Pittmans

THE PITTMAN BROTHERS

    Many great football players have played for De Leon over the years, but two of the greatest played in the very earliest yearsincluding B.J and Ralph Pittman both of whom went on to play for Baylor University.  Both were inducted into the Baylor Football Hall of Fame in 1964.  They are pictured here in their Baylor University football uniforms.  Both played halfback, B.J. from 1919-1922 and Ralph from 1922-1924.


    The center photo is an extraction from a photo of the April 1910 ground breaking for the construction of the branch line of the railroad from De Leon to Cross Plains.  B.J. is on the left and Ralph on the right.  B.J. pointed the two out in an interview.  The boy in the middle has not been intentionally blurred but just happened to move as the picture was snapped and is unidentified.


       In 1953 B.J. was declared the greatest Bearcat to that time.  In 1924 Ralph was elected captain of the Bayor football team.


     B.J. was employed for many years by Employers Casualty Insurance in Dallas in their Public Relations Department.  He was also the manager of their company baseball team in a time when people paid significant attention to a city league of business teams.  He molded employees and “summer help” into a very competitive team which won the Dallas City title in 1927 with B.J. batting .444.  In 1929 the team won the city title and then the championship of west Texas.  They had a three game series for the state championship against a Houston firm.  Houston won the first game 4-1, Employers the second 7-0; and the third game was called due to darkness with Houston leading 6-5. 

    

     Among the players who were on the Employers team were Pinkey Higgins who went on to play for the Boston Red Sox and Dan Davenport who played for the Chicago White Sox.  (See Baseball-The Peoples Game by Harold Seymour 1991). 

   

    B.J. was able to recruit another special player for one summer, the immortal Clyde W. Littlefield.  Littlefield had been the coach at Greenville when B.J. and the Bearcats played them for the state title in 1917.  He went on to coach both football and track at the University of Texas where he won more Southwest Conference championships than any other coach.


         Ralph, who had attended Baylor Law School with Leon Jaworski and had teamed with him for a moot court championship, went to Washington where he joined a law firm remaining there until his death. 

B.J. Pittman Jr.

Ralph D. Pittman