The Fort Worth Panthers would “play ball!” on only four home fields during their eighty-nine years. Here is a brief history of the places where the Panthers “laid down”—but only when they slid into homeplate.
Let the record show that Cowtown’s most storied sports team was organized in January 1888 in the gambling rooms over the White Elephant Saloon. Those rooms in 1888 were still run by Luke Short one year after he had walked down the stairs from those rooms and into wild West lore.
The moving force behind the new baseball team was William H. Ward, owner of the White Elephant. Other organizers were B. L. Waggoman, who has a street named after him; A. J. Anderson, who played a key role in Jim Courtright’s great escape in 1884; and C. J. Swasey, who had been a pioneer baseball player twenty years earlier.
The civic-boosting Daily Gazette predictably predicted that the new Fort Worth team would be the best in the state.
And it would be. But not right off the bat.
The next month Ward attended a meeting in San Antonio to organize the Texas League, of which the Fort Worth team would be a charter member.
The Gazette wrote: “A St. Louis sporting paper, which appears to get its Texas news straight from the headquarters of the Dallas base ball club, said recently that the fight in the Texas league would be between Galveston, Austin and Dallas for first place, while Fort Worth and San Antonio would scramble for the rear.”
Meow!
T&P Park (1888-1901)
The first home of the Panthers, according to the Star-Telegram, was T&P Park, located on the Texas & Pacific reservation at Jennings Avenue and Railroad Avenue (Vickery Boulevard today).
In an early Texas League game in March 1888, T&P Park had a new grandstand as the town of cows met the town of hogs. (Cincinnati as a leading pork-producing city was nicknamed “Porkopolis.)
As the Fort Worth team and the Texas League began their first season the Gazette debuted a logo to highlight its baseball coverage.
The new team played its opening game in Houston on April 7, 1888. President Ward was in attendance.
On April 8 the Gazette published sketches of the players.
(“Young Giant” was one of the Gazette’s nicknames for Fort Worth.)
The Gazette referred to the team one week into its first season as the “Fort Worth hospital nine” because of injuries and illness.
To this point the Gazette had referred to the team variously as the “Fort Worth nine,” “Fort Worth team,” “Fort Worth players,” “Fort Worths,” “Panther City team,” “Fort Worth City Panthers,” etc.
By April 14, 1888 the team finally was the “Panthers.”
The month of June brought a new baseball logo for the Gazette but a loss to Dallas for the Panthers.
The feline nine ended their first season with a 21-27 record.
Between 1888 and 1910 two brothers dominated the history of the Panthers. William H. Ward was president and/or manager for ten years. His brother John L. was president for two years. Both brothers were city aldermen.
William H. Ward was manager of the Panthers in 1895 when they played the Dallas Steers in the Texas League championship series in September. The series was scheduled to be a mini-season: best of fifteen games!
By September 17 Fort Worth was down six games to four in the series with five games yet to be played.
On September 19 the Panthers beat the Steers 11-4 to even the series six-six with three games to go.
But, the Gazette fairly cackled on September 21, Dallas manager Ted Sullivan was so disgusted after Fort Worth beat Dallas 8-1 at T&P Park on September 20 to take a seven-six lead in the series that he took his bat and balls and went home and refused to return to Fort Worth to play.
As for Sullivan’s reception at T&P Park, the Gazette said that “the treatment he [Sullivan] has received on the Fort Worth grounds cannot be well compared to the injury and insults heaped upon the Fort Worth club in Dallas by the members of the Dallas club, assisted by the ‘rooters’ and supposed peace officers of that city.”
Thus, the Fort Worth Panthers won—by default—their first Texas League championship and won it in a way that added to the legend of the Big D-Cowtown rivalry.
The Fort Worth Panthers were not the only Panthers to play at T&P Park. In 1896 the Black Panthers, Fort Worth’s “crack colored ball team,” also played there. (These Black Panthers were not the Black Panthers who would play at McGar Park twenty years later.)
Also in 1896, an old cowboy told longtime Star-Telegram livestock writer Frank Reeves in 1947, African-American cowboy Bill Pickett first publically demonstrated bulldogging at T&P Park.
Other amateur teams played baseball at T&P Park.
Haines Park (1902-1910)
Sore loser Ted Sullivan did eventually come back to Fort Worth: as manager of the Panthers in 1902! William H. Ward was again president.
In 1902 the Panthers lost their lease on T&P Park and sought a new home. An iron angel flew to the rescue: Before Northern Texas Traction Company even began interurban service to Dallas, NTTC general manager Frank M. Haines gave the Panthers $1,000 to build a new ballpark. Then NTTC went further: It offered the Panthers land for that new ballpark.
The park was located, the Star-Telegram wrote, “near the streetcar barns of East Lancaster Avenue” at Pine Street. I suspect the park was on the undeveloped block just south of the car barns. Haines Park, like T&P Park, was adjacent to Texas & Pacific railroad tracks. Casey Jones meets “Casey at the Bat.”
Nonetheless, the Panthers had a new home, and NTTC had another attraction to increase ridership on its interurban line: The interurban track ran down Lancaster Avenue one block from Haines Park.
The Panthers lost their first game in their new home to the dreaded downriver rivals.
As at T&P Park, cowboys rode and roped at Haines Park.
And amateur teams played baseball.
Even soccer! This team, too, was named “Panthers.” And note that football was played at Haines Park in 1909: Supporters of Polytechnic College and Fort Worth University destroyed the soccer team’s goal posts.
The next year brought a new president and manager of the baseball Panthers: Walter J. Morris. Morris would be owner and/or manager from 1910 to 1915.
Morris/Panther Park (1911-1925)
In 1911 Morris moved the Panthers to their third home: the eponymous Morris Park.
As at T&P Park and Haines Park, amateurs played at Morris Park.
In 1914, Morris’s last year as leader of the Panthers, Morris Park was renamed “Panther Park.”
Panther Park in the 1920s. The Texas League would not begin to play night games under electric lighting until 1930. Before 1930 late-afternoon games often were “called account darkness.” (Photo from Jack White Photograph Collection, University of Texas at Arlington Libraries.)
Morris/Panther Park was located on the North Side between North Main Street and the Cotton Belt railroad track. Yes, once again Casey meets Casey.
It was at Panther Park in 1920 that the Panthers, under the leadership of president Will Stripling and manager Jake Atz, had perhaps their best season, winning not only the Class B Texas League championship but also the first Dixie Series, beating the Little Rock Travelers of the Class A Southern Association.
Panther Park/LaGrave Field (1926-1964, 2001-2014)
In 1926 the Panthers moved east across North Main Street to their fourth and final home. Now the nearest railroad track was six blocks away.
The new park was named “Panther Park,” although the team now occasionally was referred to as the “Cats.”
Three years later Panther Park was renamed “LaGrave Field” upon the death of club business manager and part-owner Paul LaGrave.
LaGrave Field today.
Crave more dates?
In 1965 the Cats moved to Turnpike Stadium in Arlington and became the “Dallas-Fort Worth Spurs” of the Texas League.
Turnpike Stadium was renamed “Arlington Stadium” in 1971. In 1972 the American League Washington Senators began playing at the stadium as the “Texas Rangers.”
Texas Ranger Nolan Ryan pitching at Arlington Stadium in 1992. (Photo from Wikipedia.)
Arlington Stadium was demolished in 1994.
Everybody up! It’s time for the seventh-inning stretch before moving on to:
