Fort Worth Forum: Amon Carter's Cats Season Tickets - Fort Worth Forum

I'm sorry, I have to gloat a bit...

My father has recently come into possession of four of Amon Carter's season passes for Fort Worth Cats games.

They are from the years 1926, 1928, 1930 and the final one originally was for 1932 but now has 1933 printed on it. The first two appear to be signed off on by Paul Lagrave, the other two perhaps by a "R.P. Meehan" or some name to that effect. It's tough to read the signature.

The price for Amon's seat was $25.00 in '26 and '28 (that includes a $2.28 war tax) down to $15.00 in 1933. I found them terribly interesting, and thought I'd share the info with yall.

I'm trying to talk my father into giving the Cats a call to find out if they are interested in one of them for a display or something like that. I'll let you know how that goes.

That is Way Cool!

Very cool!

In my (humble) opinion, it would be gloating if YOU had the tickets. Since it's your father, I think you are merely providing valuable information to the community.

That the information happens to be way cool is beside the point.

Glad to hear yall find these as interesting as I do, in a lot of ways they're little bitty time capsules.

Where's our guy with the Cats connection, I'm curious to see what interest they have in them.

During my recent absence from the Forum, I also ran across and picked up what I assume is a similar ticket in an online auction. My ticket - a which I have scanned and included below - is from the 1929 season. There were actually several lots of such tickets up for auction by the same seller - including some from the same years that Arch mentions his father's are from. I was the first person to place a bid on all of the lots, but all but one of them went for more than I was willing to pay. Oddly enough, for whatever reason, the other bidders were not interested in the 1929 ticket and I was able to get it for the starting price.

My guess based on the apparent existence of duplicate tickets from the same year is that they were probably not Amon Carter's personal season tickets but rather part of a bulk purchase of season tickets that he probably distributed to major advertising buyers and local power brokers he might have wanted to curry favor with - much like companies today will purchase box seats at sports venues for the use of their VIP guests.

I wonder what "not good for admission to park" means. Was there something along the lines of an amusement park on the stadium grounds? It also states "good for Texas League games only." Does anyone know if more than one team played in the Fort Worth ballpark or if there were occasions where a team might have a match up with another team outside of its league? If you look at the ticket, you will see no explicit mention of the "Fort Worth Cats" but rather the "Fort Worth Baseball Club" - but a quick google search reveals that the FWBC and the Cats were one and the same. Is it possible that the FWBC might have sponsored other games besides the Cats - perhaps exhibition games of some sort?

I have yet to figure out why there are multiple passes for a given year, but one of my theories is that they may have simply issued a pass for each game of the season. It seems feasible (though inefficient) until you get to the part about "Not good for admission to park," which suggests that some kind of additional voucher was necessary for admission.

As I understand it, Fort Worth Baseball Club is simply what the organization formally referred to itself as.

There were occasionally other exhibition games held at La Grave, but I suspect that "good for Texas League games only" is disclaimer-speak for "this thing doesn't allow you into all events at La Grave Field, just the Cats games."

I dug out my copy of Jerry Flemmons' Amon: The Life of Amon Carter, Sr. of Texas and found some interesting information regarding Carter and the Cats. For those who have access to the book, the relevant pages are 364-366

"At games of the Fort Worth Cats baseball team, of which he was briefly part-owner, Amon often came on to the field to discuss a disputed call with umpires, or he would roam the stands collecting bonus money for players' special achievements, such as game-saving catches or propitious home runs.

The Cats of the 1920s perhaps were baseball's best minor league franchise, so popular that the twelve thousand seat Panther field [Anyone know if this was an earlier name for LaGrave Field - or was this a different ballpark?] could not hold all fans, and often as many as a thousand others stood behind the outfield. Managed by John Jacob "Jakie" Atz, the Cats won six consecutive Texas League championships and five of six Dixie Series pennants.... [Perhaps this explains why the season tickets stated that they are only good for Texas League games - as opposed to Dixie Series games] Amon doted on his winning Cats and in 1924, even showed off...[several important players]. They and Amon, [Star-Telegram Circulation Manager]Harold Hough and Silent Cal posed for pictures on the White House lawn.

Amon made the President an honorary Fort Worth citizen. The publisher also handed him a gold key to the liquor-filled vault behind Amon's home but teetotaler Cal's response to that Prohibition-era generosity has been lost to history. He called Amon, "Cowboy."

Leaving, Hough said, "Sure am glad you got to meet me, Mr. Coolidge." Cal grimaced politely.

The group traveled on to New York for the World Series then returned to Fort Worth....

Amon blustered loudly and long on the Cats and cartoonist Bud Fisher placed his Mutt & Jeff [Mutt & Jeff was a very popular cartoon strip during the '20s. The strip finally came to an end in 1982] in Fort Worth for a visit. In one comic strip, Jeff told Postmaster Billy Moore that they were the only Republicans in town, while Mutt begged Amon and Will Stripling for a tryout with the Cats, claiming he was better than 'Rogers Hornby ever was....'" [Comment in footnote at bottom of page: "Hornby briefly managed the Cats following his major league career. Fisher was so fond of Amon that he named one of this race horses "Star-Telegram...."]

Unfortunately, the book does not list the specific years that Carter was part owner of the Cats.

My ticket is in extremely good shape - which makes me wonder if it was ever actually used. Even though it is made out of a very heavy stock paper (perhaps heavy enough to be considered a light cardboard - I am not sure where the exact line between the two begins), I would think that being carried to and from baseball games would have subjected it to a certain amount of wear and tear.

The fact that there exist multiple tickets from the same season really makes me think that Carter perhaps distributed them as gifts. That certainly would have been something consistent with Carter's mode of operation which was to ingratiate himself with as many people as he could - especially if they might someday prove useful for one of the many causes he promoted. As part owner, he would have been in a position to get plenty of them at either a reduced price or even no price. Either way, the $22.50 price tag on my 1929 ticket was not an insignificant sum of money in those days - it was roughly the equivalent of $242 in today's money. The $15 price tag on your dad's ticket from 1933 during the depth of the Great Depression was worth about $212 in today's money.

What I will do is see if I can dig up the contact information I had on the person who sold me the ticket and see if he/she can provide any more background as to where they might have come from. If your dad purchased his on ebay, then chances are pretty good they came from the same person who probably acquired them in a lot. I do remember noticing that the seller was not located in Texas.
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By the way, if anyone is interested in how I came up with those price conversions, I will put up a posting in a new thread explaining my source.