By ROY HESS, Staff Writer
Fifty years later, the legacy of the 1965 Brownsville High baseball team still shines brightly.
That season, the Eagles were led by the rare left-handed pitching duo of Charlie Vaughan (13-3, 203 strikeouts, 0.39 ERA, two no-hitters) and Tony Barbosa (12-1, 139 strikeouts, 1.01 ERA, three no-hitters). The Eagles advanced all the way to the Class 4A state final in Austin before finishing the season with a 30-8 record following a 14-0 loss to Dallas Samuell in the title game June 16, 1965. Class 4A was the UIL’s highest classification back then.
No team from the Rio Grande Valley has won a UIL state title in baseball. The only other Valley teams to reach the UIL state championship game in baseball are Mercedes twice (1974 and 1986) and Harlingen South (2007).
Also, since 1965, no other Brownsville public school has made it to the UIL state tournament in baseball, making that feat a goal to aspire to for all of the city’s ballclubs that have followed.
“It’s pretty amazing what that team accomplished, even now, 50 years later,” said Rene Medrano, currently the football coach at Hanna whose athletic roots are in baseball. “What that team did still means a lot.”
Medrano was a standout as a second baseman and shortstop at Hanna before graduating in 1977. He went on to play baseball two years at Texas Southmost College and two more years at the University of Mary Hardin-Baylor before receiving his college degree in 1981.
After a few years as an assistant at Porter, he was the Cowboys’ baseball coach from 1986 through 1993, and then served in the same capacity at Harlingen High from 1994 to 1998 before becoming Pace’s football coach in 1998. He switched over to Hanna to continue coaching football in 2012.
Medrano was a baseball assistant at Porter under the late Arnie Alvarez, who was the starting third baseman for the 1965 Eagles. Also, Alvarez coached the 1974 Mercedes team to the Class 3A state final. After his stint at Porter, Alvarez coached at TSC.
“It’s truly remarkable what that 1965 team did,” Medrano said. “It’s a motivation for the kids (of Brownsville) to strive to have a season like that and to shoot for the stars like they did.”
Joe Rodriguez, former Brownsville ISD athletic director and current BISD school board member, coached the 1965 Eagles and was assisted by the late Ramon Rodriguez, who died at age 73 in 1995.
“It was a team with a lot of heart,” Rodriguez said of his ballclub of 50 years ago. “They were a bunch of gritty kids from all over the city. Their work ethic was unbelievable. They would do anything you asked of them, and they could run all day. They were always in condition. We played on a field (old Lions Park/Eagles Field at present day Skinner Elementary) that didn’t have a blade of grass.
“It wasn’t the size of those kids, it was the fight and the heart they showed,” Rodriguez added. “They proved themselves (playing) in college and in the pros. The main thing is the character they’ve displayed throughout their lives.”
Back in those days, Brownsville High played in District 14-4A, which had a North Zone (Corpus Christi) and a South Zone (the Valley).
The road to state first meant getting past a tough Corpus Christi Ray team in a best-of-three series to win district in May 1965. It took a big comeback by the Eagles to get their playoff run started toward state.
The Texans won the first game of the series 4-3 in Corpus Christi before the Eagles defeated Ray 3-1 in the second game despite not getting a hit.
The score was deadlocked at 3 in the third game at Brownsville before Rene Torres, the Eagles’ senior shortstop and a .219 hitter during the regular season, connected on the first pitch he saw for a two-out, seventh-inning solo home run over the left-field fence for a dramatic, series-clinching 4-3 win.
Amazingly, it was the only home run that Torres, a switch hitter, ever hit during his high school career. At first, Rodriguez had instructed Torres to bat from the left side and attempt to lay down a bunt. But the Texans brought in a left-hander to pitch, so Torres batted from the right side and lobbied “Coach Joe” to let him hit away. He said OK. What immediately followed became one of the most historic moments of Brownsville baseball lore.
There was a standing-room-only crowd of approximately 1,000 spectators on hand at Eagle Field, and upon seeing Torres hit such an improbable home run, the fans stormed out of the stands and from behind the ropes to mob him as he rounded the bases.
“They wouldn’t let me get to home plate,” Torres said. “It was really something memorable. You could say it was the shot heard around the city.
“That ball mysteriously flew out of the ballpark,” Torres added. “I wasn’t excited. I was a 135-pounder, so I was in shock about what had happened. It was the biggest moment of my baseball career.
“It seemed like the whole city was there. It’s been 50 years, and people still approach me about that home run, even my doctor who told me he was there at the game as a kid.”
For his part, Rodriguez likes to joke about his initial advice to Torres of laying down a bunt.
“Yeah, I just told Rene to go up there and hit a home run and win the game,” Rodriguez now says, introducing a bit of revisionist history to the story.
After getting past Ray, the Eagles won five straight playoff games to reach the state final. They defeated Waco Richfield in bi-district (3-0 and 5-4), San Antonio Lee in the regional finals (2-1 and 5-3) and Galena Park in the state semifinals (7-1).
Vaughan threw a three-hitter with eight strikeouts against Galena Park on June 15, 1965.
The next day, unfortunately for the Eagles, was a completely different story.
Against Dallas Samuell in the state final, Barbosa started and Vaughan relieved along with Sergio Manzano and Ruben Delgado.
The Eagles had run out of gas. They finished with too many errors (four) and too few hits (one). Meanwhile, Samuell pounded the four Brownsville High pitchers for 11 hits and received nine walks en route to a decisive 14-0 victory.
“It was kind of disappointing to me that we lost that last one,” Barbosa said. “We didn’t perform the way we had done all year, but that’s the way things go.”
After graduating in 1965, Vaughan signed to play pro ball directly out of high school and made it to the major leagues with the Atlanta Braves. He pitched the Braves to a 12-2 victory over the Houston Astros in 1966 with Joe Torre as his catcher. Second baseman Cesar de la Garza signed a rookie league contract with the Astros in 1966.
Others such as Torres, Alvarez and Barbosa went on to play at then-Pan American University in Edinburg. Barbosa soon made it to the pros as well and rose to the Triple-A level with the California Angels and pitched in the Mexican League before returning to Brownsville to coach at Pace, Porter and Brownsville Veterans Memorial.
The memories of the team from 1965 live on, Barbosa said.
“There was so much camaraderie between the guys,” he said. “There was a lot of teasing and joking around going on, but when ‘Coach Joe’ said it was time to get down to business, the focus and concentration was always there.”
The players now are in their late 60s, and Rodriguez is 79. They’re a little grayer or balder now, and they’re nowhere near as fast on the basepaths as they once were.
“It’s hard to believe it’s been that long,” Vaughan said. “It’s also hard to see that some of us aren’t getting around that well anymore.”
Added Torres, “We’ve had some reunions lately (in Brownsville) with about 12 guys or so showing up, and we just look at each other and say, ‘Darn, we’re getting old.”
The 1965 baseball season remains an experience that none of them will ever forget.
“We had the kind of team that we felt wasn’t going to lose with the pitching we had plus our defense and our speed on the bases,” Torres said. “Hopefully we left a legacy for the young ballplayers of today to look up to as far as hard work, camaraderie and teamwork are concerned, because that’s what it took to get us to the state final.
“We had fun, and it was a memorable journey,” Torres added. “It’s been 50 years, and nobody (from Brownsville) has done it again. I can’t help but think some team from Brownsville will have that kind of season before too long.”
The 1965 Eagles are scheduled to be honored at Saturday’s 28th annual RGV Sports Hall of Fame banquet at the Port Isabel Events Center.
For ticket information regarding the banquet, call (956) 227-6563 or (956) 495-4687.
Roy Hess covers sports for The Brownsville Herald. You can reach him via email at [email protected]. On Twitter he’s @HessRgehess.