Program at Library Oct. 29 Focuses on Early Baseball in Texas German Communities

The Fayette Heritage Museum and Archives is excited to welcome Richard W. Butler, Jr., from the Kendall County Historical Commission and the Society for American Baseball Research (SABR), for a presentation and book signing at 6 p.m. on Thursday, October 29, in the library’s meeting room at 855 S. Jefferson Street in La Grange.

Mr. Butler’s newly released book, “Hill Country Ball,” is published by Texas Tech Press. This book looks at baseball from the post-Civil War era through the Great Depression, during which time the German settlers in Texas’s Hill Country turned baseball into an important Sunday tradition. While the book is focused on communities such as Fredericksburg and Boerne, similar traditions around baseball were integral to the German and Czech communities in Fayette County.

Mr. Butler is a retired local government attorney and a lifelong baseball fan. A member of SABR since 1983, he has lived in the Texas Hill Country since 2022, and has published articles in several SABR journals. He brings deep analytical skills along with extensive baseball knowledge to his research, and “Hill Country Ball” is his first book.

An underlying theme to the stories and history in the book are the ways in which baseball maintained community bonds despite everything else happening, political or economic or otherwise. In areas like Fayette County, which had German and Czech populations, baseball was often one of the only activities that both cultures partook of together, generally maintaining a degree of separation otherwise.

Those attending the program and book signing can use the library’s main doors until 6 p.m., and afterwards should use the meeting room’s after-hours entrance towards the rear of the building along Franklin Street.