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Imagine,
if you can, baseball slugger Babe Ruth walking around a field and
shoveling cow manure.
In 1923, Ruth joined fellow baseball players for a series of exhibition
games in Texas, including three which
were played at Corrigan,
22 miles north of Livingston,
in a pasture owned by Mrs. P.B. Maxey.
Corrigan was chosen, according to a story in the Corrigan Times,
because it had railroad transportation, hotels, saloons and other
amenities for the players. It was also a convenient midway point
between other towns.
Mrs. Maxey’s field was chosen because it was one of the few open
areas in town. When promoters of the games offered to rent the field,
Mrs. Maxey refused payment, asking only that her family be allowed
free admission.
Other baseball fans watched the games from wooden bleachers, which
accommodated about thirty people, or stood around the infield.
At the time of Babe Ruth’s exhibition games, cows, sheep and other
livestock were allowed to run free and before each game members
of the teams cleared the field of manure.
Nell Braziell, 98, of Corrigan,
then the sixteen-year-old granddaughter of Mrs. Maxey, remembered
seeing three games. “I didn’t pay much attention to Babe Ruth. He
was a big, husky guy and I thought he was a good player,” said Nell.
After his games in Corrigan,
and his ensuring fame with the New York Yankees, Ruth’s career was
watched closely by Nell. Each time she found a newspaper story about
the legendary hitter, she clipped it and stored it away. On the
days of the exhibition games, early automobiles lined the road leading
to the Maxey pasture. Those who did not have a car would come afoot
or ride horses, which were tied to trees around the field.
While most of the baseball players arrived by train, Ruth may have
driven his own car, a black Moon manufactured in the 1920s. Ruth
bought the car for $2,350 with a grill attachment reading, “San
Antonio,” a gift from San
Antonio Mayor John Tobin.
Ruth’s career was a legend in its infancy in the 1920s and he went
on to build a home run record that stood until the 1970s when it
was broken by Hank Aaron. Meanwhile, another link to Babe Ruth’s
visit to Corrigan
exists in Polk County.
Greg Ogletree of Livingston
bought the slugger’s black Moon vehicle in 1975 and still owned
it in 2006.
© Bob
Bowman
Bob Bowman's East Texas
October 10, 2010 Column. Updated January 10, 2012
A weekly column syndicated in 109 East Texas newspapers
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