The Man Who Saved Baseball in Syracuse

New book details how Tex Simone nurtured

By Mary Beth Roach

 

For Syracuse baseball fans of a certain generation, there is one name that is synonymous with the sport.

Tex Simone.

The Syracuse Chiefs, like all teams, has an ever-changing roster. It’s gone through several name changes and major league affiliations. And the Chiefs’ home, the one-time MacArthur Stadium, was replaced by a new stadium, which has also had different names since it opened in 1997. But, yet, there remained one constant.

Tex Simone.

The North Side native stayed here in his hometown, despite offers to advance in the baseball business and he brought the sport to local fans season after season for more than five decades.

Now, Tex’s two children — son John Simone and daughter Wendy Simone Shoen — along with author William Humber, tell his story in “Tex: The Man Who Saved Baseball in Syracuse.”

In the book’s introduction, the authors write that “this is a celebration of his commitment to his city and its teams and of an era in baseball increasingly seen in the sport’s rearview mirror.”

It chronicles Tex’s (christened Anthony) early years as one of seven kids growing up in a large Italian family and as an athlete at the former North High School.

It goes on to detail his formative years in the Army; his brief stint as an accountant; and his career with the Chiefs, starting as a groundskeeper in 1961 and moving up through the ranks, to trainer and traveling secretary before becoming general manager in 1970 and then executive vice president chief operating officer in 1996, when son, John, took over at GM.

Tex left the organization in 2013, when the then-board decided to move in a new direction and he was named vice president emeritus.

The book has been years in the making, according to John. He and Wendy had been working on it with Tex, but they were not able to complete it due to their father’s Alzheimer’s disease. Tex died in 2015 at the age of 86.

Following Tex’s death and while the siblings were trying to find a writer to help them complete the book, John said they received a letter from Bill Humber. He is a writer, an historian on Canadian baseball and a long-time friend of their dad’s, who had interviewed Tex on several occasions over the years.

“It was such a moving letter, I said to Wendy, ‘there’s our author,’” John said.

The siblings contacted Humber in 2017 and they almost had the manuscript done when COVID-19 hit. Humber had wanted to travel to Syracuse from his home in Canada, walk Tex’s old neighborhood and talk with some of his friends and colleagues. But with the pandemic and travel restrictions, Humber couldn’t make the trip and the book got put on hold.

But once the pandemic and travel bans lifted, work on the book intensified the last two years, John said.

Collaborating on the project was something that John said he and Wendy enjoyed immensely, bringing up the old stories and then getting it in print.

“I did it so my kids and my grandchildren, someday, could know who their grandfather was. But more importantly, so the community knew he was other than just the guy at the ballpark,” John said.

The one thing that John wanted to make sure of was that his father’s love of Central New York came through. The love he had for his hometown, his family and baseball motivated Tex through his long career, John said. “It was his town. Baseball and the history of it in the community were important to him.”

So important that Tex even turned down jobs with major league baseball to stay here. John believes that a big reason for that was his family, explaining that he refused a job in Toronto because he didn’t want to leave one of his brothers, who was dying of cancer.

The book’s title, “Tex: The Man Who Saved Baseball in Syracuse,” speaks to what John believes are his father’s greatest accomplishments — keeping the team together in 1969-70, when it faced financial troubles and spearheading the construction of a new ballpark to replace the old MacArthur Stadium, which was built in 1934, but by 1990, was showing signs of its age.

As John noted, “Early on, it was keeping the team afloat in 1969-70. That was very important. Equally important was building the stadium. He knew he would lose baseball again if we didn’t do something with that old stadium.”

Today, one of the roads leading into the stadium is named for Tex, and a bust of the legend is in the ballpark.

Baseball fans will love the pages full of details, photos, memories and quotes from friends and Tex himself, many of which came from research Humber had done, scouring newspaper stories and from drawing from his own conversations with the local baseball icon over the years, John explained.

An added feature is the section that contains passages from letters that Tex wrote home to his older brother, Archie, while he was with the Army. John said they found the letters by accident and determined they needed to be in the book. In the chapter, “A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Ball Park,” the authors share memories that some former Chiefs players and former general managers of the Toronto Blue Jays, had of Tex.

John said he hopes that his dad would have enjoyed it. “It told a story of his life from his early days until the end. He was proud of his journey and his love of his family, service to his country and to his community,” he noted.

The book has found fans not just in this area, but throughout the country, John said, and it is also promoted on texsimone.com.

Those interested can find the book in the three area Barnes and Noble stores — Dewitt, Cicero and Destiny USA. There will also be a book launch with the publisher, author and former players at the NBT Bank Stadium on May 2, with the Syracuse Mets play the Scranton Railriders.

And John, now 64, is working on another book about his experiences with the Chiefs as a youngster. When preparing the manuscript for his dad’s story, John said he started jotting down stories about his early years with the team, as a bat boy, in the dugout and on road trips. The publishers had asked to see John’s notes that he had made and once they did, they realized they had the potential for another book.

So, baseball fans, get on deck for that one.