Tex Hughson

Cecil Carlton “Tex” Hughson was born February 9, 1916 in Buda, Texas to Cecil Hughson and Ada Rowland Hughson, a farming family. The 1920 federal census listed him as the middle of three children with an older sister and a younger brother. He grew up in Kyle, graduating from a small class there before enrolling at University of Texas at Austin. There he played baseball under Uncle Billy Disch, long time coach of the Longhorn baseball team and one of the individuals for whom the university’s Disch-Falk field is named. In 1937, Tex was named as a First Team All-Southwest Conference pitcher, earning a 9-2 record. His club went 11-6 that year and finished second in the Southwest Conference. 1937 was the only year during Disch’s last five season as head coach that his team did not win the Southwest Conference.

Later that year, Tex signed with the Red Sox. During his minor league career, he played for the Moulton Packers of the Georgia-Florida League (Class D), the Canton Terriers (Class C) of the Middle Atlantic League, Rocky Mount (Class B) and the Louisville Colonels (Class AA). He reached the big league club in 1941, making his debut appearance on April 16, 1941 in a game against the Washington Senators. Shortly after that, he returned to the Louisville club until early July, but played the rest of the season for Boston. Except for 1945, Tex remained active in Major League Baseball for almost all of the next nine years, always known as a hard throwing pitcher, from 1941 to 1949. As a big league pitcher Tex accumulated 96 wins against 54 losses. He never lost more games than he won in any year that he played. Tex spent his entire career with the Boston Red Sox and finished three seasons in the top 10 in wins in the league.

His best year in wins was 1942 when he won 22 games and lost 6. An incredible 22 of his games played were complete games and he had 20 in one year. That record would absolutely be unheard of today, when a starting pitcher pitching a complete game is very rare. In 2024, for instance, there were only 28 complete games out of 4,858 games started. Only three players had two complete games while the other twenty-two players had only one.

Tex won 20 games and lost 11 in 1946. His third best year in wins was 1944 when he won 18 games against 5 losses, but finishing first in the league in the winning percentage category. He was known as a “flamethrower.” His lifetime earned run average was a quite respectable 2.94 and he recorded four years in a row with an earned run average of under 3.00. He was not known as a batter, and had a lifetime batting average of .119.

Four of his years were played before military service in 1945 and the remaining four years were after his one year non-combat service during World War II. He was named as an All-Star three times. In 1946, Tex appeared in three World Series games, pitching 14.1 innings for the Red Sox. Accumulating a record of 104-50-2 and finishing first in the American League, the Red Sox went on to fall in the series to the St. Louis Cardinals in seven games. All statistics above are from Hughson’s page at www.baseball-reference.com.

All the pitching finally took its toll and Tex developed arm issues later in his career. Surgery followed by rehabilitation was not entirely successful and Tex announced his retirement in 1950. The Sunday Anerican-Statesman (Austin, Texas) of July 2, 1950, in an article about the minor league club known as the Austin Pioneers, mentioned Tex as a possible candidate for manager. Tex had been a player on the team for part of one season near the end of his career and he only lived a few miles away. He was being considered for the position by owner and president Ed Knebel and among other candidates, Knebel was waiting to see if Hughson might still return to the big leagues, which was still an option for him for a short time that year.

Hughson’s baseball honors include being inducted into the Texas Longhorn Hall of Honor in 1970. This honor was presented to Tex and five other Longhorn standouts (Jim Reese, Chal Daniel, Holly Brock, Lucian Parrish and Bowie Duncan) on November 25, 1970 by Governor John Connally at the Thanksgiving football game between University of Texas and Texas A&M. The bullet points of Tex’s Hall of Honor biographical page note his selection as an All-Southwest Conference pitcher, his major league won-loss record and selected other MLB statistics.

Tex was next named to the Texas Sports Hall of Fame in a ceremony on June 5, 1987 at Fair Park in Dallas along with six other honorees including Bill Glass, Jack Pardee, Y. A. Tittle, Don Haskins, Jerry Heidenrieich and Darrell Lester. The concept for this entity began around 1949 and its first induction was held in 1951. For a number of years, it was located in North Texas. It later lapsed into a hiatus until it found a permanent home in Waco in the early 1990s.

Tex was posthumously inducted into the Red Sox Hall of Fame in November, 2002. This entity was begun in 1995 to honor the careers of players, managers and other personnel connected with the club. It was an elite group and only 21 people had previously been inducted before this class. At the time inductees were chosen roughly every two years by a committee of fifteen people. Joining Tex in 2002 were pitchers Duffy Lewis (a 20 game winner along with Hughson in 1946), Bob Ferris and Jim Lonborg, outfielder Fred Lynn, shortstop Rick Burleson and club executive John Harrington.

He returned to Texas and lived in San Marcos where he was very active in local affairs. His civic accomplishments include founding Little League baseball, serving on the San Marcos school board, ranching, real estate and being involved in the family meat brokerage business. During his tenure on the school board, he is noted for championing the integration of San Marcos’ school district.

Tex died of kidney failure on August 6, 1993 in San Marcos at Central Texas Medical Center. Following a memorial service at Pennington Funeral Home, he was interred at San Marcos Cemetery.

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