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Biography, Sports Nut, Military Service, Civic Involvement, Inglewood Church, Family History, Loving Memories, Guest Book, Home Page
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Sports Nut!
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To say that John Holland was a sports enthusiast was like calling Niagara a little water fall. On the night that John died, he was wearing his coaching shorts and a colorful T-shirt describing what made him a “Sports Nut”… they had to cut it off of him in the hospital emergency room.
His father had played baseball and must have instilled in John the love of the game. The vacant lot across the street was probably just the training ground needed to set history in motion. John was a professional baseball player in the minor leagues on teams based in Lubbock, Tyler, and Ballinger, Texas. He traveled all over Texas playing baseball. These were the “farm chains” of the Detroit Tigers, Cincinnati Reds, and the Dallas Rebels. John was a pitcher and also played outfield.
One very cold day in 1947, John had pitched for a while then they let the other pitcher go in. The manager told him to warm up so they could put him back in, as the replacement wasn’t performing that well. After a few minutes of warm up, the other pitcher’s game improved so John went back to the bench. After sitting out again, suddenly John was called directly from the bench to the pitcher’s mound without warming up his arm. The inevitable happened; John “threw his arm out.” The injury to his shoulder was so severe that he never got over it. On March 20th, 1947 Sam Rosenthal, the president of the Lubbock Baseball Club, handed John an “outright and unconditional release.” In those days the players had no recourse and certainly no safety cushion for injuries. His baseball career was just over.
Back before the war, in 1940, Clarence E. Linz rented the ice arena from Fair Park in Dallas and brought a professional hockey team to Dallas. It wasn’t far into the season that Canada entered World War II and the entire hockey team went home! Luckily they left all their equipment behind. The rink then opened up for public skating and Jack Freel ran the place. John and the other kids would hang around the rinks and help clean the ice after closing time. In return, Jack gave them free passes to skate. John and his friends called themselves the “Rink Rats.” Another one of the kids was Bill Nolen who went to school with John at Adamson. They got to be very close friends out at the rink.
When the war started, some sailors from “up North” would come over to Fair Park from the Dallas Naval Air Station and use the abandoned equipment to play hockey. Jack Freel had been a hockey player and began to teach the kids a little about the game when he had the time. Eventually the “Rink Rats” started playing hockey against the sailors who regularly beat the tar out of the kids because they had been skating all their lives and you just don’t get that much ice in Texas.
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Minor League Baseball
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The Titans
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Got him!
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