Temple Eagles
The Temple Eagles, based in Temple, Texas, gave the central Texas railroad city six seasons in the Big State League from 1949 through 1954, with the franchise returning one final time in 1957 under the Redlegs name before withdrawing mid-season in August as the circuit collapsed around them. Temple's identity had long run along two tracks: the Gulf, Colorado and Santa Fe Railway, which made the city a major rail junction in the late nineteenth century, and the Scott and White clinic, which grew into one of the largest medical facilities in the Southwest and gave Temple a parallel identity as a regional medical destination.
On the field, the Eagles were the class of the Big State League in 1952, winning the pennant while the Waco Pirates finished a historic 56 games behind them with a 29-118 record. Lon Goldstein, a former Cincinnati Reds infielder who had spent four seasons with the Gainesville Owls, served as Temple's player-manager in 1953. Monty Stratton, the Chicago White Sox pitcher whose career had been cut short after he lost his leg in a hunting accident in 1938, played for the Eagles in 1949 as part of his remarkable return to professional baseball on an artificial leg, a comeback that inspired the 1949 Jimmy Stewart film "The Stratton Story."
The Big State League was a Class B circuit that ran from 1947 through 1957, fielding teams exclusively from across Texas. Named for the state's reputation as the nation's largest, the league stretched from the Gulf Coast to the plains of West Texas, bringing professional baseball to cities the higher-classification Texas League had never reached.
