Hal Hirshon, My Hero

Earlier I had written that in the playoff series vs. Ft. Worth for the Texas League title in 1946 that our rightfielder Hal Hirshon, as I remembered it, had hit four homeruns, one in each of the Rebels' victories. My memories had each of these deciding the game, or at least playing a big part in the victory.

Well, recently I was able to validate some of this. I was at the library, going through the old microfiche newspapers of Sept. 1946 in quest of some other info, when I ran across stories of the first three games. Led by Hirshon's grand slam, Dallas took the opener. Then, following a Cats' win in game two, his three run blast settled game three. Can I doubt my remembrance that he indeed settled games three and four with homeruns as well?

What Else Happened During the Summer of 1946?

Let's see... Well, I turned twelve that summer. Early in the summer I was taken to McKinney for hernia repair surgery. This was something I had been troubled with since birth as far as I kmow. Anyway, the surgeon in the hospital there did well by me. No more problem.

I was on my back in the hospital for a week. Boring? Of course. I read a lot. Somebody brought me a "big little" book which I still remember the title of. It was called "War in the Jungle," a Terry and the Pirates story. What else? I don't recall.

I has a baseball magazine and used it while abed to write for autographs of my favorite players c/o their clubs. E.g., an address might read:

Dixie Walker
Brooklyn Baseball Club
Brooklyn, New York

I only got one response, an autographed picture of Hank Greenberg from the Detroit Tigers. Otherwise the whole experience was a huge disappointment.

Grand Prairie's swimming pool opened that summer. While I had to take it easy so as not to rerupture the rupture, I was allowed to ride my bike and to swim. I taught myself to swim that summer. No doubt I had a great tan spending as much time as a did there. Popular music hits
were played over the loudspeaker, and two I recall being played a lot were "Pretending" by Andy Russell and "To Each His Own" by the Ink Spots.

Other than a lot of swimming I don't actually remember a whole lot of what I did that summer. Exceot dor keeping up with baseball. I'd get up in the mornings, go outside and bring in the Dallas Morning News, and devour the sports section. Normally there would be twelve box scores in the paper: four Texas League, four National League, and four American league. And I would go over them all line by line. Usually in that order. At night I'd listen to the Rebels games, sometimes the Cats. I heard the major league All Star game that July, including Ted Williams hitting the homer off the "balloon" ball, as they called it.

Once school started I played softball even though my folks told me not to. The feared I'd tear my stitches loose. But I didn't. I was center fielder for Mrs. Thompson's seventh grade boys team.

Forties Football Trivia

Can you name the player that made All Southwest Conference three consectuve years while playing three different positions and wearing three different numbers?

Hint: he's one of the three from that era who were all-conference all four years they played.

More from 1946-- Sometime

I haven't written to this blog in a long time, a very long time.

Since we've moved into the Waco area, and the main library is not hard to get to, I thought I would look through the old newspaper files to try to get some more information and names before I moved on to 1947. However, I've been so busy that I never got that done.

I'll do it, but for now I'll move on to what I remember of 1947. And maybe a few other things too.

The Dixie Series, 1946

Dallas swept the Atlanta Crackers in the Dixie Series. That's all I remember for sure. I feel pretty certain Bob Moyer, after wielding a pretty quiet bat against Fort Worth, hit a bases loaded home run to sew up one of the games. I seem to recall that one of the games was pretty high scoring, maybe 10-6. I feel sure I listened to all four games, but am more sure that I attended none. But that's it, all I remember. (Hopefully, someone will happen onto this blog with stronger memories.)

For certain, though, the Rebels won and were the Champions of Dixie.

While Dallas was chopping up the Fort Worth Cats, the Southern Association championship was being determined in a series between Atlanta and the Memphis Chicks. I was pulling hard for the Chicks. Why? Well, Pete Gray played for them. Pete Gray was the one-armed outfielder who played some major league ball the previous season with the Saint Louis Browns. Now all the real big leaguers were back from the war, but Gray was still able to play in AA. Not only did I want to see how a one-armed man played the outfield and swung the bat, but I thought Dad would too. It could have been a strong selling point in getting him to take me to a game.

Didn't happen though. Atlanta won.

And then Dallas won. Fantastic!

1946 Playoffs

Going pretty much purely on memory now, I recall the 1946 regular season first division finishers were:
(1) Ft. Worth Cats (somewhere around 100-54);
(2) Our glorius Dallas Rebels (91-63);
(3) San Antonio Missions; and
(4) Tulsa Oilers.

The Cats took out the Oilers and the Rebels eliminated the Missions in, I believe, pretty routine fashion.

So we had a Dallas-Ft. Worth series for the Texas League championship. The first two games would be in Cowtown and the Cats were a decided favorite. But, then, along came Hal Hirshon.

Hirshon, Rebel rightfielder, had only hit about .236 for the regular season, but always seemed tougher in the clutch. He had some power, maybe nine homeruns. And for Hal Hirshon clutch situations seemed to abound in this series. Memory is a funny thing, and mine is probably funnier than most. But I remember Hirshon slugging four homers in this five game series. Yes, five games. Dallas took down those mighty Cats in five.

And there it was: The Dallas Rebels, 1946 Texas League Champions.

Research Resources

Earlier I wrote that I was going to check the Texas Almanac at our local library and try to locate more details regarding the 1946 Texas League season. But, alas, the Alvin library doesn't keep back issues anymore. I haven't checked to see if any of the other branches in our Brazoria County system have any going back that far, but even if they do, they're probably considered a research resource not available for check-out. I'm not sure I'd want to drive to Angleton or to Pearland or wherever just to glean what information that might be in the 1946 Texas Almanac.

However, the Dallas Morning News seems to have practically everything they've published online now. The problem is that access is pretty expensive. Just one day's access cost about ten bucks. But, you know, someday I just might try that to see what all info I could gather in a day.

For now, though, I'll just write what I remember-- or what I think I remember-- of those glorius '46 and '47 seasons and let it go at that. If I get more iformation in the future I'll doubtless update some entries; until then what's here will be what's here.