| Midland
has always been a baseball town, as long as I can remember. The current class
AA team is called the Midland Rockhounds and is a member of the Texas League.
They play in the new Citibank Ball Park west of town.
Back in the 1950’s,
they played at Indians Stadium located at the corner of Wall Street and the Andrews
Highway. Indians Stadium no longer exists; a Walgreen’s Drug Store stands in its
place. I used to go there as a kid, back in the early fifties. I had no money,
but sometimes I would be able to sneak in, if I was lucky. Most of the time, I’d
climb up on the outfield fence and watch the game from there, as other folks would
do.
One night in the summer of 1954, I was 13 years old at the time, the
Indians were playing the Roswell Rockets. Now, the Rockets had a big ol’ home
run hitter named Joe Bauman, and that year he was hitting more home runs than
anyone had ever hit before. He hit 72 that year, a record for professional baseball
that stood until Barry Bonds hit 73 in 2002. I went out to the park to check it
out. I found a perch on the left field fence about 20 feet inside the foul pole.
Back in those days, West Texas was
prone to sandstorms, and I mean real big, red, block out the sun sandstorms. As
luck would have it, one of them was rolling in from the west and it was coming
in fast. It was
somewhere in the middle of the ballgame when Big Joe came up to bat and the dust
was so thick you could barely make him out from where I was standing. Well, he
hit a long ball and it was coming right at me, only higher. The left fielder for
the home team was running, but he could tell that he wasn’t going to catch that
ball, so he just kept running, right on past the foul pole, then stopped and seemingly
watched the ball majestically sail over the fence, foul.
“Foul” cried
the ump. He couldn’t see the ball in the dust, but he could see the fielder. Only
the ball wasn’t foul, it went over my head and ended up across the street. Joe
Bauman hit 72 home runs that year, but he would have had 73 had it not been for
a sandstorm and a quick thinking left fielder. I read many years later that Joe
questioned the umpire's call. The umpire said, "I didn't see the ball, so I can't
call it a home run, but I did see you swing, so that's a strike."
© Charles Watson
Coldspring, Texas (born
and raised in Midland)
They
Shoe Horses, Don't They? October
9, 2012 Guest column
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