Doubleday, inventor of baseball: First comes to Port Isabel, Brownsville
The origin of baseball in the Valley points to Brownsville, specifically to when the first baseball club was formed in 1868.
The inaugural game pitted the Rio Grande Club of Brownsville against Club Union de Matamoros. The Christmas game was high in tallies for both sides as hitting dominated the game.
A Daily Ranchero report read, “The Matamoros boys were found to be no ordinary antagonists for the championship of the border.” The boys from the Heroic City pounded the Brownsville squad with relentless hitting and thus won the game 49 to 32.
As years progressed, the number of teams on both sides of the border grew and America’s game reached a fever pitch in the early 1900s.
War brings notables here
There is even some history of baseball in this region prior to 1868 and it was all due to the Mexican War of 1846.
Abner Doubleday, who was credited with inventing the game, was stationed in the Valley with Zachary Taylor’s U.S. Army during the Mexican War — once in Port Isabel and again at Brownsville’s Fort Brown.
Some old-timers believe that Doubleday organized the first baseball game in Texas in Port Isabel of all places — but no written document has been found that verifies such a game was played. It remains pure speculation.
The time frame was right, though, since Doubleday was in the Valley seven years after he supposedly came up with the concept for baseball in 1839.
The Brownsville Herald credited John D. Hill, who came to the city to get into the rice business, with giving the sport a push in 1903. Hill’s son, Frank, was a college pitcher at Kentucky, and after watching an Army team take on local civilians, he decided that the family should organize a local team.
By 1904, when the St. Louis, Brownsville and Mexico Railway came into town, an amateur team was in place. The squad won all its games that year, including one over a strong team from Corpus Christi, and it declared itself the South Texas champion.
In 1910, Brownsville joined Corpus Christi, Beeville, Laredo, Victoria, and Bay City in the professional Southwest Texas League.
Sam Bell was the first manager of the Brownsville Brownies, and local pharmacist W.G. Willman was named the secretary. One manager who went on to bigger things was also in the league — University of Texas coach Billy Disch managed the Beeville Squad. The Brownies won their first game, a 2-1 decision over Corpus Christi, on San Jacinto day in 1910. The team finished the season 68-47, good enough to win the second half and set up a playoff against Victoria.
The teams split their games in Brownsville, and then split the next two in Victoria. To accommodate large crowds — by some reports, between 8,000 and 9,000 — the rest of the series was moved to Corpus Christi’s stadium.
Brownsville took the next two games and the first league pennant. Among the players on the team was pitcher John Taff, an Austin native who appeared in seven games for the Philadelphia Athletics in 1913.
The Southwest Texas League lasted two seasons, but Brownsville went on to field teams in three more leagues — the Texas Valley (1938), Rio Grande Valley (1949- 1950), and Gulf Coast (1951-1953).