J. Walter Morris: Mr. Baseball of the Southwest

There was a bit of fluster about him, just enough to endear him to the Fourth Estate. Few, if any, sports figures enjoyed a better press.

He was J. Walter Morris, a man of a million jokes. He laughed heartily at them all. Not the least shy, he could talk unceasingly of his accomplishments. To say that baseball was his life is an understatement. A turn of the century graduate of the University of Texas Law School, he would laughingly remind listeners: “I was vaccinated to be a lawyer but it didn’t take.” He would go on, “I organized more leagues (14 to be exact) than any other man and was president of more (seven).

“I even went down in the bowels of the earth (Carlsbad Caverns) to organize one of them (the West Texas-New Mexico).”

I knew Walter well. He was an early hero. Ironically, when he got canned by the Big State League in November 1950, I was hired in his place. My first statement to league directors was to label Walter “probably the most outstanding baseball executive in the history of the Southwest.” Then Walter accompanied me in my station wagon to the baseball meetings in St. Petersburg. He was released at 69; his successor was 29.

Walter was the first college graduate from Texas to become a major leaguer. He played for the Texas League founder, John J. McCoskey, as a St. Louis Cardinal in 1908. Walter would brag that his active career was cut short by a deep spike wound from manager Fred Clarke of the Pirates, his way of saying, “we were tough in my day.”

He was president of the Texas League from 1916 through 1920, and with protégé Paul LaGrave of Fort Worth originated the Dixie Series which for several generations would be the outstanding sports event of the Southwest. Prior to assuming the mantle of league leadership, he has been a player, manager, club owner, and club president. He served the lower leagues on the Board of Arbitration of the National Association of Professional Baseball Leagues for five years and during the Depression formed four leagues.

Morris earned a footnote in baseball lore by uncovering a gambling scandal in his Evangeline League in 1946. Several players drew suspensions.

J. Alvin Gardner, legendary Texas League president, had been Morris’s batboy at Beaumont in 1904 and their friendship endured for a lifetime. Beverly Roberts, long-time personal secretary to Gardner, recently recalled: “In his last years Mr. Morris lived at the old Blue Bonnet Hotel in downtown Dallas. He was not in good health and if by 10 o’clock each morning he had not called our office, I was under instructions to call his room and verify that he was all right.” At the time of his death Morris was practically devoid of worldly possessions.

The colorful veteran was a favorite of Harold Ratliff, sports editor of the Associated Press, Southwest. He once wrote:

“No man ever contributed more to baseball than J. Walter Morris. He organized more leagues, built more parks, and served in more capacities than any other man in history.

“And he brought to the game a great degree of righteousness. He had to force much of that, but he was the man who could do it.

“They called him the ‘finingest’ president of them all. He stuck ballplayers and managers for anything he considered detrimental to the game he played and loved with a fierce passion.

“His pronouncement of fines and suspensions against recalcitrant players and managers always brought a chuckle. Typical was this statement given to the press one day: ‘I am fining three players and a manger for using derogatory and uncomplimentary expletives, which in simple English means cussing the blankety-blank umpire.’ He was a crusader against profanity on the ball field. ‘There are women and children present,’ he would explain.”

“He capped the climax of a fining career by assessing a chief of police $10. He collected the money, too, although the officer didn’t pay it — the ball club did. ‘I can do anything if it concerns baseball,’ Morris said. ‘This guy shoved one of my umpires.’ So he delivered an ultimatum. Either the chief of police paid the ten bucks or the ball club for which the chief was rooting forked it over. The ball club did it.

“They called this salty personage, ‘Mr. Baseball of the Southwest,’ and he lived up to the name.”