Over
the years, East Texas have given their
hometown baseball teams some oddball names. But none of them had the flair of
the Longview Cannibals. which played for 44 years in the Gregg County city.
Now, a book by Jeff Barnhart of Longview,
naturally called “The Longview Cannibals,” tells the team’s story from 1895 to
1939.
First of all, about that distinctive name:
The team got
it in June of 1895 when the team defeated the San Antonio Missionaries, 7-0, in
a hastily scheduled game when the Texas League team missed its train connection
at Longview after a series
of games in Shreveport.
Longview
newspaperman C.B. Cunningham reported that the Missionaries “were eaten up by
the Longview cannibals today.” Longview’s
baseball fans liked the name so much that it stuck.
But the Longview
team had more than just a unique name.
Many of the Cannibals went on to
play with major league baseball teams through the years. Among them were Jack
Johnston, Sam West, Grady White, Hick Munsell, Ray Flaskamper, Abe Bowman, Merv
Conners, and Tex Jeanes.
Intertwined with the Cannibals’ story are blurbs
about other East Texas baseball teams,
like the Tyler Elbertas and Tyler Governors, the Lufkin Lumbermen, the Henderson
Oilers, the Marshall Texas and Pacifics (named for a railroad), the Kilgore Boomers,
Gushers and Drillers (all oilfield names), the Jacksonville Jax, the Arkansas
Travelers, the Beaumont Exporters, the Big Sandy Maroons, the Cleburne Railroaders,
the Nacogdoches Missionaries, the Palestine Pals and the Sulphur Springs Saints.
Alas,
the Cannibal name ceased to be used after Longview
’s 1939 minor league season. Local teams were then called by such mundane names
as the White Sox, the Texans, the Cherokees and Pirates.
As Van Craddock
of the Longview News said in a foreword for Barnhart’s book: “The story of the
Cannibals’ nickname is well-known in these parts, but there has been little history
written on the team itself...until now. Thanks to Jeff Barnhart’s exhaustive efforts,
a valuable slice of East Texas and
minor league baseball history has been preserved for future generations.”
The
Cannibal books may be ordered from Barnhart’s website: www.longviewcannibals.com.
Baseball
has been a rich part of East Texas
for decades, and we hope other writers will take the time to explore the stories
of other teams in the region.
Bob
Bowman's East Texas
November 22, 2009 Column
A weekly column syndicated in 109 East Texas newspapers
Copyright
Bob Bowman |
