Kids at play

Toward the end of the final homestand of the 1963 season, Houston Colt .45s manager Harry Craft decides 61 years ago today to show what the team’s future may be as he starts nine rookies in a 10-3 loss to the New York Mets.

With a Friday night crowd of 5,802 watching at Colt Stadium, Houston fields a lineup of pitcher Jay Dahl and catcher Jerry Grote with Rusty Staub, Joe Morgan, Sonny Jackson and Glenn Vaughan in the infield, and Brock Davis, Aaron Pointer and Jimmy Wynn in the outfield.

The novel idea, though, quickly falls apart as Dahl and rookie reliever Danny Coombs allow eight runs over the first three innings while the Mets race to an 8-0 lead.

The average age of Houston’s lineup is 19 years, 8 months with Dahl the youngest at 17.

Dahl ends up getting the pitch after 20-year-old rookie Larry Yellen – Craft’s original starter – sits out the game in observance of Yom Kippur.

In all, 16 of the 18 players Houston uses in the game are rookies with Carl Warwick and relief pitcher Dick Drott being the exceptions.

Jimmy Wynn

“We had fun, though we got our butts whooped bad,” Wynn says years later in an interview with Daniel Dullum.

“But still,” Wynn says, “we tried to do our best. It was just an exciting day. Not only for the younger players, but also for the fans to see what they thought would be the nucleus of the Colt .45s.”

Some of that nucleus evolves into greatness as Morgan goes on to have a Hall of Fame career as one of the game’s greatest second basemen, while Grote, Staub and Wynn eventually become All-Stars in the National League.

Pointer also uses the game to pick up his first hit in the majors – a fourth-inning single to center off Mets starter Al Jackson.

Historians later note that Pointer’s younger sisters – June, Ruth and Anita – go on to have far more hits, though, as they eventually become the Grammy-winning “Pointer Sisters.”