4/27/74: Clark Field, RIP

[Tulsa Horn]

Good Lord, where have 30 years gone?

If you young guys will indulge us nostalgic old-timers, could we have a moment of silence for a dear old friend who was buried in the rush to modernity 30 years ago?

30 years ago on Tuesday, Clark Field hosted its last baseball game when we played the aggies, and I was lucky enough to be there. The aggies beat us that last game to salvage 1 game in a 3 game series.

I know there was a recent Clark Field thread, so I'm not going to go on & on, but I would like to quote a favorite passage that I re-read every year around this time, written by another late UT icon, Willie Morris, in his book "Always Stand in Against the Curve:"

"Directly across the street from the football stadium had been the most lovely and harmonious baseball field in the United States, the most unusual baseball diamond I have to this day ever known. It was called Clark Field, and it had been carved out of the earth from the limestone all around it. Its roofed grandstand and bleachers had a patina of time, and its entire surroundings were touched with an unhurried grace that behooved the best and most complex of all American games. I loved this field, and it came to represent for me the most enduring spot on the whole campus of the University of Texas. Indeed, to me its became the best place in all this frenetic, pulsating state. . . . Was there a finer place in God's creation to spend a placid afternoon in the sunshine with one's favorite coed and one's best pals from Breckenridge Hall, watching the Longhorns in their burnt-orange and white embarass the loathsome Texas Aggies?"

There are some benefits to age: I got to see James Street, Cotton Speyrer, Larry Robinson, David Chalk, John Langerhans, & Burt Hooton. I got to know Bill Bethea & Bibb Falk. And I saw many, many games at Clark Field. You young guys don't know what you missed.

 

[daytonhorn]

Amen Brotha!

Member of Class of '69

 

[Endust]

thanks.

 

[ENlightened]

OK, OK, OK ... I'm raining on the nostalgic parade here, but ...

Texas actually played six more "warm-up" games in Clark Field between the aggy finale and the NCAA district tournament. Back then, there was no waste-of-time conference tournament to undo in a weekend what had been established over a three-month conference schedule. Of course, that also meant there was a gap of nearly a month between the last game and the first NCAA game.

Anyway, Texas beat Southwestern twice and took three of four from Lubbock Christian in those final six games, the last of which was played May 17. But April 27 is correctly remembered as the final scheduled game at Clark Field, and as I recall, a lot of people took away pieces of the park that day. (I was 10 at the time and not there, sadly.)

P.S.: aggy won the first game of that final series, not the last. The "Kings of the Diamond" book reports that Bobby Clark (fitting, no?) scored the winning run on a wild pitch as Texas beat aggy 4-3.

Sorry. That's just what editors do.

 

[TornJock]

Clark Field was, for me, a place that had the allure of a theme park when I was a kid growing up in Austin in the 50's and 60's. Thanks to my Dad being a part of the Saturday morning coffee club at C&S Sporting Goods when it was on the Drag, I had the good fortune to be raised in the presence of one Mr. Bibb Falk. He'd come in every Saturday morning and make the coffee for everyone and then hold court in the break room there. His observations on politics, weather, life, and especially baseball, were not to be missed.

Coach Falk ("Lefty" to his buddies at the coffee conclave) invited me to be a batboy when I was about six & that turned out to be the beginning of some of the most fun a kid could ever have.

My Dad thought Coach Falk only wanted me to be present at the games & when he took me to my first game, the Bibber jumped all over me for not having been at practice during the week. I found that he wanted the batboys to be involved in everything from shining shoes to oiling gloves to chasing foul balls and even shagging flies in the outfield. What a great place to learn baseball! Clark Field became my playground; Dad arranged to pick me up at school and drop me off at the ballyard & he'd go back to work until I was through doing whatever Coach Falk decided I needed to do. It may have seemed like drudgery to some, but it was actually fun cleaning caked-on infield clay out of the shoes of Pat Rigby, Wayne McDonald, Spotty Bethea, and the like.

Coach Falk would hit fungo to me, just like the "big guys" & he'd hit 'em where I could catch it on the run, but he'd hit theirs just out of reach & then climb all over their butts about how "...the damn kid can catch it, but you lazy turds can't!" ( It wasn't until a few years later that I realized Coach Falk could hit fungo better than most people throw) Coach Falk taught me the fine art of the drag bunt and convinced me that I was not going to be the next Mickey Mantle. He told me that I'd never hit for power, but with my speed, I should stay on the left side of the plate and keep working on bunting & "inside-out hittin'' ". ( He said I'd add 100 points to my average doing that & he was correct, as usual.)

As the years went on, I saw many great games in Texas Baseball history from the dugout at Clark Field, and learned how to climb Billygoat Hill to chase down fly balls. I learned that the big jar of Vaseline hanging from the shoelace by Coach Falk's "office" in the locker room was for keeping your glove limber and well-preserved. I learned how to get up on the roof to fetch foul balls (and found how the knowledge of how to get on the roof would come in handy for "UFO spotting" during my days as a student at UT...It was a great, secluded spot to have late-night "picnics").

One day, during a break in practice, Pat Brown and a couple of other guys found that the door to the utility tunnel that had been installed behind and under Billygoat Hill was unlocked. I was in the outfield with the guys & we snuck in, unnoticed by the Bibber, and took a "tour" of the tunnel & found that it went under what was then Red River St. and and then west under 23rd St. We found our way through the hot, dark, damp tunnel down to a service portal and popped up out of the tunnel down the street & ran back into Clark Field. We were soaking wet with sweat & Coach Falk looked at us and bellowed, "Where the hell have you turds been?"
Brown answered, "Just getting some extra runnin' in, Coach!"
He hollered, "Well all right! About time somebody did somethin' extra around here!" we ran back to the outfield and fell out laughing.
Between the batboy experience and being a ballboy/manager for the football team as a kid, I definitely had a unique upbringing.

Clark Field was definitely one-of-a-kind, and it's a shame the younger bunch will never see such a unique setting for baseball.

As ENLightened said, aggy had taken the first game of the aforementioned series 11-5 on Friday, 4/26/74 & we swept on Saturday, 8-0 & 4-3. I remember the last game particularly well because we were getting ready to have a scrimmage (perhaps the Orange-White game) and most of us were in our football gear, watching the game from the top of the north end horseshoe. We all went nuts when the winning run scored as the shadows crept across the infield.

I've heard that there have been sightings down in the basement of the Performing Arts Center of a grey-headed man in an old flannel baseball uniform, carrying a fungo bat, humming to himself as he strolls around where the old creek bed was behind Clark Field. He's probably looking for an errant foul ball that cleared the roof and trickled down to the creek...
The faint scent of a half-smoked cigar mixed with the smell of pine tar lingers in the air as the apparition passes...

, Lefty...I miss you and your old home...

 

[Hobbes]

Is that 26th beyond the outfield wall? How was Clark Field laid out?

 

[Hobbes]

Never mind - I read the last post.

 

[Bob in Houston]

I got to UT the next fall. I obviously missed out.

 

[Humble Glenn]

Thanks for the post, Tulsa Horn, from someone who broadcast many games from the beautiful old place. My favorite memory of Bibb Falk is how scared I was when I did one of my first games. I asked for the lineup and he gruffly replied "Hell, I don't know. None of them are any good. Why don't you decide, Brown? I stuttered and quickly declined. Later on, became a friend and realized there was a good guy behind that tough exterior. Thanks to you and Torn Jock for some great reading. By the way, you know my son-in-law in Tulsa well, I know. Glenn

 

[UTME]

Great stories folks. It appears that missed out on a significant piece of Longhorn baseball history. I love the Disch, but Clark Field seems to be a very special place w/ alot of character. Perfect for college baseball IMO.

Does anybody have the technology available to enlarge the picture of Clark Field in the first post to a larger "screen saver" size without losing the quality? If so, could you PM me? Thanks.

 

[Tulsa Horn]

I knew I could count on all of you old geezers to wax nostalgic about Clark Field. Thanks, Enlightend, for clearing up my aging memory. And thanks, Torn Jock, for the stories about Bibb. Yes, Glenn, I know your son-in-law, daughter, and grandson. They're some of the people that make living in Oklahoma work for me.

First, a quick Bibb story. Bibb always had a twinkle in his eye, and loved to talk baseball. After I met him, I went home and looked up his stats in the Baseball Encyclopedia. I noticed his nickname was "Jockey." I asked him about that, and he said it was because of his reputation as a bench jockey. He would have fit right in with the Wild Bunch in their wilder days. A particular target of his was Babe Ruth. He told about how in his playing days, the players left their gloves on the field when they went into bat. He and Ruth both played right field (Bibb played for the White Sox and later the Indians), and one day Bibb found a dead bird on the field and stuffed it into Ruth's glove. Babe was none too pleased about that, and they rode each other hard everytime their teams played. Bibb made bench-jockying an art form and said his teammates were always amazed by the information he'd dig up on opposing players to needle them with.

Does anyone remember the between-games ceremony on that day 30 years ago? As I remember (okay, my memory has already proved faulty once), some administrator (this was pre-Dodds) came out and made a speech about the new ballpark being constructed across 35, and the fans relentlessly booed. No one was happy about the idea of a new ballpark.

The Disch is to Clark Field what a Ford Taurus is to a vintage Corvette. The Taurus will get the job done and get you where you want to go, but there are no aesthetics, no fun-factor, and you never really bond with it. On the other hand, you'd smile everytime you looked at your classic Corvette, you'd be proud to own it, and love driving it. If you ever let it go, you'd miss it forever and regret the decision to sell it. The day you sold the Taurus, you'd forget about it and be happy to move on to the next car.

If they announced they were tearing down the Disch tomorrow, would anyone care? Oh, sure, you'd have a lot of happy memories about the players and the games, sitting next to your buddies, and the Wild Bunch's schtick, but would you remember anything about the park other than the painfully uncomfortable seats, the north wind that froze your butt during games in February, or the heat that cooked you in May?

 

[Branyon]

Great stories - thanks for the memories. I was fortunate to attend the games of that series with the Aggies and we were mighty pleased to win that last one. What a great place to watch a ballgame - we could see part of the field from the library in Townes Hall and if a game was underway we often departed with our books in hand for a few innings.

 

[Tulsa Horn]

Since we're talking about beloved Texas legends . . .

Bibb Falk played on the 1919 SWC championship football team and the SWC championship baseball teams from 1918-1920.
His coaching record at UT: 478-176 (.730).
He coached UT to 20 SWC championships and 2 NCAA championships.
He played in the major leagues for 12 years, compiling a lifetime average of .314.

I once asked him about his days as a player. "Well, I could hit a little. In 1924, I hit .352. Finished second in the American League to a guy named Ruth. You ever heard of him?"

 

[TornJock]

Tulsa,
I always liked the story about Bibb when he was asked about the difference between hitting back when he played and the modern times.
The interviewer asked Bibb what he thought he'd do against the modern pitchers, if he'd hit .314 like he did "back in the day" & he replied something like, "Naw, I'd hit around .270 or .275."
The interviewer replied, "Why so low?"
Bibb: "Hell, I'm 75 years old!"

Vintage Falk.

Which reminds me...I'm getting a little torqued at the radio announcers, Moreland in particular, who keep referring to Disch-Falk Field as "The Disch". I think it's being disrespectful to Coach Falk and his family, friends, and former players. The man's name is just as prominent as Uncle Billy Disch, so I say let's give him his due and include him in every reference to the ballyard.

Anyone with me? I'm callin' KVET...

 

[olehorn]

Thanks, Tulsa Horn, for the memories of Bibb Falk. I never met the man, might have passed him in Gregory one time, and if that was him, he really didn't look like a major leaguer. Which means nothing.

But what he did for UT baseball, along with Disch and Gustafson, was to establish firmly the great tradition we now enjoy. Few other schools have equalled this history.

Just another reason why we all can smirk when someone says oh, you went to UT?

I saw Clark first in 1958. Nothing anything close to it, I suppose, anywhere in the world. Billy Goat Hill produced many guffaws from UT fans when an opposing outfielder tried to get on top of it to relay a ball back to the infield.

What a shame that it had to be replaced. Progress? Dunno.

Hook'em

 

[1sahorn]

i was in attendance at the last regular game at Clark (against a&m). that's the good news...bad news is that was the last time i saw then Horns in person for 20 years (circumstance was cruel). by the time i first saw the Disch, it was 20 years old and not too pretty. Clark was 10 years older than dirt and somewhat run down from neglect but still the most charismatic ball park in the country. it was replaced because we would never stand a chance of hosting in the tournament because of the cliff. too bad we didn't move home plate back, make the cliff the outfield wall & improve seating. there were a lot of good spirits in that old place.

 

[GAS_Horn]

TornJock,
I am guilty of referring to the baseball stadium on another thread as "the Disch" and after reading your post I will never do it again. Since I also know Big Larry, calling Disch-Falk by any other name is just wrong. Thanks for your posts about Clark; those really brought back alot of memories. I was a freshman in 73 and 74!

 

[TornJock]

GAS,
Thanks. I think we can either call it by it's proper name or change it to:
The "Falk-n-Disch"...

That has a nice ring to it.

 

[UTSquared]

Fellow Old-Timers,

Thanks for the great stories. I only caught a few games at Clark when I was in grad school, being a "serious student" at the time

, but it was a memorable place. The stories about Clark and Bibb Falk in this thread by those who really know them well need to be preserved, so I just nominated the thread for the "Classics".