© by Ray Sanchez 08.14.16
Oh joy, oh happiness. The Boys of Summer are back.
The El Paso Chihuahuas will open their first home stand of the year in the Pacific Coast League next Friday at beautiful Southwest University Park. And what a welcome sight that will be.
Baseball has been part of the American landscape since almost the country’s beginning. Can you believe the first reported baseball game in the country occurred in 1791? Shucks, that’s just a few years after the Declaration of Independence.
As for El Paso, we had a baseball field even before we had a paved street. I get a big kick from the following quote by the late Bob Ingram, the first sports editor at the city’s first newspaper, The El Paso Herald-Post. He wrote in his book, “Baseball: From Browns to Diablos” that:
“There may have been hostile Indians when wagon trains came to the westernmost part of Texas in 1880 but when the wagon master shouted ‘Circle your wagons’ it’s more likely he may have been wanting to clear a space for a baseball game between the settlers and the pioneers.”
Ever since, we’ve had many teams, many leagues but nothing like our present Chihuahuas.
IT’S NO WONDER why the game is so popular. It takes only a ball and a bat to play. However, the game as it evolved is a lot more intricate than a newcomer to the sport would think. One has to hold his or her breath on every pitch, every second.
And when a runner or runners get on base the intricacies of the game increase a hundred fold. Does the pitcher hold the man at first, will the runner steal second, what happens if the man at bat hits a single or a double, where to throw the ball from the outfield? That’s just for starters. And the pressure and the strategy keeps increasing as the game goes on.
I DON’T KNOW how many baseball games I’ve covered in my lifetime. I would guess that covering everything from Little League to high schools to colleges to local professionals to Major Leagues it must be in the hundreds.
Sometimes, I even did statistic reports for the league office when covering some of the El Paso professional team games. That was before computers and the reports had to be done by pen. It was quite an ordeal since every pitch, every hit, every run had to be reported. Sometimes I wouldn’t get to bed until 1 a.m. and then get up at 4 a.m. to go to work at the Herald-Post, an afternoon newspaper that had a first edition deadline of 11 a.m. in those days.
It was hard work but I found that every single game I covered was fascinating. Every game was different than the one I had covered before. That’s still true today.
ABNER DOUBLEDAY, a distinguished Civil War general, is credited with inventing the game of baseball in the 1830s. But it’s highly disputed by many experts. After all, there had been baseball games before he appeared on the scene.
Still, Doubleday had a lot to do with rules and the way the game is being played today and for that he deserved to be inducted into the National Baseball Hall of Fame at Cooperstown, N.Y.
EXCUSE ME if I’m excited about the El Paso Chihuahuas. I used to dream that someday El Paso would get a Triple A team but I didn’t think I’d get to see it.
Yet here it is, in all its glory. And what a success it is, and has been, since its beginning. Just last week we saw another sellout crowd when we got to see the parent club, the San Diego Padres, come to play our Boys of Summer. Yeah, they beat us, but what the heck. It was a real treat.
So sit back, and enjoy. And give thanks to MountainStar Sports Group and our city officials for making the dream come true.
Oh joy, oh happiness. The Boys of Summer are back.
The El Paso Chihuahuas will open their first home stand of the year in the Pacific Coast League next Friday at beautiful Southwest University Park. And what a welcome sight that will be.
Baseball has been part of the American landscape since almost the country’s beginning. Can you believe the first reported baseball game in the country occurred in 1791? Shucks, that’s just a few years after the Declaration of Independence.
As for El Paso, we had a baseball field even before we had a paved street. I get a big kick from the following quote by the late Bob Ingram, the first sports editor at the city’s first newspaper, The El Paso Herald-Post. He wrote in his book, “Baseball: From Browns to Diablos” that:
“There may have been hostile Indians when wagon trains came to the westernmost part of Texas in 1880 but when the wagon master shouted ‘Circle your wagons’ it’s more likely he may have been wanting to clear a space for a baseball game between the settlers and the pioneers.”
Ever since, we’ve had many teams, many leagues but nothing like our present Chihuahuas.
IT’S NO WONDER why the game is so popular. It takes only a ball and a bat to play. However, the game as it evolved is a lot more intricate than a newcomer to the sport would think. One has to hold his or her breath on every pitch, every second.
And when a runner or runners get on base the intricacies of the game increase a hundred fold. Does the pitcher hold the man at first, will the runner steal second, what happens if the man at bat hits a single or a double, where to throw the ball from the outfield? That’s just for starters. And the pressure and the strategy keeps increasing as the game goes on.
I DON’T KNOW how many baseball games I’ve covered in my lifetime. I would guess that covering everything from Little League to high schools to colleges to local professionals to Major Leagues it must be in the hundreds.
Sometimes, I even did statistic reports for the league office when covering some of the El Paso professional team games. That was before computers and the reports had to be done by pen. It was quite an ordeal since every pitch, every hit, every run had to be reported. Sometimes I wouldn’t get to bed until 1 a.m. and then get up at 4 a.m. to go to work at the Herald-Post, an afternoon newspaper that had a first edition deadline of 11 a.m. in those days.
It was hard work but I found that every single game I covered was fascinating. Every game was different than the one I had covered before. That’s still true today.
ABNER DOUBLEDAY, a distinguished Civil War general, is credited with inventing the game of baseball in the 1830s. But it’s highly disputed by many experts. After all, there had been baseball games before he appeared on the scene.
Still, Doubleday had a lot to do with rules and the way the game is being played today and for that he deserved to be inducted into the National Baseball Hall of Fame at Cooperstown, N.Y.
EXCUSE ME if I’m excited about the El Paso Chihuahuas. I used to dream that someday El Paso would get a Triple A team but I didn’t think I’d get to see it.
Yet here it is, in all its glory. And what a success it is, and has been, since its beginning. Just last week we saw another sellout crowd when we got to see the parent club, the San Diego Padres, come to play our Boys of Summer. Yeah, they beat us, but what the heck. It was a real treat.
So sit back, and enjoy. And give thanks to MountainStar Sports Group and our city officials for making the dream come true.