Special to The Leader

In 1932 Schoolboy Rowe played his one and only season with the minor league (Texas league) team in Beaumont, Texas called the Beaumont Exporters, and it was the next year on April 15, 1933 that he pitched his first game in the majors in Detroit for the Detroit Tigers against the Chicago White Sox, a game he won. Dickie, Dixon, President of the Angelina County Genealogical Society in Lufkin, Texas spoke at the Union County Genealogical Society in the auditorium of the South Arkansas Community College in El Dorado, Arkansas.

Dixon became interested in Rowe because of his mother’s diary given to her by her Latin teacher Miss Gladys Arrington for best Latin notebook covering January 1, 1929 to 1933, in which there were references to him written by her while she was in high school with him and afterward when he wrote to her (after her family had moved from El Dorado because of the Depression on January 24, 1930). She recorded entries when she wrote him and when she received letters from him.

Rowe was a prominent athlete in many sports at El Dorado High School and played there until the fall before he began playing in Beaumont, Texas for the Texas league team the Beaumont Exporters. For example, there was a day on which on the same day he won a golf tournament and a track meet. A very likable person, he acquired his nickname because he was playing baseball with men while he was still in school. He played in the majors until his last major league baseball appearance on September 13, 1949, when he played with the Philadel-phia Phillies. Later he was a pitching coach and a scout for the Tigers.

In the 1932 Rowe with his bat and his pitching arm combined with Hank Greenberg’s hitting prowess to propel the Exporters to win the Texas League pennant from the Dallas Steers. Both he and Greenberg went up to the majors the next year. He went on to become a Hall of Fame pitcher and the holder of the record of the most consecutive wins with Walter Johnson at 16 games.

For more information, contact Dickie Dixon at (936) 240-8378 or email him at dickie.dixon@hotmail.com