A Tale of Two Hornsbys: A Sweetheart Back Home
This article was written by Howard Green
This article was published in 2001 Baseball Research Journal
If there had been a Pulitzer Prize for batting, Rogers Hornsby would have won several. In 1924, line drives flew off his bat to the tune of .424, best ever for a twentieth-century season. His career average of .358 is second only to Ty Cobb’s, and he is invariably called, “greatest of right-handed hitters.” He is also often called a number of less pleasant things.
Blunt and independent, Hornsby feuded with St. Louis’ Sam Breadon, New York’s Charles Stoneham, Boston’s Emil Fuchs, Cincinnati’s Gabe Paul, and the Bill Veecks — elder and younger — at Chicago and St. Louis. In 1926, with the Cards, became the only manager ever to be dismissed after a World Series championship. He was too blunt-speaking to remain.
In 1953, Puss Ervin, a Fort Worth Press columnist, invited me to sit with him and Hornsby at a Texas League game at LaGrave Field. Having heard so much of his rank rudeness, l was hesitant to say much and certainly not to ask baseball questions. However, Hornsby could not have been more cordial. In about the fifth inning, I summoned enough courage to inquire if he thought Stan Musial would hit .400. He replied, “He just might do it. He’s damn sure good enough hitter.”
Around home, Rogers Hornsby seems not to have displayed the prickly attitude that made him so tough for baseball executives to deal with. The late Claude McAden, co-owner and GM of the 1950 Gulf Coast League Galveston White Caps: “I met a different Hornsby to the one I had read about. In baseball he was a Hall of Farner and I, a nobody, but he treated me as an equal.” Others had similar memories.
The late attorney Sol Greines, who as a boy captained a team that opposed one led by Hornsby: “Often we were opposing pitchers, he for the team composed of boys living on the east side of North Main against my west side bunch. Rogers never forgot where he came from.”
Ed Smith, retired Tarrant County purchasing agent: “My dad and mother grew up with Hornsby and liked him. When my mom died, he flew down from Chicago for the funeral.”
The late John Reeves, for twenty years a front office fixture for the Fort Worth Texas League Cats: “Hornsby could handle a team on the playing field better than any manager we ever had. Also, he never smoked or drank — in that respect, a fine example for people of any age.”
The late Milton Price, respected minor league executive and assistant to TL president J. Alvin Gardner: “Mr. Gardner thought so highly of Hornsby that he tried to buy the Phillies from Gary Nugent in 1941 and give Hornsby the dual role of manager and general manger. We got outbid.”
With the press, Flem Hall remembered Hornsby as a straight shooter: “He never embroidered the facts. I don’t think Rogers ever lied to anybody. His personal habits were circumspect.”
The late Walter Morris was a legend in his own time, president and organizer of numerous leagues. At the time Hornsby was growing up, Morris, assisted by Paul LaGrave, was operating the Fort Worth Cats. He had this to say: “As sure as the sun came up, this skinny kid was at the park every day, shagging flies and asking questions. There never was a kid so determined to be a ballplayer. In my many meetings with Hornsby over a lifetime of years, I never saw that ‘blunt manner.’ I liked him as a boy and as a real man.”
Umpire Len Roberts, who would become a National Leaguer, worked the Texas League in 1950 during Homsby’s successful Beaumont season: “Rogers Hornsby was a true gentleman on the field — he never questioned a decision. I don’t think there was a dishonest bone in his body.”
In addition to Fort Worth and Beaumont, Hornsby also managed Oklahoma City in the Texas League. Owner Jimmy Humphries recalled: “I thoroughly enjoyed Rogers, and he was one of the best, if not the best, manager I ever had. We both enjoyed the ponies.”
Turbulent moments often prevailed during the exciting life of Rogers Hornsby, but back home in Texas he left a more positive image than he did in the big league cities of the north and east. But he was, indeed, his own man, and he had the brash confidence of the supremely gifted. This is the fellow, after all, who reputedly said: “I never saw a pitcher I didn’t feel sorry for.”