Baseball great enshrined in Cooperstown, Hubbard

By David Mullen

Baseball is a game preserved by memories.

Historically, the first baseball game ever played was in Cooperstown, N.Y. in 1839. The ball was a tightly compacted sphere of cloth wrapped with a stitched leather cover.

Abner Doubleday, an American Civil War Union general, was credited with originating the game of baseball in Elihu Phinney’s cow pasture in Cooperstown. Doubleday’s status as the “inventor of baseball” is often disputed. Regardless, the baseball used in the game was discovered adjacent to a Cooperstown farmhouse and dubbed the “Doubleday baseball.”

Local philanthropist Stephen C. Clark purchased the Doubleday baseball for $5. At a Cooperstown club, Clark created a one-room shrine to baseball collectables that included the prized baseball. The room attracted curious visitors and laid the foundation for the scenic upstate New York town to build the greatest Hall of Fame in sports.

On Sunday, Feb. 2, 1936, the inaugural Baseball Hall of Fame class was announced in Cooperstown. The first members were professional baseball’s five greatest players of the era: Ty Cobb, Walter Johnson, Christy Mathewson, Honus Wagner and George Herman “Babe” Ruth.

In 1937, the Hall of Fame added a second class of members, inducting second baseman Nap Lajoie; the top two managers in terms of wins all-time, Connie Mack and John McGraw; Cincinnati Red Stockings shortstop George Wright, two baseball executives; and Cy Young, a pitcher so gifted that an award was named after him. Although good enough to earn the honor, Cy Young never won the Cy Young Award.

The other member of the Class of 1937 received the second most votes behind Lajoie and was the first player inducted to the Baseball Hall of Fame from Texas. His name was Tristram E. “Tris” Speaker.

Nicknamed “Grey Eagle,” Speaker was born on April 4, 1888, in Hubbard, a town about 90 minutes due south of Dallas, accessible by driving down Interstate 35 to Hillsboro and then taking a straight shot of boredom on TX-171.   

“Hubbard was a bustling city [during Speaker’s childhood]. It was a mercantile city,” said Herb Horn, chairman of the board at Historic Hubbard High School. 

“We had a lot of historic homes built in the city. Instead of living at the big plantation, plantation owners would live in the historic homes and own land all around Hubbard. The soil was rich for raising cotton.” Hubbard had a train depot, and harvesting and processing cotton was the economic engine.

“Back at that time, Hubbard had hot wells. We had mineral water,” Horn said. “We had a bath house here, and people would come in from all over to take baths. It was a destination. It was a booming little city in the 1900s. In 1973, we had a tornado that came through and destroyed at least a third of downtown. You can still see remnants of it today.”  

Located in the Historic Hubbard High School at 300 N. 6th St. and opposite the Wilkes Memorial Library and Children’s Library is the one-room Tris Speaker Museum honoring the hometown hero. Members of the Speaker’s family left his collection of baseball memories for fans to enjoy. 

“It wasn’t near this big,” Horn said, “and his great nephew Scott has it on loan to us. Scott has enhanced it over the years.” 

In his youth, Speaker broke his right arm after falling from a horse while working on a ranch. The injury forced him to become left-handed. Speaker once said, “The American boy starts swinging the bat as soon as he can lift one.” 

After a year of college baseball at Fort Worth Polytechnic Institute, Speaker began playing professional baseball at 18 years old for $50 per month. He would return to Hubbard when the baseball season went on hiatus. 

“If you go right around this corner, turn at the next corner and the first house on the left-hand side,” said Jerry Ellis, the local Tris Speaker expert and Hubbard genealogist, pointing out a window in the Tris Speaker Museum, “he had a room there and stayed there in the offseason.”

Speaker was a lifetime member of the Hubbard volunteer fire department. A plaque at City Hall honors the hometown hero.

In his 22-year playing career primarily with the Boston Americans /Red Sox and Cleveland Indians, Speaker hit for a .345 average, finished with 3,514 hits, 117 home runs, 1,529 RBI and still holds the record for doubles with 792. As a manager, Speaker won 617 games and led the Indians to their first  World Series title in 1920.

Open on Wednesday and Saturday at 10 a.m., the Tris Speaker Museum is full of pictures, baseballs, bats, newspaper clippings and baseball memorabilia honoring the Grey Eagle. “We feel very fortunate to have it,” Horn said. 

Before Willie Mays, Speaker was considered the best defensive center fielder ever to play baseball. He had a strong arm, a great glove and exceptional speed. He still holds the Major League record with 448 outfield assists.

A teammate in Boston, pitcher Babe Ruth, once said: “I’d be pitching and hear the crack of the bat and say to myself, ‘there goes the ballgame!’ But Tris would face back to the fences, and at the last moment make a diving catch. Not once, but a thousand times.” One could envision Ruth telling the story to a group of wide-eyed kids while chomping on a cigar.

When the colorful Bill Veeck owned the Indians, he brought Speaker back to the team as an “ambassador of goodwill” and a coaching consultant to Larry Doby, the American League’s first Black player and Major League Baseball’s second Black player behind Jackie Robinson. In 1951, Speaker was inducted into the inaugural class of the Texas Sports Hall of Fame in 1951 and is in both the Red Sox and Indians Hall of Fame.

In December 1958, Speaker died of a heart attack pulling a boat from the water at Lake Whitney. He was 70 years old and is buried at Fairview Cemetery in Hubbard.

“Luck is the great stabilizer in baseball,” Speaker once said. Despite a modest upbringing as a Texas farm boy, Speaker was lucky enough to excel at the game he loved.

In a one-room shrine on the first floor of an aging brick schoolhouse three blocks off N. Magnolia Avenue in Hubbard, the memories of Hall of Famer Tris Speaker are being preserved.