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.
October
10, 2010 Column. Updated January 10, 2012
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