Come Some Sweet, Bluebonnet Spring

(I was going to write commentary about the latest gun horror in this country up in Nashville, but I wanted to let is pass and see if I arrived at any new perspective or understanding of the context. I may deal with the subject this weekend. A much more pleasant notion occurred to me, and that is opening day for major league baseball. I took a ride this past weekend out toward the grave of Rogers Hornsby, a man considered by many to be the greatest baseball player who ever lived. He came from a small spot east of Austin, and I preferred just now, to think of him and his life. I guess it happens every spring. - JM)

While the Indian paintbrush and bluebonnets still color the banks of the Colorado, may I suggest you follow old Webberville Road east of Austin out where the river makes a few horseshoe twists coming down from the Hill Country and marking its water course through the black land prairie out toward the Coastal Bend. This little ride, for me, is a rite of passage when the seasons change. Make sure you look for a sign indicating the Hornsby Bend Cemetery, or stop and ask directions. Everybody who has lived there a while knows its location. Significant people in the history of Texas rest there not far from the river. One of them is, arguably, the greatest baseball player to ever put on a big league uniform.

Spring is the optimal time to visit the grave of Rogers Hornsby, who still retains the highest batting average ever recorded in the big leagues. He is buried in a modest cemetery not far from the bend in the Colorado, which is named after his family. Often, an admirer will have left a perfectly useful baseball glove atop Hornsby’s grave, and his headstone will be easy to spot.

The Hornsbys were important actors in the founding and development of Texas, though the state takes little note of their history. Rogers, whose first name was his mother’s maiden surname, rests not far from Reuben Hornsby, the family patriarch, and one of the founding Texas Rangers. Reuben had been given a grant of land in Texas by Stephen F. Austin. He was a surveyor and with his wife Sarah settled there along the river and established the first community in what later became Travis County. Hornsby, who, eventually, helped to survey Austin for the capital of the Texas Republic in 1839, also was father to the first Anglo child in the county, sat on the initial jury in Travis County, and even grew the first corn. Twelve members of Hornsby’s family became Texas Rangers and are also buried in the cemetery. And one of Reuben Hornsby’s descendants became a player many baseball experts argue is possibly the most talented to ever grip the rawhide or run out a ground ball.

Rogers Hornsby was born in Winters, Texas, a dusty spot on the Edwards Plateau, just over forty miles south of Abilene. After his father’s death when Rogers was just two years old in 1898, his mother moved the family to the Austin area, which was just a few miles up the Colorado from where his grandfather had settled Hornsby’s Bend. The family, eventually, returned to Fort Worth for work but by the time he was fifteen, Rogers was playing semi-pro. When he entered major league baseball still in his teens, he helped to launch the managerial career of Branch Rickey, the man who later made Jackie Robinson the first African American in pro baseball. 

Hornsby, who said he could remember nothing about his life before he held a baseball in his hand, played in the “dead” and the beginning of the “live ball” eras. But he hit most everything, regardless of its resilience against wood. Only Ty Cobb has a higher career batting average of .367, and Oscar Charleston of the Negro Leagues, who hit for a 364 mark. Hornsby batted .358 over his career of 23 seasons and earned two Triple Crowns, batted .400 or better three times, and in 1924 hit a .424 average, which remains the highest B.A. in MLB history. He is also the only player to hit .400 and get 40 home runs in a single season. 

But he was not a considered much of a convivial or pleasant fellow. Teammates didn’t care for Hornsby, who never drank, smoke, or went to the movies. His belief was that the moving pictures might damage his eyesight. Hornsby gambled on horses and lost a lot of his earnings as a ballplayer, and was married three times, but lived for baseball. No less a legend than the “Splendid Splinter,” Ted Williams said Hornsby was the greatest hitter for power and average who had ever played the game, and Frankie Frisch, a player and manager in the big leagues, described Hornsby as the “only guy I know who could probably hit .350 in the dark.” He won seven batting titles and one World Series, which ended when Hornsby tagged out Babe Ruth trying to steal second base. The Texan was sufficiently obsessed with baseball that when his mother died during the World Series, he had her funeral delayed until the contest had concluded.

There are ball diamonds along Webberville Road today, not far from where Rogers Hornsby rests, and there are boys and men still playing the game on them that Hornsby loved. Many of those players have no idea of the greatness that once passed through that little settlement on the Colorado River, not much more than a long throw from where they are shagging fly balls each Spring. My senior men’s team, a few years back, took our spring training on a nice private field only a few miles from where the great second baseman is buried.

I was always hopeful, as baseball will make a man, of a good season, warm weather, and a happy life every spring as I drove through Hornsby’s Bend on my way to practice. I wondered what Rogers might think of our skills after our too many decades but I am sure he would have understood our undying love of a game that connected us to our youth and the power of hope. I also frequently thought of what Rogers told a sportswriter that kept pestering him about who he was and what he did to occupy his time when the weather was cold and he wasn’t playing the game. 

“People ask me what I do in winter when there’s no baseball,” he said. “I’ll tell you what I do. I stare out the window and wait for spring.”

And now spring has arrived. So, play ball!