Waco’s professional sports lineage is clearly that of a minor league town.

Be it baseball, basketball or even ice hockey, Waco has hosted countless minor league sporting events and served as home base to a  number of minor league teams throughout the decades.

Believe it or not, the city has also experienced its share of brushes with the big leagues.

Babe Ruth and the Yankees visited Waco’s Katy Park in 1929. The Waco Cubs lost, but all of Waco came out to see the baseball legend.
Associated Press file photo

Longtime Waco residents have no doubt heard the tales of Elvis Presley dining at the Elite Cafe or have seen photos of President Teddy Roosevelt speaking at the rally to open Katy Park. But the list of sports luminaries who have descended on Waco is no less impressive.

Right off the bat, here’s a larger-than-life figure — Mr. George Herman Ruth.

You know him better as the Babe.

On April 4, 1929, the Waco Cubs — the city’s minor league baseball club in the Texas League — hosted an exhibition game against none other than the world champion New York Yankees.

“So this is Waco!” bellowed Ruth, starting a colorful interview with Jinx Tucker, then-sports editor of the Waco Times-Herald.

Fans started swarming downtown Waco before sunrise to jockey for seats to see legends like Ruth and Lou Gehrig. Katy Park’s capacity was 4,000, but estimates of the crowd that day ranged up to 11,000.

Fans packed the stadium to the absolute brim, so much so that the foul ground vanished completely. The Yankees pounded the Cubs, 13-3, in a game that was called in the top of the ninth inning after numerous interruptions from fans. Several Waco youngsters sprinted onto the field during play to plead for autographs from Ruth and Gehrig, and sometimes swooped in front of the outfielders to steal the ball.

New York Times sportswriter John Drebinger deemed it a “joyful picnic” and “one of the weirdest spectacles probably ever seen on a baseball field.”

Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig and other great baseball players visited Waco’s Katy Park.
Texas Sports Hall of Fame photo

Extending the truth

“It’s amazing to think that Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig played at Katy Park,” said Jay Black, curator of the Texas Sports Hall of Fame. “(Yankees manager) Miller Huggins always claimed that Ruth hit one off the Percy Medicine Building.”

As is sometimes the case with Ruth, that’s more a good story getting in the way of the truth. The box score shows that Ruth walked twice, doubled and hit into a double play against the Cubs. Gehrig, meanwhile, homered and drove in six runs, while Tony Lazzeri went 3-for-4 with two homers.

The Iron Horse and the Sultan of Swat weren’t the only baseball greats to ever roll through Waco. For years in the early 1900s, the New York Giants held their spring training in nearby Marlin, because the town was known for its supposedly health-building hot springs.

And nine years prior to the Yankees’ arrival at Katy Park, Waco served as the spring training site for the Chicago White Sox. It was 1920, the spring after the infamous “Black Sox” scandal in which eight players conspired to throw the World Series.

But in the spring of ’20, the scandal was still circulating amongst the rumor mill, and players like Eddie Cicotte and “Shoeless” Joe Jackson were in attendance at camp in Waco. Jackson, however, was unable to work out the first few days of camp because his luggage hadn’t arrived.

Joe Louis, shown with lions from the Dailey Brothers Circus in Gonzales on the same day as his fight in Waco, announced he was quitting boxing after that night’s fight and joining the circus.
Associated Press file photo

From diamond to the ring

From the Black Sox to the Brown Bomber, Waco’s Katy Park opened its gates to galaxies of stars over the years. On March 25, 1950, boxing great Joe Louis staged a four-round exhibition fight at Katy Park, but it was Louis’ announcement a few hours before the bout that captured the most attention.

“Louis Quits Ring for Good,” read the headline in the Tribune-Herald , as the boxer told reporters that his exhibition match against J.K. Homer, a heavyweight out of Fort Hood, would be his last fight.

“I have decided I will not return to the ring to try to regain the heavyweight championship of the world,” Louis said.

It figured to be a special night for the 1,500 Waco fight fans who turned out for the match.

“I remember Joe Louis looked at a group of us boys before the fight, and said, ‘Hey, you mullets, come help set up this ring!’ ” said Tito Martinez, a longtime Waco resident who was in high school at the time. “He didn’t give us any money, but he gave us ringside seats.”

Homer wasn’t much of a challenge for Louis, who bloodied the soldier’s face in the second round and won the four-round match by unanimous decision.

Louis’ retirement didn’t stick like his jab, though, as the former heavyweight champ returned to the ring to tangle with Ezzard Charles at New York’s Yankee Stadium in September of 1950. He proceeded to compete in nine more sanctioned fights over the next year before closing out with a loss to Rocky Marciano in October 1951.

Laver’s serve comes to Waco

Whatever the sport, the greats of the 20th century seemed to find their way to Waco. Rod Laver, who’s on every short list of the greatest tennis players of all-time, played an exhibition match in Waco, as did other standout pros of the time.

“After the war, there was an exhibition tennis match at the old Marrs-McLean Gym, between Don Budge and Bobby Riggs,” former Trib sports editor Dave Campbell said. “Budge was a Grand Slam winner and Riggs had made a reputation for playing great tennis. I remember watching, just enthralled.”

In 1936, after his gold-medal exploits at the Olympics, sprinter Jesse Owens turned heads at Katy Park by racing a horse.

From 1966 to ’73, Waco served as the site for an annual LPGA event that included the likes of Kathy Whitworth among its winners.

And soon after the Ferrell Center opened in 1988, the arena quickly attracted fans for events other than just Baylor basketball games. The Dallas Mavericks hosted a couple of exhibition games there, and both the Mavs and Phoenix Suns held training camps in the building.

“The training camps were designed to create fan interest, gain some more marketing exposure,” said Tom Hill, Baylor’s associate athletic director for facilities and events. “I think the Mavs recognized they had a good facility down here in Central Texas.”

In October 1993, however, when the Mavs held their camp in Waco, the players viewed it more as a “Junction Boys” type experience.

“All I can gather is that there isn’t a lot of nightlife here,” point guard Derek Harper said at the time. “We’re here to work.”

NBA greats on the Brazos

Of course, it’s one thing for a smaller city like Waco to host a training camp or an exhibition game. It’s quite another to distinguish one’s self as a site for an actual regular-season pro contest.

Yet in 1972, that’s exactly what Waco did, when the NBA came to town.

The Houston Rockets were in their first season in their new home city after moving from San Diego. To build fan interest, they occasionally did some barnstorming, and that season their tour included two regular season contests at the Heart of Texas Coliseum in Waco.

The first such game arrived just three games into the season, in late October 1971, when the Rockets met the Chicago Bulls. A scant 750 people watched the Bulls gore the Rockets, 125-110.

Here’s how Hollis Biddle described it in the next day’s Tribune-Herald : “The worst fears of what the ticket prices might do to the attendance figures came to light as game time approached and only a few spaces in the 8,700-seat Coliseum became occupied.”

Ticket prices for the game started at $5 and ranged up to $10.

So no one knew what to expect in late February when the Rockets came to Waco again, this time to host the Los Angeles Lakers. Starring the likes of Wilt Chamberlain and Jerry West and only a few weeks removed from a record 33-game winning streak, the Lakers figured to be a bigger draw than the Bulls, but just how much bigger remained a mystery until game day.

Wilt Chamberlain (13) visited Waco and lost to the Houston Rockets, 115-110.
Associated Press file photo

Rockets upset Lakers

This time, ticket prices topped out at $7, and the game proved to be a hit, as nearly 7,700 fans showed up to watch the Rockets upset the Lakers, 115-110.

“To this day, I vividly remember the way Wilt Chamberlain shot free throws in that game,” said Keith Barfield, a Dallas accountant who was a 15-year-old Waco high school student at the time. “Of course, Wilt wasn’t known for shooting free throws. But what I remember from that game, and I don’t think I’ve seen it before or since, is that he shot his free throws way up at the top of the circle. . . . It was pretty bizarre.”

Hall of Famer Elvin Hayes poured in 33 points and 20 rebounds to fuel the Rockets to the upset. The Lakers, who lost a 135-134 overtime game to Detroit in Los Angeles the night before, received just 10 points from Chamberlain, though West pumped in a game-high 36, without the benefit of a three-point line.

The Lakers went on to win the NBA title that season, giving West a measure of redemption after a long career of falling short in the finals.

So let the record show that Jerry West, aka “Mr. Clutch,” one of the great shooting guards in basketball history, never won a championship without playing a regular-season game in Waco first.

“I used to ride my bike to the Heart of Texas Coliseum to watch Baylor basketball all the time,” Barfield said. “I just couldn’t believe it when the Lakers came to town. I remember sitting there, watching all those Hall of Famers, the Jerry Wests, the Gail Goodrichs, and all I could think was, ‘This is big time.’ ”

bcherry@wacotrib.com

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