Hey Mr. Williams, about a month ago in a thread about the new Willie Mays biography you brought up a part of the book where they discussed the barnstorming "Willie Mays All Star Team of 1955 and 1956 that some would argue might have been the greatest team ever. I countered with a major league team that Connie Mack took to Japan in 1934 as being possibly the greatest team ever formed. You then mentioned the concidence that in 1983 you had met team member Lefty Gomez as well as a Japanese gentleman who played against that great team. So now I finally got started reading the Willie Mays biography and I get to part about his traveling All Stars on pages 303 and 304. My part of the concidence is that the great allstar team that you mentioned finally lost after 49 consecutive wins in two years in where else but Victoria, TX, which is my home town!
It's strange how you could have ties to an obscure team in the 1930's that I brought up and I could have ties to another from the 1950's that you brought up out of the blue.
The strange thing is, I know quite a bit about the local baseball history but have never heard of this team passing through. The book even comments that Willie hit a homer in Victoria in 1955 but was injured and sat out the game in 1956 leading to the loss. Going to try to research these games at our local library. Victoria was a town of about 25000 people at that time so it just shows how much the barnstorming teams traveled.
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