Nesbitt Memorial Library Journal, Volume 2, Number 1, January 1992 Page: 33

Home Games Tuesday and Friday Nights: Five Years of the Herder Truckers
of Texas in the fall of 1928. I stayed in college parts of the next two years but never
finished school, somewhat to my regret later on.
I worked in a variety of jobs while growing up. My father had a large
vegetable garden as a hobby (he was an attorney, but had grown up on a farm in Cook
County, Texas) and for several summers I sold fresh vegetables from a small wagon that
I pulled around our end of town. In the summers of 1926 and 1927 I delivered ice for
the Central Power & Light Company. While at Texas, I worked as a clerk at Camp Mabry
in the Adjutant General's department, and also served as an Assistant Sergeant at Arms
in the Senate during the legislative sessions in 1929 and 1930. In 1931, I tried
professional baseball, playing with San Benito and La Feria in the Class D Rio Grande
Valley League. In 1932 and part of 1933, I worked on a surveying crew for Texas
Highway Department in Gonzales County. Then on November 1, 1933, I started working
for the Texas Relief Commission in what was supposed to be a temporary job, but turned
into a lifetime career that ended with my retirement on February 28, 1972. The original
agency became the Old Age Assistance Commission, then the Department of Public
Welfare, the Department of Public Resources, and finally the Department of Human
Services. I was a clerk, then a case worker, County Administrator, and during later years,
a field representative, and Regional Director when retiring after 38 years plus.
Since retirement my wife and I have enjoyed traveling over most of the
United States and part of Canada, and spending time with our three daughters and their
husbands and eight grandchildren. My wife taught school here in Gonzales for 33 years.
We celebrated our 56th anniversary on December 23, 1989. We are active in our church.
She has her needle point club and I play a lot of golf. I have always been active in sports,
lettering in football, basketball, track, and baseball in high school and earning my
freshman numerals in baseball at Texas University in 1928. I also played on a winning
intramural basketball team. In 1926, I started my career in amateur and semi-pro
baseball, playing with the Gonzales Cotton Mill team when I was 16 years old. I hit .426
in 15 games, with fourteen singles, six doubles, four triples, and two home runs. In the
summers of 1927 and 1928, I played on the local town team. In 1929 and 1930, I played
very little baseball, as I was in summer school and working in Austin in 1929 and went
to California in the summer of 1930.
In 1931 came the one year stint in pro ball, in the Rio Grande Valley League.
Then from 1932 through 1941, I played with the Gonzales Indians in the South Central
Texas League. From 1933 through 1941 I1 was manager and first baseman, and Gonzales
won the league title in 1933 and 1934. In the fall of 1941 I1 was transferred to Edinburg,
Texas, and that combined with the war stopping most sports, kept me out of baseball
for four years. In 1946, the Guadalupe Valley Semipro League was formed, and for
1946, 1947, 1948, and 1949, I managed and played first base as usual for Gonzales.
In 1950, I played with the Seguin White Sox. This was the end of my career, except
for a couple of games with Gonzales in 1953.
I have many fond memories of the more than 20 years spent in baseball.
Some of the highlights are being named to the all league team in every season from 1933
through 1950, playing with the Luling Oilers in 1937 in the Texas Amateur Athletic
Federation Tournament in Austin and being named to the all tournament team (Weldon
Hart and Wilbur Evans, sportswriters with the Austin Statesman wrote "personal
nomination for the tourney's most valuable player outside the box, Midkiff knocked home
the winning runs in Luling's first two games, and was the team's leading hitter in the
third game; his fielding was impeccable, and he is extremely fast on the bases."), playing
in the San Antonio Invitation Semipro Tournament with Gonzales and being named to

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