Flashback : Dallas

A Miscellany: History, Ads, Pop Culture

Category: Sports

May 9, 2014

Minor League Ball: The Dallas Rangers — 1958-1964

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by Paula Bosse

Now there’s a baseball pennant.

“YES WE ARE AAA.” (Apparently triple-A ball had different cleat allowances back in 1959.)

My knowledge of baseball? Pretty limited. I knew that Dallas had professional teams leading up to the Texas Rangers, but that’s about it. Here is a 1958 team photo of the Dallas Rangers, a minor league team that lasted from 1958-1964, known for a couple of those years as the Dallas-Fort Worth Rangers. (This team, by the way, has no historical connection with the present-day Texas Rangers.) They played at Burnett Field. Again, I know precious little about this sort of thing, but, from what I can gather after a hasty skimming, they weren’t very good. The faltering franchise moved to Vancouver in 1965. To Canada! I like this photo. From a purely Americana perspective, the best sports team photos are always, for me, those of  baseball teams.

baseball-dallas-rangers_burnett-field_1958(Click for larger image. Won’t be any sharper, but it’ll be slightly bigger.)

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Sources & Notes

Since I don’t know what I’m talking about, there will be a lot of links.

Top photo of 1959 pennant is from Ebay — which, as of THIS MINUTE, is currently available for purcha$e, here.

The 1958 team photo and 1959 program — I’m not sure where I found them months ago, but I think it might have been here. (As I’m looking at the page right now, all the photos are inactive — but the site may just have exceeded its monthly bandwidth. Lots of good info on the teams that played at Burnett Field, though.)

Bottom image of pennants from a Dallas Morning News blog post by Robert Wilonsky.

Dallas Rangers Wikipedia page here.

Info on Burnett Field here.

And, for those who are really into this sort of thing, the team stats for that 1958 team pictured above can be pored over here.

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Copyright © 2014 Paula Bosse. All Rights Reserved.

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March 25, 2014

City Park Skating Rink — 1906

Don’t miss the “artistic skating” exhibition…

by Paula Bosse

CITY PARK RINK
Morning Session for Beginners.Special Attraction for Friday and Saturday
G. S. Monohan, champion fancy and trick skater of the Pacific Coast.
A wonderful exhibition of artistic skating Friday and Saturday afternoons and nights at 4 and 9 o’clock.
The admission fee of 15¢ will be charged all spectators and skaters for these four performances.
Tickets at Kramer’s Cigar Store.

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Sources & Notes

Ad from the Dallas Morning News, March 14, 1906.

An article by Michael V. Hazel about the short-lived Old City Rink is here.  (Legacies has covered absolutely EVERYTHING!)

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Copyright © 2014 Paula Bosse. All Rights Reserved.

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March 3, 2014

The Store That Doak Built

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by Paula Bosse

Doak Walker, the Heisman-winning superstar football player for SMU from 1945 to 1949, was, for a good forty-odd years, a partner in a successful sporting goods business that bore his name: the Doak Walker Sports Center. When it opened in Highland Park Village on August 23, 1951, the 24-year old — then playing pro ball with the Detroit Lions — was a bona fide celebrity, both locally and nationally. Predictably, the grand opening drew large crowds of sports fans eager to see their homegrown hero and check out the new place in town to get tennis balls and baseball bats (and, who knows, there might even have been some who showed up to see those unnamed Lions teammates the ads said he’d bring with him). The promise of “souvenirs for everyone!” was merely icing on the cake.

At the same time that the Sports Center was opening, Doak’s name was also on a Gulf station that he and former Mustangs teammate Raleigh Blakely owned on Hillcrest across from the SMU campus. And while both of those business concerns were chugging along, he was also appearing in local and national ads for everything from chewing gum to Vitalis (with a name like “Doak” you’re going to have instant name recognition). Oh, and he was also playing football. Doak Walker was a force to be reckoned with — on the field, on Madison Avenue, and in the dang Park Cities.

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Postcard of Doak Walker Sports Center from the Boston Public Library Tichnor Brothers Postcard Collection on Flickr, here.

Life magazine from Sept. 27, 1948. The cover story on Doak Walker and the SMU team can be accessed here.

Signed issued of Sport magazine is currently available for sale here.

Triangle Motors ad from a 1951 program for an SMU-Rice game at the Cotton Bowl.

Doak Walker bio on the Pro Football Hall of Fame website is here.

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Copyright © 2014 Paula Bosse. All Rights Reserved.

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