Special to the NEWS
The origin of baseball in the Rio Gande Valley points to Brownsville, specifically to when the first baseball club was formed in 1868.
The inaugural game pitted the Rio Grande Club of the city against Club Union de Matamoros, Tamps., Mexico. The Christmas game was high in tallies for both sides as hitting dominated the game.
A “Daily Ranchero” report read, “The Matamoros boys were found to be no ordinary antagonists for the champions of the border.”
The boys from Heroic City pounded the Brownsville squad with relentless hitting and thus winning the game 49-32.
As years progressed, the number of teams on both sides of the border grew and America’s game reached a fever pitch in the early 1900s.
WAR BRINGS BASEBALL NOTABLES TO SOUTH TEXAS
By the fall of 1845, Zackary Taylor and his 4,000 troops were stationed in Corpus Christi before the Mexican War. They lived in tents along over a mile of bay-front land. Among his officers was Abner Doubleday, the inventor of baseball. By 1846, Taylor’s army made its way to the Rio Grande Valley.
There is some history of baseball in the RGV prior to 1868 and it was all due to the Mexican War of 1846.
Abner Doubleday, who was credited with inventing the game, was stationed in the Valley with Taylor’s U.S. Army during the Mexican War—once in Port Isabel and again at Brownsville’s Fort Brown.
Some old-timers believe that Doubleday organized the first baseball game in Texas in the fishing village of Port Isabel, but no written document has been found that verifies such a game was played. It remains just speculation, although the time frame was right, since Doubleday was in the Valley seven years after he supposedly came up with the concept for baseball in 1839.
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