Who were the Houston Eagles? The city’s history in the Negro Leagues of baseball.

Major League Baseball has embraced Negro League history by adding the statistics of more than 2,300 Negro League players to its official record book this week. These statistics are for players who played between 1920 and 1948, which places the Houston Eagles just outside the recognized time period.

The Eagles, who played at Buff Stadium, left Newark for Houston in 1949 – two years after Jackie Robinson broke MLB’s color barrier – and departed for New Orleans in 1951.

This is the story of Texas’ only Negro League team…

The Newark Eagles were one of the most famous teams in the Negro Leagues, forming in 1936 and winning the 1946 Negro World Series, defeating the Kansas City Monarchs led by Satchel Paige and Buck O’Neill in seven games. The Eagles featured players who would become MLB stars like Larry Doby, Don Newcombe and Monte Irvin. However, when Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier in 1947, many of the Eagles’ biggest stars quickly followed. With the departure of the best-known players, interest in the Negro Leagues waned enough that the National Negro League closed its doors after the 1948 season. This decision led the Newark Eagles and other members of the league to join the Negro American League. Facing declining attendance, Eagles owner Effa Manley, the only woman in the Baseball Hall of Fame, sold the team in 1949 to WH Young, who moved the team to Houston.

When it was announced that the team was moving to Houston, Irvin, the Eagles’ biggest remaining star, moved to MLB. Max Manning, who was one of the Eagles’ best pitchers on their 1946 championship team, remained the staff’s ace. Infielder Johnny Washington, who debuted in the Negro Leagues in 1936 at just 20 years old, was nearing the end of his career, but still ended up leading the Negro American League with a . 366. The Eagles’ most popular player was Andrew “Pat” Patterson, who began teaching and coaching at Yates High School in Houston near the end of his baseball career. When the Eagles moved to Houston, Patterson, 38, came out of retirement to suit up again. Patterson was already well known as one of the founders of the Prairie View Interscholastic League, in which black schools competed in segregated Texas. He later became the first black coach to be inducted into the Texas High School Coaches Association Hall of Honor.

The Eagles shared Buffalo Stadium with the Houston Buffs, the city’s minor league team for the St. Louis Cardinals before the Colt .45’s debut in 1962. With the teams both playing in the stadium, the Eagles played home games at the stadium only on weekends. nights. After the Eagles and Buffs left, Sammy Finger, owner of Finger Furniture, purchased the ballpark and tore it down to build a showroom, which opened in 1965 and featured a plaque commemorating the location of the marble.

With the mass exodus of players, the Eagles have not played up to their usual standards. In their first season in Houston, the Eagles went 34-35 in 1949, but finished last in each half of the season. Things were bad enough that manager Ruben Jones retired mid-season and was replaced by Red Parnell. The situation only got worse in 1950, with the team finishing 23-41 and playing several home games in Nashville, Tennessee, due to attendance problems.

Houston had long been home to black baseball with semi-professional and professional teams like the Greyhounds, Cotton Clubbers, Littlerocks, Rosebuds, Black Aces, Black Buffaloes, Postoffice Carriers, and Sunflowers playing in various periods throughout the 1880s However, the Eagles’ move was the first attempt to give Houston a legitimate chance in the Negro Leagues. Unfortunately, this came too late, at a time when the league’s popularity was waning as its biggest stars moved on to MLB. The team’s lack of success on the field didn’t help either, as the Eagles were never able to break out in Houston. By their second season in Houston, the Eagles began playing some home games in Nashville, Tennessee. A year later, the team moved to New Orleans where it lasted only one season before folding in 1951.