gritsforbreakfast.bsky.social
Nom de plume of Scott Henson, Austin, TX, recovering journalist, opposition researcher, and criminal-justice advocate (ACLU, Innocence Project of TX, and others). Cancer survivor. Househusband. Blog (on hiatus): https://gritsforbreakfast.blogspot.com.
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Hardly anybody does, I think, it's a very obscure story. But he's a fun character!
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It's happening everywhere. And I'm starting to think it's the only good thing about this horrible political moment. The Ds who've been undermining progressive goals from w/in are all, one by one, outing themselves. There are a LOT of them., bsky.app/profile/grit...
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The other one was about "Tea Cake Johnny" Matthews, who in 1901 was brought in from Houston to umpire a game in Fort Worth in which Rube Foster pitched a no hitter. bsky.app/profile/grit...
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My recent threads were about a couple of black umpires from Houston operating in the first decade of the 20th century, including a sharply dressed fellow named Dan Nobles: bsky.app/profile/grit...
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Almost never angry, the only thing I ever saw rile the man was talking abt coming home from combat flights and hearing nazis on US radio pushing pro-Hitler America First propaganda. He considered NATO stability and European peace the justification for all lives lost. I'm glad he won't witness this.
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My final Greatest Gen relative to pass was my father in law, who we cared for in his final years. He was a machine gunner in a subhunter for the Canadian RAF starting in '39.
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Seems a tad early for roses yet, are you seeing them in Tyler already?
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The array of things harming Ag is long, growing and often simply incomprehensible. Among the USAID cuts was a 30 person agency that basically is THE entity connecting US soy farmers to export markets. There are >4,500 soy farmers in TX alone. Just a constant drip, drip, drip of such stuff.
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Cc: @bballhist.bsky.social, this thread was inspired by some of our recent conversations about negro-league stats.
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I love that the negro league stats have been integrated and find SO many interesting new comparisons whenever looking through the revised numbers. It's truly a blessing.
But I also think about guys like Reuben Jones w/ a 24-year playing career and 7 years of stats. He deserves remembering, too.
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And it should be mentioned: For every gap in sporting history because of this lack of black newspaper records, the gaps in political, cultural, and social history are just as or even more profound. It's a major loss on many, many levels.
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Jones' isn't a Hall of Fame caliber player, but he was an strong one, and immensely respected by the press and his peers. Sadly, the record of his prime years has been lost thanks to the indifference and/or bigotry of Texan librarians and archivists.
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Reuben's final managerial stint was with the San Angelo Black Sheepherders, who finally shut down during the 1954 season. He died in Big Spring, his hometown, in 1970, giving him a professional baseball career as player and manager spanning roughly 40 years.
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When the Newark Eagles moved to Houston in 1949, Jones became their manager. He was replaced the following year by Red Parnell, a former Houston Black Buffaloes standout who won a batting title playing for Jones on the 1927 Birmingham squad.
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Jones was also respected and well-remembered as a manager, w/ stints leading the Birmingham Black Barons to a league championship in 1927, and the Memphis Red Sox in 1931 and later, during WWII. He coached the west all stars in the 1944 East-West All-Star game.
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Jones played for the the Little Rock Grays starting in 1932, then the Cleveland Red Sox in 1934, giving him a 24-season playing career. Seamheads has partial stats for seven of them.
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In between his time in Dallas and Birmingham, he spent most of another lost season with the Indianapolis ABCs, though all who saw him considered him a strong performer. This puts him on a squad on which a quite-fun Hollywood film was loosely based.
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But because the majority of black newspaper editions from Texas during this era have been lost, it would be impossible to recreate Jones' stats for his years in Texas in the way Seamheads, e.g., has done for his time w/ teams like the Black Barons and the Memphis Red Sox.
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The handful of Texas games for which we find box scores show Jones excelling in this era, like the time his home runs led the team to victories against the Galveston Black Sand Crabs on consecutive days: www.newspapers.com/article/the-...
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Jones spent 5 years w/ Austin, then joined the Dallas Black Giants in 1919 and was a hero on their best squads when they won the Texas Colored League championships in 1920, '21, and '22. One commentator declared, "the club at that time [was] recognized as the best negro baseball team in the South."
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The Black Senators by 1914 fielded squads primarily made up of players recruited from around the state and the South, supplemented with talented locals. At a time when average pay was less than $2 per day, players made $3.50 per game, w/ stars claiming more.
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Indeed, many anecdotes one finds about Jones revolve around him doing other men favors. When Verdell Mathis sought a spot on the Memphis roster, nlbemuseum.com/history/play...
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Jones was a big-hearted mensch: Tillotson College "at that time being so poor it was unable to purchase uniforms, and because of his love for the sport and interest in his teammates, the 20-year-old offered to mortgage a pair of his grandfather's mules to get money for the uniforms."
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Jones played for the Manor Giants four years as their everyday catcher before moving to Austin. Then in 1914 he moved to Austin, joined the Austin Black Senators squad, and took over management of a Tillotson College baseball team on which Rube Foster had once played.
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Turns out, BaseballReference got Jones' birth right -- Big Spring in 1894. But he made his debut as a ball player at age 16 w/ a semi-pro club called the Manor Giants, a well-respected squad managed by a man named Jefferson Shanks. (Manor is a small but now rapidly growing town east of Austin.)
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According to Seamheads, Jones has a career .296 batting average in negro-league games, so he was a reliable hitter. But his prime years have not been recorded and in most cases, the primary source material to do that research has been lost bc most TX black newspapers of the era were not archived.
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.BaseballReference.com says he debuted in 1924 at age 30 and was born in Big Spring, TX in 1894. www.baseball-reference.com/bullpen/Rube...
By contrast, Seamheads has him born in Austin in 1905, making his debut at age 18 in 1923 for the Birmingham Black Barons. www.seamheads.com/NegroLgs/pla...
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Tomorrow I will revisit this, connect w/ the CIB folks, and you will get an email. :) And as I say that, I don't have yours, so post it here or DM it to me.
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Gracias! Will pass it along. :)
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Gotta contact?
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Gracias!
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Honestly, I wish they'd go ahead and go after him. It's going to happen and we need a test case. Let's stop the BS and get on w/ it. Do we still have a constitutionally constrained government or not? We need to find out. Has to happen sometime.
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Richard "Night Train" Lane is Austin's best athlete *story,* by a country mile. He was abandoned by a junkie mother in a dumpster and raised by a woman who found him there. He was a mensch, in every respect, to the end of his days. Football HoFer and a fine man. But a hair below Russ, for me.