cities. It was the last time Ruth played in San Antonio, and he did not disappoint.
With spectators coming from as far away as West Texas to see the 35-year-old Sultan of Swat, League Park was filled well beyond its official capacity of 7,000. Contemporary sportswriters
said fans worried about not getting a seat or even a standingroom-only spot pushed their money through the ticket window without waiting for change, and kids from the famous Knothole Gang (covered here April 6, 2015,) made their way over the fences. An estimated 10,000 people were there when Ruth hit a home run in his first at-bat.
The legendary slugger asked Indians catcher Pete Lapan “about a famous homer that the New York Giants’ Mel Ott had hit there during spring training,” says King. “Lapan pointed out where it had disappeared, just to the right of the scoreboard in the deepest part of the park.” Ruth declared that he would hit it to the other side — and did, for a “monster homer to center field.”
He got another mighty hit in the ninth inning that made short work of a vaunted spitball, against the rules for all but a few grandfathered pitchers by that time, and may have hit a fan standing in the outfield. The Yankees won 14-4, and Ruth signed autographs in left field, while the game was going on.
It wasn’t an auspicious opener.
After frequent cuts and personnel changes, the Indians finished with a 60-93 record, comparable to the previous year. Attendance was down in the first full year of the Great Depression. Hammond announced in the
Oct. 21, 1930, Light that Burns planned to go home to Gloversville, N.Y., and would not return
for the 1931 season. Praising the manager’s “gentlemanly characteristics.”
Hammond allowed that he didn’t have a replacement in mind but would shop the “national baseball meeting” a few months later in Montreal. Instead of the “pulling in a big one,” as Hammond optimistically predicted, longtime Texas
League catcher Claude Robertson moved over from Beaumont to manage the Indians in 1931 and 1932, with slightly worse results — and one huge change.
On June 18, 1932, a fire broke out that destroyed League Park. Fortunately, the alarm was turned in about an hour after the day’s game, attended by about 500 people. No lives were lost, but the park with its wooden grandstands and freshly tarred roof was a total loss — at $60,000, almost twice what Hammond carried in insurance. The cause is still unknown.
The ballpark was not rebuilt. The Indians played their home games on high school fields and stayed at Tech Field until Mission Stadium (covered here Feb. 14, 2014) was built in 1947.
Most of the area that used to be League Park, King said, is where DPT Laboratories is now, 307 E. Josephine St. Or try the Josephine Street Cafe, 400 E. Josephine.