That's the old ballgame Shreveport, chapter 9 (Mr. Pete)

Chapter 9

Mr. Pete

    Bonneau Peters was Shreveport’s “Mr. Baseball” for more than three decades.

    The shrewd businessman was part of the city’s thriving oil and gas industry for many years, but it was his involvement in athletics that gave him prominence.

      As the general managing partner, he was the driving force of the Shreveport Sports’ franchise from 1938 to 1961.

      An independent operator -- with his team not often tied to one major-league franchise as a “farm team” -- he was one of the minor leagues’ best-known, sturdy and respected leaders.
If he was controversial -- he was a strict segregationist -- it was only because he was a product of his time, before integration. But (our opinion) that does not diminish the role he played in Shreveport-Bossier and North Louisiana athletics.

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     A native of Fort Jessup in Sabine Parish -- Many is the closest city -- the young Bonneau Peters attended St. John's Catholic School in Shreveport and graduated from Robeline High School (Natchitoches Parish).

    He was hired by Standard Oil of New Jersey in 1909, working first in its pipeline division. He remained with the company and its affiliates for more than 40 years -- most prominently as chief scout for Carter Oil Co.'s southern division. When the oil boom hit Northwest Louisiana, he was the oil field scout during drilling in the area near Trees, Vivian and Oil City (just northwest of Shreveport-Bossier).

     He was in the U.S. Army during World War I, and organized a baseball team while overseas.

     When he returned home, he was manager of a baseball team in the Trees City oil field of Caddo Parish.

      He was one of the prominent boosters/benefactors of Centenary College -- particularly athletics and especially the football program in the late 1920 and early 1930s when it took on some major powers -- and an ardent fan of the Shreveport pro baseball teams in town.

       In 1938, he became more than a fan; he became the team president -- and would remain so until the end of the 1961 season. (Shreveport did not field teams from 1943 to '45, and in 1958.)

       He was one of nine men voted to the board of directors for the local stock company -- Shreveport Baseball Association -- that early in 1938 raised the funds to purchase a Texas League team from Galveston and have a new stadium built near the same area where the previous ballpark had burned down in 1932.

      The team was nicknamed the "Sports," just as it first was in the Texas League in 1925 (the 1915-24 nickname was the Gassers).

      The Shreveport Times sports editor Joe R. Carter, in his "Raspberries and Cream" column on June 5, 1938, wrote about "Bo" -- as his friends knew him -- and his new role. The headline was, "How About His Job?"

      The column began: "Probably the most unhappy man in town is a fellow whose smile and personality radiates happiness. He's a fellow who's always bubbling over with enthusiasm and known as a 'good scout' -- in his line of business and in everyday life. He'll go far out of his way to help a fellow in distress, but now learns that he cannot do anything to relieve his own troubles -- and at present his troubles are also those of his friends."

      The gist was that the Sports were off to an awful start that season, at the bottom of the TL standings. (They would remain there all season.)

      Carter, pointing to Peters' ascendancy to team president and operating partner, wrote "... They wanted a 'red hot' fan as well as a capable business man, and they made no mistake in their selection. They told 'Pete' of their wishes and he fell right in line, after learning it would not interfere with his work as an oil scout. 'Bo' went into the affair with the enthusiasm of a kid partaking of his first ice cream soda and then found himself bogged down. His team in the pennant race went 'south' and stayed there. His enthusiasm is a bit curbed but not his determination."

    Peters would become known as a keen baseball operator who knew how to acquire and sell players, but in 1938, he was learning on the job.

     He told Carter: " 'Gee, I did not know it was such a problem to get players. I know how to sympathize with the club owners now. A few years ago I had a suspicion that all a fellow had to do was push a button and announce he had the price and athletes would come flying in.

       " 'Really, we have spent enough money in telephone calls and telegrams to purchase a player. Our telephone bill alone would astonish you. ... ' "

        But working in the club offices and observing all games from his box seat on the third-base side of Texas League Park, he would learn. By 1942, he had built Shreveport's first TL championship team since 1919.

        After World War II, Shreveport had its first "golden age" of pro baseball -- record attendances from 1947 to 1949, then TL playoff championship teams in 1952 and 1955, and the franchise's first regular-season championship in 1954.

        "He was good to the people around him, once they proved themselves to him. He was a very fair man," said Francis "Salty" Parker, an infielder Peters brought in during the 1938 season and then the player-manager in 1941-42 and from 1946 to '51.

       "He was one of those people whose word was his bond," said Mel McGaha, first a Sports player and then player-manager from 1954 to '57, and -- like Parker -- a longtime resident. "When he said something, he meant it, and he wanted people around him to be like that. He took care of his players and cared for them.

        "He was a horse trader, as interested in players as money. But he knew talent, he had a good idea of what players were worth and what it took to make a major leaguer. And when he set a price to sell a guy to the major leagues, the big clubs took him at his word."

         Typical of Peters' way of dealing and making money for the Sports were two early 1950s pitchers who became big-league relievers:

        He acquired right-hander Bill Tremel from the Boston Braves' organization for $1,000, two years later sold him to the Chicago Cubs for $40,000. He acquired lefty Bill Henry for $1,000, a year later sold him to the Boston Red Sox for $50,000.

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        Ed Mickelson was one of Peters' favorite players, the Sports' standout first baseman in 1954 and a major leaguer for a brief time, and he devotes a chapter in his book Out of the Park," a 2007 baseball memoir, to the '54 season and Shreveport.

       "Bonneau Peters was to have a 'night' in Shreveport in August of 1954," Mickelson wrote. "He was in his 17th year as president of the Shreveport Sports, a conservative, forthright man and very outspoken. Mr. Peters let you know exactly how he felt about things. On his night, 3,683 fans turned out to pay homage with gifts and many kind words.

    "The country was just starting its social movement toward civil rights and racial equality, though Bonneau Peters had openly stated that no black would ever play on his team. Most clubs in the league had black players, but not us. Our black fans sat in a section down the right-field line demeaningly referred to by some as the 'coal hole.' To me, our black fans were just like any other good baseball fans and were highly supportive of the Shreveport Sports.

        "Bonneau Peters was gruff at times but was basically a kind man. He would do anything for you if he liked you. He was well thought of throughout the Texas League and especially the Shreveport area. Unfortunately, he never changed his stand regarding black players."

        Despite that, the regard for him in the baseball world was such that at the 1959 minor-league meetings in St. Petersburg, Fla., he was crowned "King of Baseball," a ceremonial honor presented annually to a longtime contributor to the game. He was the first team owner to receive the award.

      When the Sports were reborn -- with a Southern Association team -- late in 1958, Shreveport Times sports editor Jack Fiser wrote in his column: "... The principal reason Shreveport is back in baseball is this same brush-haired gent with the salty vocabulary.

       " ... Those who do care can direct their thanks toward the one man who could have gotten us a last chance. And he did it simply because baseball men everywhere respect him highly, and want him in the boat with them for the solidity and respectability he lends to the game.

       "In a sport that has become invested with fly-by-nights, soldiers of fortune, self-promoters and common knaves, he stands out like the Confederate statue  on the courthouse lawn."

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From The Oil Weekly, Oct. 21, 1922:

    Bonneau Peters, chief scout for the Standard Oil Company of Louisiana in the Shreveport territory, and Miss Irene Hughes of Shreveport were married Sunday at the First Methodist Church at Shreveport. The couple left immediately for a three weeks' trip, after which they will be at home at Shreveport.

     They had one son, Bonneau Peters Jr., who died in an automobile crash (near Abilene, Texas) in 1947 at age 19.

      Irene died in 1973; "Mr. Pete" died August 8, 1974, at age 87.

 Bonneau Peters, right, with other Texas League team operators in 1955

                 (photo from Texas League office files)