April 8, 2011
By Jerry Hill
Baylor Bear Insider
It never fails. To this day, 50 years later, Dutch Schroeder never gets in a conversation with either Tom Ledbetter or Howard Lee “without them bringing it up.”
The “it” that Schroeder is referring to is the tragic ending to the 1961 Southwest Conference baseball season. With a chance to sweep the Texas Longhorns and earn an automatic bid to the College World Series, the Baylor Bears won the first game of a doubleheader, 3-2, but the second game was called because of darkness and ended in a 9-9 tie.
Instead of possibly moving the game from Baylor’s new field at Dutton Park to the nearby Katy Park where the Bears had played through the ’59 season, then-Texas coach Bibb Falk and his team got on the bus and headed back to Austin with what one observer called a “cheese championship.”
“The Waco Pirates (semi-pro baseball team) were still using Katy Park, so the fields were good, the lights were there,” said Schroeder, an assistant coach to Lloyd Russell on that 1961 Baylor team. “So we offered them the opportunity to go down there and finish the game. But (Falk) said the game was over. ‘We came to play two games, we’ve played two games. It ended in a tie, and we’re going home.’ I think our fans were a little ugly. I don’t remember any fights or anything, but we were quite disenchanted that we didn’t get the chance to finish the game.”
Schroeder and the surviving members of that ’61 Baylor near-championship team will get together for a 50th reunion this weekend. A brunch will be held at 10:30 a.m. Saturday at the Letterman’s Lounge at Floyd Casey Stadium, and the team will be recognized on the field before the start of Saturday’s 3 p.m. game against eighth-ranked Texas at Baylor Ballpark.
Asked if any of the Texas players had been invited to the reunion, Schroeder responded, “ I can’t believe you would even say that.”
Some feelings never die.
The following account of that 1961 dispute was written by former Baylor Bear Insider editor and Waco Tribune-Herald sports editor Dave Campbell is reprinted from the May 19 edition of the Waco News-Tribune:
They City-Slicked the Bears
By Dave Campbell
Katy Park has opened its eyes to many wild moments down through the years . . . Gene Rye’s three home runs in a single inning; a turnout for a Yankee exhibition in 1929 that left fans standing four deep around the outfield; Art Shires’ antics; the old state semipro tourney days; courageous Monte Stratton’s first mound start after losing a leg to a shotgun blast; Ramon Mejias and the Waco Pirate championship campaign of 1954, to name a few . . . and thus the baseball doings between Baylor and Texas here Wednesday could have been just another chapter in a storied past.
But the Baylor Park on Dutton Avenue, a comparative youngster as baseball parks go, has never seen anything like it.
The setting had all the necessary ingredients – the rivalry and excitement that attents any Baylor-Texas meeting; championship stakes; a big crowd on hand ready to whoop and holler; a chance for Baylor to crowd into the conference baseball throne room for the first time since 1923; the presence of some of the league’s better performers.
Then the games themselves lived up fully to the setting.
The first game was a sizzler, well played, well pitched, tight, exciting, and finally decided in the last of the ninth when Ronnie Goodwin, a strong name in the clutch, bashed a sharp single to center that scored the winning run. Baylor went into the ninth needing two runs to stay alive in the 1961 championship picture, and to the great credit of the Bears they got them.
The setting, the excitement, the turnout and the quality of play were of the variety to take you back to the good old days.
The first game had been a must game for Baylor, but not necessarily for Texas. The Longhorns went into the double-header needing only one victory to wrap up their championship and their right to represent the SWC in the national playoffs.
But having lost the opener, Texas was left in the same position as Baylor. Both had to win the nightcap.
The result was a hard-fought, bitter game, ragged in spots, played with less finesse but with no less determination. The heroes were many. Texas, firing in big artillery early, had it won; and then Baylor, rallying for eight runs against Texas’ best pitcher, had it won; and then finally Texas had it tied.
That’s the way they were when darkness caught them.
But it didn’t stay that way long.
Texas, played to a standstill on the diamond, brought out the rule book and claimed victory. And what’s more, the Longhorns made their claim stand up.
It is unfortunate that it had to end that way. Victories achieved on the playing field are always more satisfactory and subject to less argument than those achieved on technicalities, and that is true whether the winner wears Texas colors or Baylor green and gold. No doubt the players on both sides would agree.
Texas, the winner, might have had the better team, and indeed the final percentages insist the Longhorns did, but Wednesday’s developments did little to prove it. The team is left in a position of having finagled a title rather than won it, and understandably it stands accused – as one Baylor spokesman rather testily put it – of being “a cheese champion.”
“They didn’t want to play us, that’s pretty obvious,” said sports news director George Wright. “We’ve had a championship decided by the champion refusing to play the chief challenger.”
It’s not likely that Texas is going to lose much sleep on the matter.
But while Texas’ championship mettle remains suspect, Baylor stands convicted of something worse: the Bears obviously didn’t even know the rules.
“They out-maneuvered us,” athletic director John Bridgers admitted.
The out-maneuvering began early this week.
Everyone knew by last Friday night that at least one contest between the two would have to be played. It was widely assumed that the showdown would come Tuesday, and one Southwest Conference official even announced the date unofficially in Houston last Saturday.
But when Baylor coach Lloyd Russell started making arrangements for the game, Texas coach Bibb Falk objected to a Tuesday meeting. Bibb wanted to play Wednesday; his pitchers needed rest, he said. So Baylor agreed on the Wednesday date.
In so doing, the Bears were taking a great risk, although they didn’t realize it. Under conference rule (passed in 1955), no game may be played after final exams begin, and Baylor final exams began Thursday. The competition had to end Wednesday, and the foxy Falk admittedly knew it. Demanding – and getting – a Wednesday date left him in the comfortable position of needing (1) a victory; (2) a rainout; or (3), a tie.
He got the tie.
In retrospect, Baylor should have demanded a Monday or Tuesday playing date. If Texas had resisted, the conference office could have settled it, and the responsibility then would have rested there. But as conference executive secretary Howard Grubbs pointed out to Bridgers, in agreeing to a Wednesday date, Baylor was agreeing to accept the consequences.
“They didn’t want to play us, period,” Russell said Thursday. “Bibb said he wanted to wait until Wednesday to let (Tommy) Belcher get some rest, and I let him. If I was going to beat him, I wanted to beat him at his best. Frankly, it didn’t enter my mind that we would get a tie game.
“We’d have liked to have played it off, sure. I had Ward, Daniel and Fisher ready to pitch, and Bibb knew it. But he also knew the rule . . .
“It’s a poor rule that determines a championship on the basis of a technicality; but it’s put in the book for a good purpose and we’ll abide by it.”
There are some lessons there for all.
It might be a good thing in the future if the arrangements for such contests were left with the conference office.
And certainly it would be a good thing if all concerned would get fully acquainted with the rules.
