History of the East Texas League: Minor League Baseball in East Texas (1916–50)

The East Texas League was a minor league baseball circuit which represented almost every East Texas town of any size in one or another of its iterations. The first East Texas League (ETL) had previously operated as a semi-pro league before being reorganized as a minor league in 1916. It was ranked Class D, the lowest rung in organized baseball. Under league president Lawrence Jordan, the league had teams in Palestine, Lufkin, Nacogdoches, Crockett, Rusk, and Jacksonville. Jacksonville did not join the league until the other five teams had already started the season and withdrew after nine games. Crockett pulled out after twenty-two games. Few were surprised when the league disbanded on July 19. Palestine and Lufkin led the abortive first season with identical records of 14–9. As Crockett, Nacogdoches, and Rusk never again hosted professional baseball at any level, it could be argued that the awarding of franchises was poorly handled.

1923–26, 1931: Class D

In 1923 another ETL was attempted, this time with Ike Hockwald as president. Still rated Class D, the new league featured an entirely new cast of franchises: Paris, Greenville, Marshall, Mount Pleasant, Sulphur Springs, and Longview. All six franchises played a full season. Notably, the Longview franchise sported the nickname of Cannibals, an appellation that dated from 1895, when the semi-pro Longview club soundly defeated the San Antonio Missionaries of the Texas-Southern League (now known as the Texas League). A San Antonio sportswriter wrote that Longview “ate up” San Antonio, thereby giving birth to the Cannibals nickname, which was affixed to every Longview franchise, no matter the league, through 1939.

The ETL, under President T. Lamar Denman, expanded to eight teams (Tyler and Texarkana were the newcomers) in 1924. Again, all the teams in the league played a full season. A notable player for the Texarkana Twins was twenty-two-year-old Smead Jolley, who hit .371 in 1924 and went on to enjoy a distinguished minor league career (a batting average of .369 with 2,714 hits in 7,353 at bats) and a modest but successful major league career. In 1927 and 1928 he had a composite batting average of more than .400 for the San Francisco Seals of the Pacific Coast League, and in 1928 he won the league’s triple crown.

In 1925 the league was guided by President H. E. Crosby. Sulphur Springs withdrew on June 7, which created an odd number of teams (meaning that on any given day one team would be lacking an opponent). Mount Pleasant merged with Longview to bring the league back to an even number of teams (six).

In 1926 the league carried on with six teams under President T. H. Fisher. The Longview Cannibals returned and won the pennant, while the Mount Pleasant Cats were never reconstituted. The league disbanded after the season, and, with the exception of Greenville, all remaining teams (Longview, Texarkana, Tyler Marshall, and Paris) joined the Lone Star League, another Class D outfit, for its inaugural 1927 season.

In 1931 President Harry Wanderling oversaw the third version (still Class D) of the ETL, but not for long. There were just four franchises (Henderson, Longview, Kilgore, and Tyler). After four games the Tyler Trojans quit, and the league pulled the plug two days later on May 7.

1936–40, 1946: Class C

The fourth ETL arose in 1936. It was essentially a rebranding of the West Dixie League, which was rated Class C. The new ETL had eight teams: Tyler, Gladewater, Longview, Jacksonville, Palestine, Henderson, Marshall, and Kilgore. All eight teams played out their schedules. The president of this version of the ETL was Rockwall-born J. Walter Morris, a major figure in college and minor league baseball in Texas. After retiring as a player in 1913, he served as a manager and executive with various Texas League franchises and eventually was named league president. Later he founded or revived other low-level minor leagues, and in 1936 and 1937 he was concurrently president of the East Texas, Cotton States, and Evangeline leagues. In 1966 he was inducted into the Texas Sports Hall of Fame.

Another notable name in the ETL in 1936 was Dick Burnett, an East Texas oilman who owned the Gladewater Bears, the 1936 league champions. This was Burnett’s first minor league franchise, but he later purchased franchises in Gainesville; Texarkana; and Monroe, Louisiana; before buying the Dallas Eagles of the Texas League. His success in Dallas persuaded the Sporting News to name him Minor League Executive of the Year in 1954.

Though Gladewater was Burnett’s hometown, he moved the franchise to Texarkana, a larger city, after the 1936 season. The other seven ETL teams returned in 1937, and they again played a full season. All eight teams returned for full seasons in 1938 and 1939 when C. P. Mosley was league president. Notably, Jake Atz, manager of the Texas League’s legendary Fort Worth Panthers in the 1910s and 1920s, was hired to take charge of the Henderson Oilers in 1939.

Among the notable ETL players in 1939 was Eddie Knoblauch, then in the second year of his lengthy minor league career. As a member of the Kilgore Boomers, Knoblauch led the league in runs scored (125) and hits (189). Also in 1939 Longview pitcher Ed Lopat led the league in earned run average with 2.11. Five years later he was in the big leagues, during which he won 166 games, mostly for the New York Yankees.

By 1940 the onset of World War II began to affect the ETL. Though the United States had not yet entered the war, a draft was instituted during the season. Most ballplayers were prime fodder for the selective service system. Nevertheless, the ETL season began with the same eight teams that finished the 1939 season. The only change to the lineup was the Longview franchise finally abandoning the Cannibals nickname in favor of Texans. However, Palestine and Jacksonville disbanded on June 5. The six-team league persevered, but once the season was over, operations were suspended for the duration of the war, as was the case for most minor leagues.

A notable figure during the 1940 season was player–manager Francis “Salty” Parker of the Marshall Tigers. Parker led the league with a .349 batting average and was in the middle of a twenty-three-year minor league career, in which he accrued 1,922 hits, before becoming a major leagues coach for the San Francisco Giants, Cleveland Indians, Los Angeles/California Angels, New York Mets, and Houston Astros. Among the players Parker managed at Marshall was Dave Philley, a native of Paris, Texas, who played eighteen seasons in the major leagues.

After the war, the ETL, still Class C, returned with eight teams (Henderson, Texarkana, Tyler, Greenville, Sherman, Paris, Jacksonville, and Lufkin), all of which played out the 1946 season with J. Walter Morris again serving as league president. Sherman, a North Texas town, was an outlier in the ETL, but its team had a unique asset. Monty Stratton, a former starting pitcher with the Chicago White Sox who had lost his right leg in a hunting accident, signed on to pitch for Sherman. Despite pitching with a wooden leg, he won eighteen games for the Sherman Twins in 1946.

After the 1946 season, the ETL teams fled to other leagues that launched in 1947. The Class C Lone Star League absorbed Henderson, Jacksonville, Lufkin, and Tyler. The Big State League was graded Class B, so Greenville, Paris, Texarkana, and Sherman enjoyed a jump in class when they left the ETL. The ETL suspended operations for 1947 and 1948.

1949–50: Class C

The collapse of the Lone Star League after the 1948 season provided an opportunity for J. Walter Morris to re-create the ETL in 1949. Longview, Gladewater, Paris, Kilgore, Marshall, Tyler, Henderson, and Bryan took the field. After every team played a full season, the league returned in 1950 with the same eight franchises. Paris and Bryan disbanded on July 20, and the remaining six teams carried on. Gladewater won the regular season with a 92–45 record. The team was led by player–manager L. D. (Lambert Daniel) Meyer, a major league veteran, who led the ETL in hitting with a batting average of .375. Meyer, a Texas Christian University (TCU) graduate, had also played football there and distinguished himself in the 1936 Sugar Bowl and the 1937 Cotton Bowl Classic. The nephew of longtime TCU football coach Dutch Meyer, his L. D. initials were popularly interpreted as Little Dutch.

The final season for the ETL occurred in 1950, and there were few options for the better teams to relocate. By then a number of minor league players were being drafted for the Korean War, and the adoption of television and air-conditioning had brought sports and other entertainment into Texans’ homes and made venturing out into the Texas heat to watch minor league baseball less attractive. The Tyler Trojans (renamed the Tyler East Texans) made the jump to the Big State League, but the other ETL franchises passed into history, as did the league itself.