No One Wanted Them to Win: Texas’ First Baseball Champions
November 13, 2024 at 04:53AMRoberto José Andrade Franco tells the moving story of the Bowie High School baseball team of South El Paso, Texas, that won the state’s first high school baseball tournament in 1949. Franco takes his time here, talking with locals—including 92-year-old Alfonso Lopez, the last living member of the winning team—to recount what it was like for a group of barrio boys from the Mexican-American border to win the championship.
Romo sees Segundo Barrio and Bowie High School as a microcosm of El Paso’s history. It’s the countless Mexican migrants who passed through there, making it the Ellis Island of the Southwest. It’s the school walkouts demanding dignity when, among other things, students said white teachers belittled their Mexican parents. It’s the highway running in front of the school that destroyed parts of the community when it was constructed. It’s the people from there who died in wars, often serving in segregated units. It’s the lawsuit filed against the Border Patrol, alleging agents would come to Bowie High School and physically, verbally and sexually harass students, teachers and staff while asking for proof of citizenship. (In 1992, a federal judge sided with Bowie High School.) More recently, it’s the gentrification. And because it’s where the Bowie 49ers lived and played, they’re part of those spirits that pour from the ground.
“It’s just a sports story, yes, but it’s a sports story of a particular place and in a particular historical context,” Romo says of the Bowie 49ers. “For a team from the Segundo Barrio to win a championship, not only defied the racist expectations of what they thought working class Mexican kids were capable of doing, but it’s something more symbolic,” Romo continues. “Because no matter how much the school system tried to down and segregate and silence who these kids were-even when they internalized the racism, even when, to some point, they accepted the indoctrination-they still carried who they are with them.”
from Longreads https://longreads.com/2024/11/12/no-one-wanted-them-to-win-texas-first-baseball-champions/
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