Flashback : Dallas

by Paula Bosse

The Dallas Giants (1902-1916) attracted so many people to their Texas League pennant series against the Fort Worth Panthers at the old Gaston Park (in Fair Park) — numbers were estimated at 8,000 for the Labor Day double-header — that the grandstand overflow was shunted to a standing-room-only area that was “roped off in right field” — on the field! (And, yes, balls were hit into them. That’s fan-dedication!) (Read the coverage in the Dallas Morning News article “Dallas Champion of Texas League” (DMN, Sept. 6, 1910), in two parts, here and here.)

And there was much rejoicing.

St. Louis Dispatch, Sept. 6, 1910

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Aside from the fact that the team had a human-child mascot, the thing I like best about the card above is that it tells us that the team had seven (SEVEN!) pitchers. That’s a lot of pitchers.

Here’s a photo of the 1910 champion team:

And an alternate version:

Baseball cards? Here’s one from 1910, featuring Giants third baseman, Jewel Ens:

And here are some excessively inky newspaper pictures showing some of the players in action:

Dallas Morning News, March 25, 1910

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Sources & Notes

Top image is a real photo postcard (photo by W. E. Hawkes) found on eBay in October 2025; the image of the back of the card is here.

The two team photos (1910) are also from eBay. (Both photos may have originally appeared in the Spalding Baseball Guide.)

Photo of Jewel Ens is from a 1910 baseball card, found somewhere on the internet.

Read about the Dallas Giants-Fort Worth Panthers intense rivalry (and the 1910 pennant-clenching series) in the article “Braggin’ Rights for North Texas” by Thomas H. Smith (Legacies, Spring 1999), here.

Stats person? Check out the deets for the 1910 Giants on Stats Crew, here. And more info on various Giants players can be found on Wikipedia, here.

For further reading on this league, an essential book to seek out is The History of the Texas League of Professional Baseball Clubs by William B. Ruggles, originally published in 1932 and expanded in 1951.

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