Waco’s sporting history is colorful and diverse, not least due to the various minor league baseball teams that have called the city their home. One of the longest standing and most successful of these teams was the Waco Navigators, who played in Katy Park from 1906-1919.

Although the state of Texas did not boast a major league baseball team until 1962, Texans had been playing baseball since the 1860s. Initially, Texas baseball consisted only of a few amateur clubs, but by the 1880s, these teams began to pay some of their players, usually the pitcher, catcher, and shortstop. By 1887, there were at least six professional leagues in the United States, and Texas was not far behind. Spearheaded by John McCloskey, player and manager for the Joplin Independents, the Texas League came into a shaky existence in 1888, teams from Austin, Dallas, Ft. Worth, Galveston, Houston, and San Antonio making up its ranks. The first few years were a rollercoaster for the fledgling league, with some teams sporadically running out of cash for their players’ salaries, others folding in the middle of the season, and the league sometimes terminating seasons ahead of schedule.

Waco’s baseball history began years before the founding of its first minor league clubs. Along with a few amateur teams, Waco was the home of several semi-professional black baseball teams beginning in the 1870s. It was not until 1889 that Waco’s first minor league baseball team began play. Between 1889 and 1906, Waco was the home of several minor league baseball teams, including the Waco Babies, Texans, Tigers, and Steers. Each of these teams belonged to the Texas League. In 1906, during the league’s early turmoil, Waco embraced yet another new baseball team. A public contest decided the team’s name, with the winners, Mrs. W. Sparks and Miss Mattie May Wilkes, selecting the name of “Navigators,” reflecting the efforts of Texans to navigate the Brazos River. The Navigators’ first season was less than impressive, resulting in a final record of thirty-two wins and ninety-six losses. These abysmal numbers earned the Navigators the last-place spot in that year’s Texas League standings. The next four years were equally unimpressive, possibly due to frequent turnover in the manager’s position. Between 1906 and 1911, the Navigators went through eight different managers. Finally, the team hired Ellis Hardy. Formerly the head baseball coach for Texas Christian University, Hardy became the most successful and longest tenured of the Navigator’s managers, and he led the team to its first winning season in 1911. From there the team began to climb, with its record improving steadily until 1914, when the Navigators tied seven-time league champions Houston Buffaloes for first place.

The end of the 1914 season would go down in Texas League history as one of the wildest and most contested finishes the league had ever seen. Going into the last series of the season, the Houston Buffaloes led the Navigators by a single game. Waco easily won both of its slated games against the Dallas Giants, giving them a winning percentage of .670 for the season. Houston, in its turn, came away victorious over the Galveston Pirates in its first game, but their second game remained unfinished, called due to darkness in the fifth inning. They had been losing badly. With the unfinished contest, Houston finished at .673, seemingly earning themselves the pennant. Indignant, Waco contested the unfinished game, saying it had been bright and sunny when the umpires stopped the game. Texas League historian William Ruggles, who attended the game, states that it was indeed dark when the fifth inning began, but by the time Galveston had finished batting the sky had cleared. On top of this, Waco then found out that, earlier that season, Houston had broken a league rule stating that the first game of a doubleheader had to be nine innings long, stopping at seven innings in the first game of a doubleheader against Austin. Texas League President W.R. Davidson threw out the result of the shortened game, ignoring the rule that stated the teams had to replay the contest. However, he had also learned that Waco had played a game with a player acquired after intraleague trades had ended. Unfortunately for Waco, Davidson threw out that game as well. Eventually, league administration credited both teams with records of 102-50, and the pennant race ended in a tie.

The Waco Navigators won the pennant for the next two seasons, making them back-to-back-to-back champions, an impressive feat. The Navigators continued playing until 1919. The 1919 season was a dismal one, with the team posting a 59-88 record, their only losing record since 1910. At the same time, the growing city of Wichita Falls, Texas, was experiencing an oil boom. Suddenly flush with cash, a Wichita Falls group bought the Navigators and moved the team, renaming them the Spudders after the oilfield slang for starting an oil well (not potatoes).

That same year, the newly organized Texas Colored League began to play. Among its founding teams was Waco’s newest minor league team: the Waco Black Navigators. The Black Navigators would go on to spend 1919 and 1920 in Waco, before moving to San Antonio as the Black Aces. The Black Navigators were not the last professional baseball team Waco would see in the twentieth century. Between 1920 and the demolition of Katy Park in the 1960s, Waco was the home of the Cubs, the Black Cardinals, the Dons, and the Pirates. Although Katy Park no longer stands, and Waco has not boasted a professional team since the 1950s, Wacoans have retained their love of the national pastime and recall their old clubs fondly.

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On June 19, 1865, enslaved people in Galveston, Texas, heard the news of their freedom. More than two years earlier, President Abraham Lincoln had issued the Emancipation Proclamation to establish the freedom of enslaved people in Confederate States on January 1, 1863. More than two months prior, on April 9, 1865, Confederate General Robert E. Lee surrendered. Still, many Black people remained enslaved, including approximately 250,000 in Texas. The state offered a haven to many white enslavers since no major battles occurred there throughout the Civil War, and enslavers refused to inform enslaved people of their freedom. Yet on Juneteenth in 1865—the day’s name a combination of “June” and “nineteenth”—Union troops arrived in Galveston, bringing news of the emancipation established in January 1863. There, General Gordon Granger issued General Order No. 3: “The people of Texas are informed that, in accordance with a proclamation from the Executive of the United States, all slaves are free.”

Organized by freed Black people in Texas the following year, celebrations of Jubilee Day occurred throughout the state, including Waco. The earliest documented Waco celebration occurred in 1876, which included a two-thousand-person procession led by the Waco Colored Band and local societies, including the Rising Stars and the Young Men’s Club. The groups waved bright-colored banners and wore dazzling uniforms. The parade ended at Waco Creek, in the southern part of the city, where celebrants listened to various speakers and a reading of the Declaration of Independence. Afterward, they danced, sang, and ate together.

Later, in 1913, Black Wacoans organized a celebration at Taborian Park, which included outdoor sports, a picnic, amusement rides, and a balloon release. In the following years, events also included free barbecue, religious services, pageants, softball games, and bicycle races. For Black airmen on James Connally Air Force Base, Juneteenth celebrations included a dance at the Franklin Avenue USO and sporting events at the Elizabeth Lee Center on South Tenth Street. Black employees in Waco also requested the day off from work, and in 1933, Bridge Street, which housed many local Black businesses, closed for part of the day as the community gathered there for a celebratory parade.

Juneteenth celebrations in Waco continued to grow over time. In 1946, the Chicago American Giants and the Memphis Red Sox, both part of the Negro American League, kicked off Juneteenth events at Katy Park, attracting over three thousand fans. These festivities also included broader activist efforts across Texas as Black leaders requested pardons for Black prisoners in the state. As early as June 19, 1925, the governor of Texas granted pardons to forty-five Black prisoners in response to the emancipation celebration day. Later, members of the Texas Legislative Black Caucus advocated for state recognition of the Juneteenth holiday. On June 19, 1979, the bill proposed by Representative Al Edwards of Houston passed, making Texas the first state to establish Juneteenth as a holiday.

Despite this acknowledgement, events that occurred on Juneteenth sometimes highlighted the complex legacies of emancipation. In Limestone County, the town of Mexia regularly hosted one of the largest Juneteenth celebrations in the country, often drawing over twenty thousand people. Those crowds dwindled after 1981, when three young Black men drowned after law enforcement arrested them during celebrations near what locals referred to as Comanche Crossing. Officers crossed Lake Mexia without providing life preservers to Anthony Freeman (18), Carl Baker (19), or Steven Booker (19). The boat began to sink twenty yards from shore, and the three teenagers, two of whom could swim, drowned. The three officers survived, and an all-white jury found them not guilty. The three teenagers’ tragic deaths struck the community hard and impacted Juneteenth celebrations, which now correspond with collective mourning and remembrance of the “Comanche Three.” While Juneteenth remains a celebration of liberation across Texas, such events left many pondering the limits of freedom and justice.

Still, as they did in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Juneteenth celebrations persist in the state and locally in Waco. Juneteenth events include sports competitions, red soda—including Waco’s own Big Red—carnival events, beauty pageants, gospel music performances, and a community-wide parade. Local organizations, including The Heart of Texas Black Chamber of Commerce and the Waco Council of African American Arts, Health & Culture, help coordinate activities throughout the city. These events that occur in Waco and throughout Texas also happen across the country as Americans celebrate emancipation. On June 17, 2021, President Biden signed a bill establishing Juneteenth as a federal holiday. Black Americans, though, have acknowledged and celebrated Juneteenth since 1865. Rejoicing in liberation, Black Wacoans, Texans, and Americans celebrate Juneteenth and recognize still the strides left toward freedom.

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As “America’s pastime,” baseball also imbibed the country’s original sin: racism. This scourge haunted the game from its earliest days, but by the start of the twentieth century the formal segregation of baseball was complete and remained so until 1947. Nevertheless, black baseball persisted, leaving an indelible mark on the sport. While black baseball in Waco shared similarities with the game elsewhere in the nation, the players it molded and its local legacies deserve recognition. To remember baseball in the city and at Katy Park without its black teams and players is to tell only part of the story.

Starting in the 1870s, black baseball in Waco operated independently but laid the groundwork for future developments. Waco fielded several unnamed teams from the 1870s to the 1890s, one of which joined the Texas Colored Baseball League in 1888. Unfortunately, league play never materialized. From 1897 to 1898, the Waco Yellow Jackets played regionally at their home field at Golden Gate Park off of South First Street. The Yellow Jackets dominated due to the superior pitching of a preacher’s son from Calvert, Texas, named Andrew “Rube” Foster. Waco, with its booming cotton industry, presented Foster with a larger market to showcase his skills and launched his legendary career. His “fadeaway” pitch (screwball) changed baseball, and Foster’s belief in black baseball led to the formation of the professional Negro National League in 1920. As baseball entered the twentieth century, the game retained its rural connections but expanded in urban areas.

Waco produced several teams and players in the 1910s and 20s that developed the game at the semipro and professional levels. Just as Rube Foster left Texas to pursue baseball in Chicago, Waco produced two future ballplayers who would go on to play for the Negro Leagues Foster inaugurated: Andrew Lewis Cooper and Crush Holloway. Cooper, a southpaw pitcher, spent the majority of his professional baseball career as a player and manager of the Kansas City Monarchs. An outfielder known for his assertive base running, Holloway played professional ball with the Indianapolis ABCs and the Baltimore Black Sox. He began his career in 1919 with the Waco Black Navigators, the city’s premier black baseball club and a member of the Texas Colored League that played their games at Katy Park. The lives and careers of Holloway and Cooper followed the flow of the Great Migration as African Americans left the rural South for the industrial North. This movement of African Americans affected Waco’s ability to consistently provide a market for semipro black baseball. It dropped out of Texas Colored League after only a year and later sporadically participated in the Texas-Oklahoma-Louisiana League. Nevertheless, smaller recreational teams like the Waco Black Taborians played regular games at Taborian Park on South Second Street and on special occasions like Juneteenth. Multiple levels of organization continued to characterize black baseball in Waco for the next few decades.

Into the 1930s, black baseball endured in Waco exhibiting innovations to the game eventually adopted by white teams. Now a part of the Texas-Oklahoma-Louisiana League, Waco’s Black Cardinals achieved minor league status in 1930. They participated in a historic first in Texas baseball when they played the state’s initial night game in May 1930 against the visiting Kansas City Monarchs. Within weeks, Katy Park put up permanent lights for its white team, the Waco Cubs. The introduction of night baseball—because it allowed players to earn more money by playing more games—emerged out of black baseball to impact the entire sport. Additionally, black baseball introduced the practices of numbered uniforms and utilizing protective gear. The latter became a necessity due to the quick, aggressive style of play that characterized black baseball, in contrast to the white game that hinged on homeruns. While the historical record remains spotty, it appears that black baseball for the duration of its existence in Waco welcomed white spectators in a separate section. Though formally segregated, these innovations illustrate the cross-pollination that occurred between black and white baseball, advancing the game.

It was also during the 1930s that another Waco product, George T. Walker, made his debut in the Negro Leagues. Walker pitched for the Homestead Greys and the Kansas City Monarchs from 1937 to 1943. While his was not an exceptional career, the right-hander shared in the successes of his legendary teammates, Satchel Paige and Buck O’Neil. Walker continued to play baseball into the 1950s, but his career shows how the desegregation of baseball in 1947 led to the decline of the Negro Leagues and black semipro baseball. In Waco, the destruction of Katy Park from the 1953 tornado also contributed to the end of local black baseball. While it resulted in obvious benefits, the integration of baseball in Waco and around the country also meant the loss of a significant African American institution.

The semipro and independent status of black baseball in Waco does not diminish its importance. These tiers helped develop the game and its talent. Surveying this topic at the local level illustrates how national matters of racism and sports functioned in our community.

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Waco and baseball went hand in glove for over five decades. The famous Katy Park (pinned on map below) was home to multiple minor league teams starting in 1899, one of the most famous being the Waco Pirates. The Pirates brought in two championship titles during their tenure at Katy Park, and they also made their mark on the minds and hearts of the Waco community.

The Waco Dons kicked off a new episode of Minor League Baseball in 1947. The team joined the Class B Big State League, similar to today’s Double-A minor league. The new team was most famous for its one-legged pitcher, Monty Stratton. Though Stratton had lost his leg in a hunting accident, he did not let that stop his baseball career. He famously threw a shutout in 1947 against the Paris Red Peppers. Stratton would even bat and run the bases, with the batboy keeping track of his wooden leg when he was not using it.

Stratton’s Dons were quickly picked up by the Pittsburgh Pirates franchise thanks to Katy Park owner A. H. Kirksey. The club struggled financially from the outset in 1947, so they joined the Pirates’ fold in 1948. The new name and patronage brought success, with the Pirates winning the Big State Championship that year. Though the team started strong, they would soon settle into a pattern of mixed records, not usually making the playoffs.

The years 1952 and 1953 were no kinder to the team. After a respectable but lacking season in 1951, the Pirates lost game after game. Their final record stood at 29-118. To make a dastardly record all the worse, the next year the Pirates lost everything. The May 1953 tornado that ripped through downtown destroyed Katy Park and almost took the lives of general manager C. L. “Buster” Chatham and business manager Jack Berger Jr. The two men were near the ballpark planning for the game that night against the Greenville Majors when the twister touched down, and they took refuge under a locomotive. Ironically, Chatham had always resented the trains for passing so closely to Katy Park and drowning out the announcers, but on that day a train saved his life. The club received invitations from Kilgore, Bryan, and Brenham, but the Pirates chose to move to Longview, Texas, to finish out their season. They played their first game May 28, 1953, against the Temple Eagles at Legion Field. Though they were rechristened the Longview Pirates and played sixty games in their new adopted city, they would soon be the Waco Pirates once again.

It was A. H. Kirksey who stepped up and pledged to rebuild Katy Park. Along with team President Jack Kultgen, a three-year lease was signed to bring the Pirates back to Waco. With the team’s return to Waco came new manager Jack Paepke and new players, ones who would prove to change the team’s fortune: Roman Mejias, Jack Falls, Ron Sheetz, Dick Hoffman, and Don Kildoo. The Pirates graced Katy Park in a Big State game once more against the Harlingen Capitols on April 16, 1954. Jack Falls started the game strong with a home run, the first in the rebuilt park, and the Pirates took the win 7-0. The season progressed well from there, with the Pirates almost sitting in first place in the league by May. Paepke, who would also play for the team when needed, then broke his thumb in a game on May 6 and the roster had to be reshuffled. Roster changes would continue throughout the season. By the beginning of June the Pirates were sitting at a comfortable 33-18 record.

June also brought the beginning of the most famous moment in Waco Pirates history. Outfielder Roman Mejias (batting average .237) hit a single and a triple in a June 6 game in Galveston, and this was the beginning of an incredible hitting streak. Over the next three weeks Mejias batted a .488, and his streak was just getting started. When the streak reached 37 games in July, Mejias gained national recognition and The Sporting News wrote an article about the Waco player. Even when the Pirates would lose, Mejias managed to get at least one hit during the game. Soon he was closing in on Joe DiMaggio’s record for the second-longest hitting streak in minor league history, Mejias at 55 and DiMaggio at 56. Unfortunately, that is where Mejias’s streak would end, and DiMaggio would keep his record. Mejias, though coming up to bat four times, failed to get an on-base hit against the Pioneers on August 2. His streak stats stood at .419, 19 doubles, 5 triples, and 7 home runs. The end of the streak did not spell the end of the 1954 Pirates’ success, however, and the team went on to win the Big State League Championship. It was an exhilarating and unexpected 105-42 season for the team and Waco was abuzz with baseball fever.

Despite the great success of the 1954 season, the Pirates would only play two more years in Waco. The reason was a surprisingly rapid decline in interest in Minor League Baseball. Waco residents have blamed the decline on various things, such as the rise of Little League and the explosion of television, but either way the Pirates came to the end of their tenure after the 1956 season. The Big State League itself folded the following year.

Though Minor League Baseball did not last forever in Waco, it had a tremendous impact on the town. Thousands of Waco residents hold fond memories of nights spent at Katy Park watching the games. As former Pirates batboy T. R. Taylor said “If the lights were on at Katy Park, my parents always knew where they could find me.” That was true of many Waco baseball fans in the mid-twentieth century.

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Known throughout the nation for his pitching prowess, Andy Cooper made a name for himself at a time when segregation placed limits on black baseball.

Now known as the nation’s pastime, baseball has captivated Americans since the early nineteenth century. But prior to the 1940s, blacks could not play in either of the major leagues or their respective farm systems. African Americans instead formed their own teams and eventually created their own leagues. The Negro National League (NNL), formed in 1920, lasted until 1931 and was soon followed by the Negro American League in 1937. Andrew “Andy” Lewis Cooper had a successful career in both of these leagues, playing for both Detroit and Kansas City.

Born in Waco in 1898, Cooper grew up in the city and attended A. J. Moore High School and Paul Quinn College. The date of his birth is often debated, since his draft certificate states that he was born in 1897, while his birth certificate reads 1898.

Cooper first played for the Dallas Black Giants in 1919 before making the jump to Detroit. He made his debut with the Detroit Stars in 1920 and played for them until 1927, after which he was traded to the Kansas City Monarchs. Known as one of the best pitchers in baseball, Cooper was traded for five players. He played one season with the Monarchs before rejoining the Stars in 1930. In 1931, he returned to the Monarchs and continued to play there until 1939.

Cooper was known as one of the best pitchers in baseball and was recognized for his absolute control over every one of his pitches, including a fastball, curveball, and screwball. His knowledge of batters’ weaknesses gave him one of the best records in the business. Cooper eventually transitioned from a starter to a successful relief pitcher. By the end of his playing career he posted a 116-57 record and held the NNL record for saves with 29. Cooper became player manager of the Monarchs in 1937, when they joined the Negro American League, and by 1940 he had led Kansas City to three championships. Cooper’s last appearance as a player in 1939 was with the Monarchs.

Andy Cooper did not always play in a Negro league. During the early twentieth century, many African American ballplayers turned to barnstorming—the practice of traveling around the world to play exhibition matches—instead of professional baseball. In 1927, financial difficulties led to pay cuts in Negro baseball and a contract-jumping ban was put in place to prevent players from switching leagues or leaving their team. Cooper decided to test the ban by joining the Philadelphia Royal Giants, a traveling team. His first barnstorming trip took him as far as Japan and Honolulu. When he returned to the NNL, he was assessed a thirty-day suspension and a $200 fine for contract-jumping. Cooper’s second barnstorming trip occurred during the off-season while the Monarchs played in an independent league following the dissolution of the NNL. That trip took him to Japan, the Philippines, Korea, and China.

Cooper continued to coach Kansas City until 1941, when he suffered a stroke during the preseason. He went home to Waco to recover but died from a heart attack on June 3rd of that year. He is buried in Greenwood Cemetery in East Waco.

Cooper died only a few years before the beginning of the integration of baseball with the signing of Jackie Robinson by the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1946. Although he never saw integration, Cooper left a lasting legacy on the sport, eventually recognized by the Baseball Hall of Fame. In 2006, a special committee selected Andrew Cooper and several other African American players for induction into the Hall of Fame, ensuring that his legacy as a phenomenal player, smart manager, and inspiring mentor continues on.

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