“How can you not be romantic about baseball?”
By David H. Waller
Pitchers and catchers reported to spring training last week, which always feels like the unofficial signal that winter is winding down. For me, it also brings back a lot of memories, because baseball has quietly shaped much of my life and career.
Baseball was my favorite sport growing up and through high school. When I was in college, the movie Moneyball came out, and I remember sitting there thinking, “That’s it, that’s what I want to do.” I was convinced I was going to be the next Billy Beane, building teams with spreadsheets and finding hidden value where nobody else was looking.
After graduating from Texas Tech, I was fortunate to land a low-level internship with the Texas Rangers in their ticket office. It wasn’t glamorous, but it was a foot in the door. That first season was 2012, and the Rangers were riding high after back-to-back World Series appearances, so selling tickets was about as easy as it gets.
That year turned into a historic one for the franchise, with more than three million tickets sold for the first time in team history. There were about a dozen interns working that season, and the organization was so pleased with our work they even treated us to pizza one afternoon (don’t go too over the top, Rangers...)
The season itself didn’t end the way we had hoped, with the Rangers losing the division on the final weekend against Oakland and then falling in the Wild Card game. The next year I was “called up,” so to speak, into the sales department, but before long I realized that sales wasn’t for me. Eventually I moved on to a position next door at AT&T Stadium and spent ten years there.
Looking back now, though, baseball was still quietly guiding me, even when I didn’t realize it. And in many ways, that guidance eventually led me right here, to The Albany News.
A discovery in
Grandmommy’s office
In November 2023, my grandmother, who us Wallers knew as Grandmommy, passed away after living a long and full life. A few days later, I found myself in her office, surrounded by shelves of books she had collected over the years.
As a regional history book collector, I thought I had seen nearly every publication tied to this area. But one unfamiliar orange hardback caught my eye. The title was Reynolds Presbyterian Academy & College. When I opened it, something unexpected happened. A mint-condition baseball card slipped out onto the desk.
It was a 1912 team photo of the Reynolds College baseball club, with the Shackelford County Courthouse clearly visible in the background.
As a lifelong baseball fan, I was stunned. I had never known Albany once had a college, much less a college baseball team. That discovery sent me down a research rabbit hole and led to the first story I ever wrote for my new blog.
Albany’s forgotten college team
Reynolds Academy had been around since the late 1800s, but in 1909 it transformed into Reynolds Presbyterian College. By the following year, students wanted athletics, and in 1910 the school formed a baseball team.
In the early days, there weren’t enough Reynolds students to fill a roster, so local high school boys helped fill positions. The team played early games against high school squads and nearby colleges, gradually building interest and participation.
By 1912, the program had matured. The team elected officers, ordered official gray uniforms with an “RC” logo, and even adopted the name Reynolds Baseball Club.
Games were played every Tuesday afternoon, and admission was always free. Town residents turned out faithfully, turning baseball into a weekly community gathering. Local boys who no longer played on the roster still participated as bat boys, proudly calling themselves “Rat Row.”
Unfortunately, the college itself closed just a few years later, around 1913 or 1914. Records are scarce, and very little remains documented about the baseball team beyond a handful of game mentions. That small baseball card may be one of the few surviving pieces of evidence that the program ever existed.
From one story
to many
That discovery didn’t just reveal a forgotten chapter of Albany history. It changed my own path.
The article I wrote about the Reynolds baseball team became the first story on The Albany Echo, a blog I created to tell stories. What started as one article quickly turned into more. One story led to another, and before long I found myself spending evenings digging through history and writing about local history.
People seemed to genuinely enjoy those stories. They would stop me around town to mention something they had learned or to share their own memories. It showed me that local history still matters deeply to people here.
A crazy idea that
made sense
Around that same time, The Albany News was for sale. More and more people began mentioning it to me, telling me I ought to at least look into it.
At first, I thought it sounded like a crazy idea. Buying a newspaper in 2024 didn’t exactly seem like a safe business plan. In an age of smartphones, social media, and instant news, newspapers often get written off as something from another time.
But The Albany News is different. This paper has a community backing it. It’s something people depend on to stay connected to Albany. Even in our advanced technology age, that kind of local connection is something people still need.
The blog itself may no longer be around, but The Albany Echo still makes appearances in The Albany News. Bringing back historical stories about our town. Ones you may remember or ones you have never heard of.
Guided back
home
When I look back now, it’s hard not to see the symbolism. A baseball card falling out of a history book, pointing me toward telling stories about the very community I love. I only wish Grandmommy could have seen where that moment led. I think she would have smiled, knowing that one small discovery helped guide me right back home.
At the end of Moneyball, there’s a scene where Billy Beane believes he has failed. He didn’t win the championship, didn’t get the ending everyone expects. But then he realizes something bigger — that he changed the game itself. In that moment, he says a line that has always stuck with me:
“How can you not be romantic about baseball?”
That’s exactly how I feel at this point in my life.
I’m living out a dream, a dream I didn’t even know I had until I got here. And in a funny way, I have baseball to thank for that.
