Genres

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Texas League History

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Click here to view Kris’ Texas League History books.

The Texas League, founded in 1888, was among the oldest active circuits  in minor league baseball before the major leagues took over and stripped the League of it’s name in 2021. Today, the former Texas League is known as the “Double-A Central.” You can change the name, but you can’t change history.   The Texas League’s history is rich with players, managers, executives, teams, and cities, and the League has produced some incredible performances and moments, both on and off-the-field.  From murderers and bank robbers to ministers, the Texas League had its share of characters over parts of 14 decades, but the days from the League’s founding until 1910 offer some of its best stories. Over the years, some 38 cities have played in the league. When the Texas League closed its doors, not a single original city remained. San Antonio had moved to Triple-A in 2019.

With so many cities, players, and teams, the amount of information to be uncovered about Texas League history is seemingly limitless. In his decade of researching the League’s early history, Kris Rutherford has discovered many never-before published facts including the true identity of the unfortunate pitcher who played all 9 innings of a 51-3 loss in 1902; the ancestry and name of long-time Texas Leaguer “Cy” Mulkey; how the 1900 Galveston Hurricane and cotton boll weevils helped propel the Buccaneers to the 1934 championship; why the 1902 Paris franchise became known as “Eisenfelder’s Homeseekers”; and how one of the founding fathers of Texas League Baseball in Sherman is tied to the John F. Kennedy assassination.

The Texas League has so much to research and so much to write about, Kris could occupy himself for far longer than the over 130 years since the League made its debut.


Youth Sports Fiction

Click here to see Kris’ Youth Sports Novels. HTPM

As a youngster, Kris wasn’t particularly fond of reading; in fact, he’s not particularly fond of reading today. He has always fit the mold of the “Reluctant Reader.”  Fiction was and remains the toughest pill to swallow, with literary classics like David Copperfield, Little Britches, and The Grapes of Wrath still giving him nightmares today. But, if his parents wanted Kris to read something other than the sports page, they knew they could count on two authors to keep him captivated for hours: Matt Christopher and Alfred Slote.

Christopher and Slote were the deans of 1970’s youth sports fiction. Matt Christopher turned out books by the dozens including classics like The Kid Who Only Hit Homers, The Lucky Baseball Bat, and The Home Run Kid.  While Kris enjoyed Matt Christopher’s work, it was Alfred Slote who wrote the stories he found most interesting. My Father, The Coach  and Matt Gargan’s Boy remain favorites, but Hang Tough, Paul Mather remains the most influential book in Kris’ life. At the age of 9, when Kris first read Slote’s classic, he knew someday he wanted to write sports stories. He stopped and started a thousand times, until 2008 when he finally completed his first novel, Squeeze Play, a book later picked up by a publisher under the title, Batting Ninth. Since then, in between Texas League assignments, Kris has also written Nothin’ But Net, an out-of-the-ordinary sports story with an important message about sports, the environment, and facing obstacles. In 2013, the Future Fisherman Foundation found the book so compelling they published it as a resource for their programs such as “Hooked on Fishing, Not on Drugs.”

 General

From time to time, Kris works with other authors on their books either anonymously or as a co-author. He also freelances as a writer for The Trucker Newspaper, and the Little Rock Daily Record, and he and his wife own and publish the Roxton Progress, a small-town Northeast Texas newspaper. His interests run far beyond sports and include geneaology, classic country music history, and uncovering and bringing to light obscure historical facts. “There is nothing more satisfying than finding a gravestone with the epitaph ‘God but not forgotten’ and bringing that person back to life in words,” Kris says.

Click here to see recent projects.