San Antonio Broncos · San Antonio, Texas · 1909

Navigators Blow Up and Broncs Win

July 1909, a doubleheader of San Antonio journalism: the Waco Navigators blow up in a 12 to 4 slugfest, and Cap Leidy, presented a floral horseshoe that turns out to be a bunch of choice beets, replies with five clean line drives in five times at bat.

Two stories share this corner of the San Antonio Light and Gazette for July 6, 1909, and both are settling the same happy question. The first opens with a sigh of pure mock sympathy: “Poor Navigators! They had been traveling beyond their pace for three games and when the blow-up came it was a Fourth of July celebration, with all the giant crackers and other noise accompaniments that are embodied in the wildest dreams of Young America the night before the Fourth.” Waco got chased “about the lot running down 17 clean bingles to various corners” while the Broncs piled up twelve runs, two of them arriving on “a chesty heave by Harbison that went through the bleacher wire.” Even the pitching stayed relaxed: Winchell gave up three home runs, but “all three of them occurred when the bases were unoccupied and caused no worry.”

The second story is the keeper. “Some sarcastic cuss, evidently after much thought and careful planning, fixed up a job on Cap Leidy yesterday.” Before the game Cap is ceremonially presented “what was evidently a floral horseshoe, nicely done up in tissue paper and with a card attached,” and the players make sure all 3,500 fans see it unwrapped: “it wasn’t a thing but a bunch of choice beets, with the fresh tops still attached.”

Cap “blushingly acknowledged the tribute in a sweet-girl-graduate manner, but the lines around the corners of his mouth tightened perceptibly.” Then comes the answer of the title: “he dinged the ball on the nose five times in a row for five clean line drives in as many times at bat.” Five for five, one for each beet. The banner across the top of the page that day asked “Well, Well, We’ve Got a Pretty Good Team After All, Haven’t We?” and nobody in San Antonio needed it answered.