Game Over 
“I’m Not Lovable, And I’m Not a Loser”
Don Baylor is a few weeks into managing perennial losers the Chicago Cubs. Is the Austin native having fun yet? Would you be?
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This is where Don Baylor was born, in 1949, to George and Lillian Baylor, a porter with the Missouri-Pacific Railroad and a school cafeteria supervisor, respectively. The three Baylor kids—Don has a brother Doug and sister Connie, both younger—grew up near Sweet Home Baptist, where George was a trustee and Lillian was the church clerk. The only playing field was on the elementary school grounds—now Mary Francis Baylor Park, named for Don’s aunt—though they found other places to play. “We played tackle football in the streets, in the rocks,” Doug remembers. Both he and his brother loved football, which they played in the fall. “UT was just over there on Guadalupe—we could hear the Longhorn fight song.”
In the spring and summer they played baseball. It was in Clarksville that Baylor learned the old-school game. “We had old folks who would teach—’No, boy, you don’t do it that way, you do it this way,’” says the Reverend H. A. Carrington, Jr., the associate pastor of Sweet Home Baptist. One of those teachers was Baylor’s father; another was his mother. “She was one of the best hitters I’ve ever seen in my life,” says Carrington, who coached youth baseball. “That lady could knock the ball all the way across Eleventh Street to my uncle’s yard. When she did that, Don came and stood on the fence and watched.” Baylor always seemed to be a little better than the boys his own age, so he often played with older kids. In Pony League and Babe Ruth League, he hit better than .500, played shortstop, and pitched, once throwing a no-hitter. “He could throw a baseball,” Carrington recalls. He could also clobber it. “Every ball he hit went three hundred feet,” says his cousin, RuthAnn Brown. Clarksville was the source of other knowledge too—”Things that were instilled by our parents: how you live, what you did,” Carrington says.
In 1961 Baylor got a chance to prove how he lived. Historically, black kids in Clarksville had been forced to go to East Austin for junior high and high school. White kids in West Austin went to O. Henry Junior High and Stephen F. Austin High. That year Baylor and other Clarksville children were given a choice: go to your neighborhood school or go across town. For twelve-year-old Don, there was nothing to think about: “My mom gave me the opportunity to walk to school or to take the bus and take two transfers and go to East Austin.” Also, O. Henry had tennis courts, a spacious cafeteria, and a lush green football field. Baylor and two other black youths—Lewis Chambers and Lenore Higgins—integrated O. Henry. Baylor remembers just one ugly name-calling incident; he chased and tackled the bigot and never heard the offending word at school again.
In time, he fit in with the children of the city’s elite, such as Sharon and John Connolly III and made friends. “But they came from a different life than we did,” he says. “A friend’s dad owned a car dealership. He got a new car every six months. We didn’t have a car until I was in the seventh grade.” In his sophomore year at Austin High Baylor became the first black player on the varsity baseball team (he batted .345). The next year, he got his first good coach too—Frank Seale, a disciplinarian who loved the fundamentals. By his senior year, Baylor was hitting .500 and attracting the attention of pro scouts. He also played forward on the basketball team, averaging fifteen points a game, but he shined brightest on the football field. Playing tight end and safety, he made all-District his junior year and all-State (honorable mention) his senior year; unfortunately, he also injured his shoulder, which would haunt his future. Universities came calling with scholarship offers, including UT, which offered a full ride. “He was an outstanding prospect,” remembers Darrell Royal, the Longhorns’ coach back then. It was 1967. The Southwest Conference had been integrated for a year, and UT had yet to cross the color line. Being a Longhorn had been Baylor’s dream since hearing “Texas Fight” as a child. Still, he turned Royal down.
Why would a born fighter pass up the opportunity to make history? (Leon O’Neal, Jr., would be the first black to get a UT scholarship, in 1968.) In his biography Baylor wrote that UT had offered a football scholarship but that he wanted to play baseball and basketball as well and that Royal insisted he play only football. Royal, wrote Baylor, would allow a football player to play baseball only if he was a pitcher, and Baylor had given up pitching after the shoulder injury. Royal remembers it differently: “We allowed dual athletes to be dual athletes. I allowed guys to play baseball in the spring and miss spring football practice. It was my definite belief that an athlete matured faster under competition than he did under practice. Don might have been confused about that.” Baylor now says, “It was not the time for integration at UT, so I ended up signing with the Orioles.” His father remembers, “He felt a little bit bitter and decided he’d better play baseball.” Everyone agrees that Baylor chose correctly—nineteen-year careers in football are rare. “Obviously, he made the right choice,” says Royal.
Whatever the reason, when Baylor left Austin and began his baseball odyssey, it cut him off from the hometown glory that is reserved for UT sports alumni such as Earl Campbell, Roger Clemens, and Spike Owen. “You never completely dismiss your roots,” says Baylor. But will he ever get recognized in his hometown? He pauses, begins to speak, and pauses again. “I don’t think that’s going to happen,” he finally says. Baylor stays in touch with old friends like Ben Crenshaw and former UT assistant coach Dean Campbell (both O. Henry graduates). Though he and his second wife, Rebecca, have a place in northwest Austin (as well as one in La Quinta, California, and another in Chicago), his only sweet home in the city is his church, which he still attends when he’s in town and which his family still travels to on Sundays. (The Baylors were evicted from Clarksville in 1969 when the Loop 1 expressway came through. George, Doug, and Connie live in northeast Austin; Lillian died eleven years ago.)
The Clarksville of Baylor’s youth has changed dramatically. It’s now mostly white, many homes have been colorfully rehabbed—and sell for as much as $300,000—and all the streets are well paved, including the one in front of Sweet Home. “One of the biggest problems most people have is they forget where they came from, so how you gonna know where you’re going?” says Carrington. “When you get there, you don’t know what to do. You get lost.”
“Donnie doesn’t have that problem,” Brown says. “He knows where he comes from.”
If only the cubs could figure out where they’re going. During the month of April, they were 10-17 and at the bottom of the power-hitting Central Division. In baseball the winning—and the losing—is in the details, and the Cubs left too many men on base, hit into too many double plays, and made too many boneheaded mistakes. They aren’t playing aggressive, fundamentally sound baseball. After getting swept by the New York Mets in a three-game series late in the month, a furious Baylor launched into a foul-mouthed tirade, accusing the team of expecting to lose. While some fans are pinning their hopes on the return of top pitchers Wood and Ismael Valdes (who’s been out with tendonitis), others say it’s already too late to save the season. Which is too bad, since Baylor’s players seem to genuinely like him and want to win for him. “He supports us one hundred percent,” says second baseman Eric Young. “He expects us to play hard for him every day. The respect is mutual.” After the club had lost six of its first nine games, Grace said, “[Baylor] is a good man. I just wish we were playing better for him.”
In Colorado it took Baylor three years to turn an infant franchise into a winner. How long could it take to do the same for a 125-year-old one? If it takes forever, Cubs fans say, but that may be too long even for a man accustomed to putting himself in harm’s way. Just because he takes the hits doesn’t mean he likes them.
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