The Aggies were present and accounted for on Sunday. Texas A&M outfielder Braden Montgomery, nursing a broken ankle, was picked 12th by the Boston Red Sox. He had much to talk about with MLB Radio on Sirius XM.
Major League Baseball’s All-Star Weekend came to the bustling bricks of the Fort Worth Stockyards on Sunday seeking something resembling Rogers Hornsby.
It was here after all in the famed meat packing district of Cowtown that Hornsby began his 23-year Hall of Fame career. He got his start on the North Side, playing at age 13 on the Armour meat packing plant team. He was an office clerk there. At 15, he was playing in an adult league in Fort Worth and a semipro team in Granbury.
In 1915, at age 19, the St. Louis Cardinals discovered him. A well-documented history details the rest of his incredible baseball life and his legacy as one of the game's great hitters.
“He must have had the best eyes of any hitter who ever lived,” said one peer. “Get close to him and he looked as if he had cat eyes. They went right through you.”
Rows of tables on the arena floor served as the base for media covering the draft. Platforms for TV and radio broadcasts were also down there.
Well, anyway, it was down here on Sunday that Major League Baseball threw a festival in conjunction with its All-Star Game on Tuesday in Arlington at Globe Life Field. The Home Run Derby was set for Monday night at the home of the Texas Rangers.
Fort Worth’s portion of the days-long event concluded with MLB’s First-Year Player Draft at the historic Cowtown Coliseum, a place Hornsby undoubtedly, at the very least, crossed paths with in his youth in the early 1900s.
Fort Worth, a collaborative effort by the city, Visit Fort Worth and its Fort Worth Sports Commission, pulled off another big event on Sunday, this time in its famed 116-year-old arena on the North Side, best known as a complex for the sport of rodeo but also site of presidential speeches and Elvis gyrations from generations ago.
There is more history there than the sum of all the parts of rodeo “soil,” which had been scooped up and removed for the occasion. We were on a hard concrete arena floor.
In an era when the city’s new, snazzy, state-of-the-art arena gets all the attention and dates, it was fun to see the matriarch of Fort Worth’s public spaces show she still has it. This, of course, is the refurbished Cowtown Coliseum with a face-lift and more improvements to come to the historic landmark.
About 2,000 people crowded into the coliseum to hear the names of players the league’s 30 teams picked in the first round. The first name baseball Commissioner Rob Manfred called was Travis Bazzana, a second baseman from Oregon State, picked No. 1 overall by the Cleveland Guardians.
He's a middle infielder like our man Hornsby, who also later managed the Fort Worth Cats after his retirement as a player.
Who wants an autograph? Children and adults alike. Braden Montgomery of Texas A&M, a new member of the Red Sox organization, obliges.
The last name called was Malcolm Moore, a catcher from Stanford picked by the Texas Rangers, the home team honored with the last of 30 picks because of its winning a first World Series.
The pick was met with raucous applause from the partisan Rangers crowd, which likewise booed the archrival Houston Astros pick at No. 28.
That got a little awkward when the league, with Manfred, trotted out the Astros’ Nike RBI representative to make the pick. The RBI program — Reviving Baseball in Inner Cities — is a youth outreach program.
It is hoped that the young lady was able to compartmentalize the reaction to the location and fanbase.
We all know that that’s the way baseball go. It’s the Astros we want to serve cow patties. Not young men and women. Well, not until they’re called up to play on the big club in Houston.
“It was a great night,” said Jeremiah Yolkut, Major League Baseball’s vice president of global events. “I think it fulfilled the whole vision we built. And I'm super excited. We loved bringing the draft here to Fort Worth.”
The league had events going on all day outside the coliseum. Former Texas Rangers players Michael Young and Ian Kinsler conducted an autograph session. Adrian Beltre, the former Rangers third baseman who is about to be inducted in the Baseball Hall of Fame, joined Manfred onstage at the beginning of the draft.
There was economic impact. More than 20,000 people came through the Stockyards for the occasion, according to Jason Sands, Vice President of Sports at Visit Fort Worth. Moreover, 8,000 hotel rooms were booked, he added.
The first two rounds were on Sunday. Rounds 3-10 were Monday, and Rounds 11-20 will conclude the draft on Tuesday, starting at 1 p.m.
“The collaboration we saw with the city of Fort Worth and [Visit Fort Worth] and the Fort Worth Sports Commission right away was the first sign that this was the right place,” Yolkut said. “You walk into the venue and you know it's authentically Texas. But the next level you need to see is the people you're working with, are they going to be able to get you through a year's worth of planning and all the details that go into it.
“The folks here, from the venue itself and also the city and [Visit Fort Worth], from the time we stepped in, wanted to figure out how can we make this happen. ‘What are the things you guys do for us? What are the ways in which we can make this a bigger and better event? How can we help promote the event?’ All those things were there from day one and ultimately came to life tonight.”
It was quite a night at the coliseum.
Arlington-native Shaunda Musick and Robert Flores of the MLB Network served as hosts. The Texas Rangers Six-Shooters, the team’s spirit dance group, stomped around, and team mascots roamed the arena floor, energizing fans, leading cheers, and serving as brand ambassadors. Trick ropers, in the manner of Will Rogers and those ropin’ fools, lent their expertise.
The first guy picked who was present in Fort Worth was JJ Wetherholdt, a shortstop from West Virginia. He was taken at No. 7.
He was greeted, as were all of those picks present, by a standing ovation.
Oddly enough, he was drafted by the St. Louis Cardinals, home base for our guy Hornsby, whose best years were those 13 seasons he played for the Cardinals — the prime of his career.
JJ Wetherholdt speaks after being selected No. 7 by St. Louis.
“It's an unbelievable experience. I’m blessed to be here,” said Wetherholdt, who played at West Virginia, and before saying anything else thanked his maker, "Lord and Savior" for his life, ability, and his will to work. “They’re getting a baller. I can do a little bit of everything. I’m a learner. I’m super excited to see what the Cardinals can do to make me a better player. I’m excited to be a Cardinal.”
Asked how he planned to celebrate the occasion, he said, he planned to hang in the Stockyards.
Sounded like a plan.
And who knows? He might’ve bumped into the spirit of Rogers Hornsby. The Stockyards were once his stomping grounds and the Cardinals his heart and soul.
