Beaumont Exporters

The Beaumont Exporters was the predominant name of a minor league baseball team located in Beaumont, Texas that played between 1920 and 1957 in the Texas League and the Big State League.

Baseball in Beaumont

The city of Beaumont was first represented between 1903 and 1905 by the Beaumont Oil Gushers, later renamed the Beaumont Millionaires in the South Texas League. It was later represented in the Texas League from 1912–1917 and 1919 as the Beaumont Oilers. After the Exporters folded, the city was later represented again in the Texas league from 1983–1986 by the Beaumont Golden Gators.

History

The Exporters first formed in 1920 and played at Magnolia Ballpark through 1929 and at Stuart Stadium thereafter.The team was ranked near the bottom of the Texas League standings during the 1920s. However, when the Exporters became an affiliate of the Detroit Tigers in the 1930s, its fortunes changed. The 1932 club, featuring future Hall of Famer Hank Greenberg, won 100 games and swept the Dallas Steers in the playoffs. Greenberg led the league with 39 home runs and 123 runs scored, while pitcher Schoolboy Rowe, who would star with Greenberg on the 1934–1935 Tiger pennant-winners, posted a league-best 2.34 earned run average. The Exporters won another championship in 1938, behind pitcher Dizzy Trout, the league's MVP. In 1942, the team won the regular-season pennant, but fell in seven games in the playoffs. Then the entire Texas League suspended operations during World War II.

After the war ended, the New York Yankees replaced Detroit as the Exporters' parent club in 1946. A series of last-place teams was followed in 1950 with a championship club managed by Rogers Hornsby — but it was known as the Beaumont Roughnecks that season.

The Exporters name was restored in 1953, but no more titles followed. As an affiliate of the Chicago Cubs (1954) and Milwaukee Braves (1955), it trailed the other seven Texas League teams in attendance. The Exporters then moved to Austin in 1956.

A revised club known as the Exporters then entered the Class B Big State League in 1956 as a St. Louis Cardinals' affiliate. It struggled on the field, finished last in the BSL in attendance, and briefly transferred to Texas City, Texas during July before returning to Beaumont. The following year, 1957, Beaumont remained in the Big State League as the Beaumont Pirates, a Pittsburgh Pirates' farm club. The league then folded as an organized baseball circuit at the end of the 1957.

The city remained without a minor league club until 1983 when the Amarillo Gold Sox, a Texas League farm team of the San Diego Padres, relocated to Beaumont to become the Beaumont Golden Gators. However the team later moved to Wichita, Kansas, to become the Wichita Wranglers in 1987.

Notable players

Hall of Famer Hank Greenberg

• Hank Greenberg, Baseball Hall of Famer

Season-by-season

(from Exporters' Baseball Reference Bullpen) (from Roughnecks' Baseball Reference Bullpen) (from Pirates' Baseball Reference Bullpen)

* Team operated in Texas City, TX from July 2 to July 7, 1956

References

• Johnson, Lloyd, ed., The Minor League Register. Durham, North Carolina: Baseball America, 1994.
• Johnson, Lloyd, and Wolff, Miles, ed., The Encyclopedia of Minor League Baseball, 1997 edition. Durham, North Carolina: Baseball America.

External links

• http://www.webcitation.org/query?url=http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Troy/4430/hebert/stadium.htm&date=2009-10-25+06:23:12