Sunday, June 16, 2024

Negro League HOFer Hilton Smith Post at Baseball Bucket List

Was planning this past weekend as I was headed to Round Rock Friday night to see the Express in a Pacific Coast League game against the Tacoma Rainiers and in searching museums in between far north Houston and Austin, I came across the Giddings Public Library and Cultural Center that said it had an exhibit on Negro Leaguer Hilton Smith.

Smith has an extensive SABR biography written about him:

Mistakenly I thought this was going to be for a Negro Leaguer whose grave marker I viewed in the Houston National Cemetery in the spring, Hall of Famer Willard Brown.

The exhibit featured items from his Prairie View A&M days and induction into their Hall of Fame as well as momentos from his induction into Cooperstown by the Veterans Committee in 2001 – one that he never was able to see as he had passed away in 1983. 

The exhibit said one of the town’s ballfields is named in his honor, but I didn’t take the opportunity to try and find it.

If you’re driving between Houston and Austin, it is worth a quick stop – and there’s even a Buc-ee’s in Giddings, but be forewarned: it’s one of the original smaller stores (not the mammoth centers that they continue to open across the country.)





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