I don’t want to throw cold water on plans to build a baseball stadium in downtown El Paso because I’m all for anything that boosts my hometown. But I do want to throw out a cautionary note: Team owners had better get themselves a heck of a promoter to go along with good players. The latter is not enough to guarantee success.
El Paso has a spotty record of supporting professional baseball. Oh, the sport has been popular here since the town’s beginning. Popular to play, that is. Following is what the late sports editor, Bob Ingram, wrote in a book I helped him produce called “Baseball: From Browns to Diablos:”
“THERE MAY have been many hostile Indians when wagon trains came to the western-most part of Texas in 1880 but when the wagon master shouted ‘Circle you’re wagons’ it’s more likely he may have wanted to clear a space for a baseball game between the settlers and the pioneers.”
By 1900 there were so many people playing baseball on makeshift diamonds in El Paso that a headline in one of the local newspapers, The Herald, declared that “Baseball fever is all over town. It is epidemic.”
When I joined the El Paso Herald-Post as a full-time sports writer in 1950 it seemed like every Tom, Dick and Harry was playing baseball not only in El Paso but throughout the Southwest. There were sandlot teams from Bisbee, Arizona, to Alpine, Texas.
HOWEVER, professional baseball was another matter. Many tried, but only a few succeeded in making it a paying proposition in El Paso.
A fellow by the name of John McCloskey formed the first pay-to-play league in El Paso in the 1920s. Not only that, he built El Paso’s first baseball stadium. It was called Rio Grande Park and was located on Wyoming Street across the street from where KROD-TV was later built. It was a small field where pop flies often went for homeruns.
Dudley Field, a more realistic stadium, was built in 1925. It was originally named Athletic Park but the name was changed to honor a popular El Paso mayor who had died in office, R.M. Dudley.
FROM THE START, McCloskey and other future owners of professional teams had a hard time making a go of it financially here. Many future owners tried, but few succeeded.
Paul started out by getting together a group of 50 El Pasoans, calling them the Diamond Club and having them sell season tickets. He collared businessmen and talked them into donating prizes. He charmed the media. Nearly every night, especially in the early days, saw some kind of giveaway like caps or jackets or watches and even, at times, automobiles. Attendance records were broken year after year. El Paso was overjoyed. The economic impact on the community was figured in the millions of dollars. A new $6.8 million stadium named after the Cohen brothers was built.
SO, ONE MIGHT say that proves that professional baseball can be a big success in El Paso. Yes, but the point here is that it was more Paul’s genius as a promoter than the sport of baseball that caused that incredible success. It’s no coincidence that since Paul sold the team it went back into the same old funk it was in before.
So I’m all for a Triple A team coming to town. And, like promoters say, a new stadium would make the city sparkle not only with a beautiful new stadium but with new restaurants and new shops and more tourists.
But can the new owners find another Jim Paul? They don’t grow on trees.