Volume 15 , Issue 27

Austin & Texas League 1905-1924

In 1905 Austin, Texas tried to join the Texas League but had to drop out because of financial difficulties. In 1906, the Austin Senators held a win for the team as they joined the South Texas league and won the title in 1906 and 1907, with nearly the same team as in 1906.

It was in 1908 the Austin team broke up its winning combination of the past years (1906 and 1907), and floundered in the cellar. My grandpa, Bill McGill, was one of those winning combination of players, in the South Texas League, and the Austin Senators during 1906-07.

In 1909 and 1910 Austin failed to field a team, but in 1911 T. S. Ingelhart purchased the Shreveport franchise and held most of that team together to win the league for Austin. The Senators, with Inglehart's help, showed their first signs of becoming a financially stable ball club.

In 1912 and 1913 Austin had respectable ball clubs, but 1914 was the downfall for Texas League baseball in Austin. W. E. Quebedeaux bought into the Austin franchise in 1913, and he started the 1914 season by selling some of the players. He was inside the law and he operated on an import-export basis. It was said that seventy players were members of the Austin team at one time or another that year.

A pitcher, Ross Helm, said, "We tell 'em hello in the morning, and less 'em good by at night."

Quebedeaux first hired Walter Frantz to manage and then later Charles B. Morgan. Both failed to put Austin out of its cellar position. The 1914 results for Austin were: "They lost a total of 114 games, had the low team average of .214, and set a world's record by losing thirty-one consecutive games. The capitol city had been trying to forget this catastrophe for forty-four years."

After 1914, the organized baseball in Austin went to pot. Only some small semi-pro teams kept the sport alive except during the period between 1923-26 when the Texas Association was formed.   |  View or Add Comments (0 Comments)   |   Receive updates ( subscribers)  |   Unsubscribe

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