You may suspect that Major League Baseball debuted in the Dallas Fort Worth Metroplex in 1972, with the Washington Senators reincarnation as the Texas Rangers in Arlington, Texas, but in fact, its history in the area harkens back to the Deadball Era. Over a century ago, the major leagues flourished in Waxahachie, Texas, in the springtime.
The Detroit Tigers, featuring the legendary Ty Cobb, trained there from 1916 through 1918. The following year, the Cincinnati Reds encamped there before embarking on their 1919 campaign that culminated in a World Series triumph over the Chicago White Sox despite the taint of the infamous “Black Sox” scandal wherein members of the White Sox took bribes from gamblers to throw the series. Ironically, after a year off from hosting spring training, in 1921 Waxahachie switched from hosting the victorious Reds to hosting the vanquished “Black Sox” from Chicago. The six-year stretch of spring training visits from 1916 to 1921 was a memorable period for Waxahachie, and the principal sites utilized by the visiting major league teams are still iconic structures serving the community.
Harry Heilmann (HOF), George Burns (1926 AL MVP), Ty Cobb (HOF), Bobby Veach and Sam Crawford (HOF) in front of the grandstand at Jungle Park, Waxahachie in March 1917. The ballpark site is still used by the local high school baseball team.
Texas hosted spring training for many major league teams from 1903 to 1941.[i] The relatively warm weather in March and the ready availability of rail travel were enticing to teams from colder climates in the first two decades of the twentieth century. The peak years for spring training in Texas were 1904 through 1922. Thereafter, San Antonio was the only Texas city regularly utilized for spring training. From the 1920s on, the expansion of the railroad and the resulting development boom in Florida lured an increasing number of Major League teams, still mainly East Coast based, to the sunnier Florida climate, which could be reached by rail even easier than Texas. The newspaper chart below shows the locations of the major league spring training camps in 1916 when spring training at Texas was at its peak, with Texas hosting as many, or more, major league teams as any other state.
Los Angeles Express, March 10, 1916.
In the first two decades of the 1900s, many Texas communities made pitches directly to major league teams to lure them to their town for spring training. The competition to bring a big-league squad to town for a month or more in the Spring fueled intense courting. Waxahachie, a small town located 25 miles south of Dallas, was one of the most successful suitors, ultimately enticing three different major league teams to town for a total of five training camps during the period.
Intrepid Waxahachie community leaders astutely took advantage of the surge of interest in Texas spring training sites by major league teams in the 1910s. Waxahachie’s flirtation with the big leagues began in earnest in 1915 when representatives of the Waxahachie Chamber of Commerce reached out with a lucrative offer to the Detroit Tigers ownership about the possibility of hosting the team for spring training. Texas intrigued the Tigers, and they also had offers from several other Texas communities. During the 1915 offseason, the Tigers dispatched their manager, Hall of Famer Hughie Jennings, and their groundskeeper to Texas to tour the vying towns in North Central Texas. They were duly impressed with Waxahachie, which was ultimately the Tigers’ choice. Several reasons, aside from just the warm weather and expansive transit network, lured them to Waxahachie.
Foremost was the luxurious Rogers Hotel, which had been completed several years prior in 1912 and was an ideal base for the team. It was a much nicer, and modern, hotel than most communities of Waxahachie’s size could boast of. The Rogers Hotel is located next to a natural hot spring that was popular at the time. In January 1916, to help further entice the Tigers, an indoor 20 ft. square three to five-foot-deep pool was installed in the hotel basement with water pumped in from the adjacent hot spring. The basement also was modified to include a locker room with 33 lockers and billiard tables for the players. There was even a rooftop garden, visible on the postcard shown below, available for the player’s relaxation.
Rogers Hotel as it appeared when the Detroit Tigers stayed there in 1916-1918.
A newly constructed ballpark for the Tigers to train in was also a key factor in their selection of Waxahachie. The Waxahachie Chamber of Commerce formed and capitalized a stock company, the Waxahachie Athletic Park Association, which in turn agreed to construct a stadium, at a cost of $4,000, on vacant land across from the city cemetery for the Tigers to train in. The players could walk the three-quarter-mile trip to the stadium alongside the railroad tracks. The stadium was christened “Jungle Park” in honor of the new occupants, the Tigers. A covered grandstand was hastily constructed, and the entire field was enclosed within a wooden fence. The current version of the stadium is still located at this site and is presently known as Richards Park in honor of Waxahachie native Paul Richards, former major league player and manager, and is the home of the Indians, the Waxahachie High School baseball team.
Newly constructed Jungle Park in Waxahachie, Texas c. 1916.
1933 Goudey card of Paul Richards and signed by him.
As attractive a lure as the new ballpark and the new luxury hotel were, with all the physical comforts a player in training could want, there was another major benefit of Waxahachie as far as the team owners, if not necessarily the players, were concerned. Waxahachie and its surroundings were “dry”, so alcohol would not be a temptation for the players. Combine these factors with the easy rail access to nearby training sites for other major league teams in Marlin Springs (New York Giants), Palestine (St. Louis Browns) and Mineral Wells (Chicago White Sox) and the attractiveness of Waxahachie becomes evident. This full-page article from the 1916 Detroit Free Press extolls Waxahachie’s virtues and favorably compares it, in puffery the locals would be loath to believe, to New York and Paris.
Detroit Free Press article about the Tigers in Waxahachie, February 6, 1916.
Waxahachie, in turn, was enamored with the major leaguers and their sojourn in town. Locals feted the players with numerous parties and banquets. Overflow crowds watched workouts and games against visiting teams such as the New York Giants. Many famous Hall of Fame players came to Waxahachie during those years. The 1916-1918 Tigers teams that trained in Waxahachie were loaded with future Hall of Famers such as Ty Cobb, Sam Crawford, Harry Heilmann and Hughie Jennings. The 1919 Reds fielded Hall of Famer Edd Roush. The 1921 White Sox team was also loaded with Hall of Famers such as Eddie Collins, Harry Hooper, Ray Schalk and Red Faber. Other Hall of Famers who passed through Waxahachie during those years were Tris Speaker, Rogers Hornsby and Christy Mathewson. The most famous of all the ballplayers that passed through Waxahachie was Ty Cobb, one of the all-time greats.
After the 1918 season, the Tigers opted to move to Macon, Georgia for Spring Training in 1919 as flooding had heavily damaged the wooden Jungle Park in 1918. After being spurned by the Tigers, local leaders quickly put the ballpark back in shape and enticed the Cincinnati Reds to switch to Waxahachie as their Spring Training site for 1919. The Reds won the World Series that year and no doubt their time training in Waxahachie played a role in that triumph. The Reds opted for Miami, Florida the following year over Waxahachie, and the Texas papers suggested it was a move made for a big pile of money and a locale where even with the oncoming of Prohibition booze and fast living thrived. The Reds switched late enough that Waxahachie was not able to attract the Chicago White Sox in 1920. The White Sox however did train in Waxahachie for the 1921 season. The photo below shows the trifecta of a Hall of Fame player at Jungle Park with the Ellis County Courthouse visible in the distance just to the side of his left arm.
By 1922, the wooden Jungle Park was falling into disrepair once again and the White Sox opted to move to Seguin for Spring Training. While minor league teams such as the Kansas City Blue trained in Waxahachie in the 1920s the big-league squads were never to return.
For a brief, but glorious while one hundred years ago, Waxahachie was a hotbed of major league baseball. It was quite an accomplishment for a city our size to host Spring Training teams. The memory of the baseball stars that passed through may be feint with the passage of time, but the structures that accommodated them are still part of our daily lives. When you visit the new Rangers ballpark this year, remember there was a time a little more than a century ago when the newest big-league park was in Waxahachie, Texas.
The following recently discovered images also depict the Detroit Tigers at Jungle Park.
