Need help with ID of So. League player

[mattsey9]

Originally Posted by mybuddyinc

Mike,

The more I look at it the more I like it.

BTW, I'm not into it, but genealogy is very popular on the web. I wouldn't be surprised if you couldn't find a site that might be able to help you out. Morris died in 1961, so there may be just a generation or two to go through. Maybe even find a relative.

Good luck, Scott (not Sean )

From putzing around on Ancestry.com...

His house where lived in Dallas until passing in 1961: Morris Home built in 1938

According to his death certificate, Morris' daughter listed his primary occupation as a professional baseball manager. I can't find him right off the bat in any census past 1900 when he was still living at home with his parents. His father, George Morris, was a practicing attorney in Rockwall, TX when he was born in 1881 and was still listed as an attorney in 1930 in Dallas. Walter likely had a comfortable, such as the term can be used to describe 1880s Texas, upbringing.

The Texas Sports Historical Association lists this bio on their webpage under JERRY Walter Morris.

https://tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/fmo58

MORRIS, JERRY WALTER (1880–1961). Jerry Walter Morris, baseball player, promoter, and executive, was born on January 30, 1880, at Rockwall, Texas. He left the University of Texas in 1902 to play with Corsicana of the Texas League, a league in which he spent the next twenty-six years as player, manager, club executive, and, for five years, league president. He was one of the earliest collegians to leap directly into organized baseball. Headlines and records seemed to follow Morris. In his first season at Corsicana his club had baseball's highest winning percentage (.793), set a world record for consecutive victories (twenty-seven), never relieved a pitcher all season, and figured in the game's greatest slaughter-a 51–3 victory over Texarkana. All this was done with an eleven-man squad. While a student at the University of Texas, where he frequently played without shoes, Morris had been known as the "Barefoot Boy at Texas." He received a law degree from the University of Texas in 1906 and tried to combine law and baseball careers until 1910, when he decided that baseball was his life's work. In 1916 he became president of the Texas League and helped to arrange the Dixie Series, a thirty-seven-year match between the Texas League and the Southern Association champions. For several years he owned half interest in the Fort Worth Cats, and again, after 1922, he was part owner and secretary-business manager for six years of the Dallas baseball team. He also served as business manager for the Shreveport, Tyler, and Fort Worth teams. He held the following personal records: club manager in his third year of organized baseball; organizer of more leagues (fourteen) and president of more (seven) than any other man on record; at one time president of three leagues concurrently-the East Texas, Evangeline, and Cotton States; builder of nine baseball parks; developer of numerous baseball players for the major leagues, including Rogers Hornsby; and once, in an emergency, Texas League president and umpire simultaneously. He died on August 2, 1961, of a heart attack following a surgical operation. In December 1966 he was elected to the Texas Sports Hall of Fame.

Here's a photo from the TSHOF of Morris as an adult: