Klein Bearkat Baseball is rich in history. Many things have changed over the years, but what will always remain is the tradition and winning attitude of the team.

Contained within this site are recollections and photos of years past. The information that has been assembled here was provided by former Bearkat Baseball players. Many thanks for sharing your memorabilia with the Klein Baseball community.

A very special thank you to former Klein Bearkat Stephen Kramer for providing us with the majority of information assembled on this website.

There were a number of occasions where there was only one umpire for the game, in which case he would call from behind the plate and, with a man on base, he would call balls and strikes from behind the pitcher's mound.

One of the pitchers (who will remain anonymous) would rub a bar of soap into his game pants about 30 minutes prior to the game. As he was pitching on the mound, he would rub his hand across his leg, putting that very wet "soap" film onto the ball and making that ball extremely hard to hit. The umps never caught on -- they always looked under the hat, belt, glove, pocket, behind ears. They never looked at his leg.

The 1971-72 Season

The 1971-72 Klein field did not have an outfield fence. There were only posts in the ground with yellow rope attached to them. The outfielders had to put them out before the games.

During this season, the team only had 7 (seven) team bats. Only a few players had their own bats. There were also no seats for either the players or the fans. There was a small 6-foot wooden bench which served as the dugout. Most fans and some players brought lawn chairs to the games.

A few of the games had to be called due to darkness, as there were no lights on the field. Games were made up when the teams played each other again.

Each home game, the team had to supply the umpire with game balls. The team had a very limited budget, so they only had 6 balls for each home game. There were a few home games when play would stop when an excessive amount of foul balls were hit. The fans and some players would look in the dense undergrowth right behind the backstop and across the street for balls.

The baseball players were the ones that not only played on the dirt diamond, but they were also the grounds keepers. They could not grow any grass on the infield due to the fact that there were no fences around the field. At night, livestock and other "critters" would graze on the seed and grass, thus making it very difficult to have an infield playing field. Coach Redman and a few others mixed seed with "something else" and the team could not practice on the field for almost two weeks. After that time, the grass did take, and the rest became history.

Many of the umpires did not wear any uniforms for most games. They wore shorts and t-shirts along with that giant chest protector and other gear.

The BIG game of each year was when the Bearkats played the "Green Weenies" of Spring High School. Spring HS was called this due to the fact that they got beat 55-0 in a football game.

The 1972-73 Season

Uniforms for the players were a problem. Not until this season did the baseball program have enough money to buy uniforms for each of the players. Up until then, some of the players had to share uniforms with other teammates from game to game. The only exceptions to this were the team captains and the pitchers.

The 1973 Bearkats got into the playoffs by winning the last 7 district games in a row. Their final record for the year was 13-9 and 9-3 in district. They defeated Channelview in the last game of the season to win the Zone championship.