Mexican American Oral Histories

Melissa Berry: This is Melissa Berry and John Moreno interviewing Josie Powe and Connie Seras. Josie, could you please state and spell your name for us?

Josie Powe: Josie, Josephine, J, O, S, I, E, J, O, S, E, P, H, I, N, E.

MB: So tell us a little bit about your experience being a Hawk...ette?

JP: My sister was the, how would you call her... manager? She really was a manager. And, you know, like Billy [Jr.] said, you know, like Billy [Sr.] and I grew up together like this. So we played ball together at a young age and stuff like that. And I mean, I enjoyed watching them, you know, play everything. And because I'm about his age, all the guys were about our age, all together, you know, and stuff and, and we would laugh, because my brother was there. My older brother and he had friends sometimes, too, at the house. So, Billy would take his friends to the backyard, which was a pretty big backyard, they would drink Kool-Aid and a little munchie of something, you know, after a game, something like that.

John Moreno: And you guys played on the Hawkettes? Did you call them the Hawkettes or--

Connie Seras: Pacers.

JM: --Pacers?

JP: Jack Alice.

JM: Oh, Jack Alice.

CS: We were Pacers.

JM: Pacers.

CS: And then afterwards, Pacers.

JM: Afterwords Pacers.

CS: Jack Alice, as far as we know, was first, and then we started our own team, our own team, because--

JM: What was the name of that team?

CS: Pacers.

JP: Pacers.

JM: Oh, Pacers, that was the team, okay.

CS: And Bill was our coach.

JP: Oh yeah, Bill was our coach.

CS: It was, was real-- it was real, was real funny, because we, we left the team with-- we were on, and we, we sort of regretted leaving, because we love ball. We would rather play ball than go to a party, you know, and we're that, that's the way her and I were. Parties? [laughs] And so we went-- we just didn't have a team. We were in limbo. And we were at the ball game one night. We were sitting there with our lip hanging down to our knees, and Bill-- her husband-- looked over at us. He said, You know what, he says, you find the girls, he says, and I'll coach you. Wow. We were scrambling. We were looking for people to play, and we made our own team, and Bill coached us, and we had so much fun. He was so good with everybody. I learned things from him that I had, I didn't know before.

MB: Like what?

CS: Well, just, just little things, you know, just little, little things that, yeah, made, made sense. How come I never did that before? And then he would tell-- I could hit the ball-- I mean, I'm not-- I could hit the ball. And he was always coaching third base, and he says, Connie, you're the only one that I know that can hit it to the fence and only get to third base. [laughs]

JP: She was a good hitter. She really, really was. She just didn't have the speed.

CS: Another time, which what should have been a conflict, really, we were going to play, and her uncle was the umpire, was the one of the umpires. So I came up to bat, and I hit it to the fence again, and I got to third base, and I'm standing on third base like that. Her uncle comes around, you know, and he says, time! He's rearranging the base, you know, like, then he looked up at me, says, next time you could try touching the bases. [laughs] Bill just looked at me. [laughs]

MB: So who did you find to join the team with you? Was it also family or family friends?

CS: You know, we just, we just-- I don't want to use the word scrounge. We jumped around, you know, other people that were looking for a team to play on, you know, or we just dug them out of the woodwork, really. We had a very good team. And of course, we all got jittery when we had to play against the former team. [laughs]

MB: How often did that happen?

CS: Often! [laughs]

I was going through some of the papers last night and I said, oh my goodness, we lost to the HMR. Oh my goodness, we lost to them again, and they were but they were all good games when we played against them.

We had a-- we had a pitcher lined up. We had already talked to her and everything. And mind you, she was our shortstop. She was the shortstop, and we had our pitcher lined up for the coming season, and so we went to her house one night to tell her, okay, we're going to start practicing on such and such date, and you know, gave her some of the rundown of what was going on. And she said, well, I have bad news for you. She says, I can't play. We looked at each other, what could we say? She said she was pregnant. She couldn't play. We came home and we didn't know what to do, so. She said, well, I guess I'm gonna have to learn how to pitch. She knocked down her wooden fence, but she became our pitcher. She became our pitcher, and she didn't. She didn't have speed, or any, you know, I mean, fast speed or anything, but she had a lot of junk, and Bill's the one that taught her all that.

JM: A lot of change ups, all the change up pitching.

CS: Yeah, everything, I mean, moved the ball all over. She kept everybody off balance, and we survived. We did it. We actually did it. Only we had to find the shortstop. You can't have-- always on-- same time. But we had a lot of fun, you know, playing together. And like she said, I didn't want to go play with her.

JP: She didn't, she didn't want to go play she-- with our team that I was on, and our coach wanted her because she was a good hitter, good defense player, too, but a hitter, that's what he was looking at. And so he finally said to me, because I was team captain, he said, I'm going to go ahead and ask Connie to kind of play with us. She was playing on a fairly good team, and--

CS: [laughs]

JP: Well, we always beat you. Anyway, and she didn't want to come. She didn't want to come, and he said, why not? Because Josie is on the team. Me. I was on the team.

CS: Our coach had told me-- see at that time, the city had rules, and they were, they were enforced. They really enforced them. They had rules that-- say, for instance, you were, you were a coach, and you were a coach from another team. You could not come and approach me to go and play on your team. You had to go to him first and ask for permission to come and ask. And those rules were enforced. Matter of fact, I found a book the other-- last night, and I said, there it is! I knew I had it! [laughs] And I didn't. I didn't want to go play with her.

MB: Why?

CS: Because I felt he-- our coach told me-- he didn't want me to leave, and he said, well, you know that Josie, the shortstop, is the one that runs the team, and I didn't know nothing. I was the one that went to the park, played ball, and went home.

JP: And I didn't really run the team. It was like, okay, she hit third base this last time, so be ready for her. I would say things like that, you know, different things. But I never, never said, it's me, you know, you know.

MB: So he was trying to agitate a conflict to keep you guys separated.

CS: I caught a line drive, an ugly line drive in third base, and I was shocked when I got the ball, because I was, I mean, it just, you know--

JP: At third base, you don't have a lot of time to think. The ball's gonna come.

CS: You better be ready.

MB: [laughs]

CS: You either get it or you eat it. And I just stood there, you know, and I heard this voice behind me say, pretend, you know, pretend like you know what you're doing. She's my best friend.

JP: A little insult, and you see, what happens?

And the thing is, you know, I couldn't drive, after... a while, I couldn't drive anymore. So she was my ride, my ride. She'd come, practice, pick me up, day-- you know-- game time, she'd go pick me up, you know. And so I had to like her. I grew-- no, I, I did. We were okay, you know, after that.

CS: She's my youngest godmother.

JM: Do you have any memories, Josie, of anything that-- particularly a memory of Santa Rita Park from when you guys were playing? With-- either winnings or maybe losses, or anything that--

JP: I just have one thing to say here, remember, we stayed late. She got in trouble with her husband, but anyway, we stayed late at Santa Rita Park because we were watching the game after us, you know, and stuff. And they were--

CS: I don't know--

JP: Anyway, so we were over there, and yeah, and we finished watching. It was almost one o'clock in the morning, and, you know, before the game ended, it was just about that time that we were waiting to watch this team from California who had come to play, you know, at Santa Rita Park. And we were not playing, but we stayed to watch and everything. And it was like one, two o'clock in the morning when the game ended. It was great game, from what can remember, you know. My other friend was with me. I thought it was, she thought it was my other friend. And so then we got to go home, you know, it finally ended, everything, and it was like, after midnight. I'm sat there, all evening, because we loved the game. You know, the games were good. So I took her home. Her husband was home. Her husband was my husband's best friend. And you know what? He was so mad, so mad because it was-- "you cannot be playing ball until midnight. You were not playing ball". It was that kind of thing, you know, stuff. And so she got down and, you know, he ripped her baseball shirt. He was like Billy.

CS: But we were, when we would travel out of town, her and I, we were, we were on the same wavelength. If we knew we had to go to Phoenix that weekend, I would make my husband a big pot of soup, about this big, you know, veggies and all that stuff.

JM: Cocido?

JP: Was it cocido?

CS: Yeah, cocido.

JM: Vegetable soup.

CS: Hold 'em for two days, you know, because he loved it. He loved it, and she would make Bill a big pot of chili beans. [laughing]

JP: Yeah, because you know, we're playing-- we don't make dinner. Then they come home and [there's] nothing to eat.

CS: That-- that was our soup joke.

JP: [laughs]

CS: So every other weekend my husband had cocido, and every other weekend, Bill had chili beans. [laughs]

JP: And then you know what she would say, because she, she would-- I worked as a nurse at the hospital, and so she would pick me up there at the hospital, and then we would take off. And it worked okay for us that way, and that way I would have to try to get home, you know, change and wait for her, whatever. So she would just pick me up over there, and then... what was I leading up to? You know the answer. [laughs]

CS: Oh, we would get to the, to the park, and the rest of the girls were already there and everything. "Josie, you're early." I said, "yeah, she left her patient on the bed pan".

JP: That's what she told them.

But we did. We enjoyed playing ball a lot. We enjoyed, you know, like, kind of yelling at each other.

JM: Camaraderie.

JP: Yeah. [laughs]

JM: You guys were like sisters, brothers.

CS: I wouldn't give it up for nothing. One time, we were in a tournament at Santa Rita, and we lost, and we-- at that time, we were with Ruben, we were with that other, with the original team.

MB: What was that team's name?

CS: It was Jack Alice. And we lost, and we were all in shock. And then our Ru-- our coach makes, makes the comment, [to] add fuel to the fire, he said, I have 12 people on the field, and I lose a game. She was pregnant. I was pregnant. Our center field was pregnant. [laughs] We were all pregnant.

MB: How long did you play pregnant? Do you remember?

CS: I was six months.

JP: Playing pregnant? Yeah, close to that. I think I was just behind you.

CS: Yeah, three months behind me. No, it wasn't center fielder. It was our catcher that was pregnant.

JP: Oh, yeah.

MB: How long did the Pacers run?

CS: Pacers? We had the Pacers about seven years, about seven years.

MB: And you guys created that after Jack Alice.

JM: Jack Alice is a sporting goods store.

JP: Jack Alice was a sporting goods store.

CS: I don't think it's around anymore.

JM: No, it's not.

You said a while before you went into the Pacers, you, you had quit a team.

CS: I just felt like I wasn't helping the team anymore. And Josie just, I don't know, she just-- maybe had a bad day or something, you know, and I just walked away.

JP: And that's when-- was Ruben our coach?

CS: Yes.

JP: Yeah, Ruben was... distant family, person to my mom and dad, and...

CS: That's why they want[ed me] to go!

She was still in high school.

JP: I was, huh.

CS: You were still in high school. And one time, we were going to New Mexico for a regional tournament, and she was scheduled to work, and Bill, I don't know what happened, there was a little bit of, you know, they weren't speaking. I don't know what the thing was, or anything. So she told him, asked him, says, "you think you can call in and tell them that I won't be in today because I'm sick?" And so, we went off, and she went to her mother's house, and her brother in law was there, and she told him, "I don't know, Bill's kind of upset with me right now. Would you do me the favor and call in to St Mary's and tell them that I won't be in because I'm sick?" And her brother in law said yes. So when she got back to work on Monday, they said, "oh, we had two phone calls". Bill called in, and her brother in law called in. [laughs]

MB: Did they both use the same excuse?

CS: Yes, they did.

MB: Okay, good!

JM: That would not have been good, huh.

CS: We would do anything just to play ball.

JP: Mm-hmm.

CS: I don't know how many parties we would turn down and-- or, you know, special occasions or something, just to go play ball. It was good, clean, fun. Yeah, good, clean, fun. That, that was the bottom line. I mean, we weren't out, you know, partying or doing things we shouldn't be doing. We were married already. [laughs] And we made so many friends, so many.

If you chose to leave a team to go play with another team, or the season was on, you had to sit out a month before you could play on that other team. And you know, to play city ball in Santa Rita and everything, you have to have that little booklet, and you had to register at the Parks and Rec over there in Alvernon. I was there at four o'clock in the morning to register the team.

JM: [whistles]

CS: And you have to have at least 10 players, you know, and you sign them up, and they would stamp them, you know, they stamped them. They-- their staff. And if you picked up another player, she couldn't play, unless you had her, her name in that little booklet and it was stamped. And when we went to play ball, when you went to start your game, you had to turn in that little booklet to the official score keeper, because Santa Rita always had an official scorekeeper. And you had to turn in that, that book and that-- he would check, he would check all the players. We won a game on a protest one time. [laughs]

JP: [laughs]

JM: Oh, wow.

CS: I protested an illegal player. [laughs]

JM: Was most of these tournaments and most of these leagues in Tucson, were they just Hispanic from central, Southside? Or did you have-- did you-- was it integrated with other--

CS: Phoenix.

JM: But what about in Tucson, like the Eastside or north side?

CS: No, it was whoever wanted to--

JM: Whoever-- so it was mixed, there was Anglo, there was--

CS: I was going through my--

JM: Was there African American players at all?

CS: Ev--everyone. All kinds.

JM: Hispanic, African American?

CS: All kinds, all kinds. There was high school girls playing out there. You know, you had to be a certain age to play, but we had one that was 12 years old. We said something else if we were asked. [laughs].

JM: I see!

JP: And you know what, one of our players passed away. She wanted to be buried there at Santa Rita Park.

CS: Oh, yeah.

JP: And, uh, we both--

JM: What happened?

JP: We did. That's what she wanted. I mean, she, she was cremated, so it was like cremation, but she said when she died, she wanted to be buried there at Santa Rita Park.

CS: It was her home, second home, you know?

JM: Wow, that's...

CS: They'd do her-- it was funny, because I was working at the time, and I asked my boss, I saw her obit, and I asked my boss, can I take off for lunch for an hour? And he said, I told him what I wanted to do, and it was real close to Santa Rita, right down 10th Avenue. And so I went down there, and they had two bouquets, two sprays, and they had a bat and a glove and a ball inside of it on home plate like that. And there's family members over here, and only two of her former teammates showed up-- actually, one, the other one was just a friend, and I showed up, and they said a few words, you know, and all that stuff. And then I just thought it was going to be just a service or something, and then, I don't know, a man came over and picked up this little box. Knowing! You know, I didn't realize, he just picked up this little box, and he walked out to the outfield, and the ashes...

JM: Wow, that's incredible. What, what-- which ball field was it? One, two or three?

CS: One, the original Santa Rita.

MB: What was her name? Do you remember?

CS: Syl-- Sylvia Holly.

JP: Sylvia Holly.

CS: She was a fantastic ball player.

She was fast.

JM: Man, that's an incredible story.

Billy Powe: I just wanted to add something when I heard her say that-- I did leave the Hawks for one year.

JM: Oh, you did?

BP: For another team. They put a super team together, I guess you'd say they got all the all stars. Yeah, and I went and played with them, and we won. We were good, but I only played one year because it wasn't the same. It just wasn't the same. We were winning, and I was happier, maybe not winning, or, you know--

JM: With the Hawks.

BP: Yeah, it was just-- then when we'd have to play the Hawks, that was, that was hard, yeah, but yes, I only played one year, and I went back to the Hawks.

CS: It, it's a thing that you're around a certain, a certain group. And usually that little group consists of friends, good friends, or you bring in somebody, that friend brings in somebody, and the friendships start, you know, then you go on another team, and, yeah, it's just not there.

JM: The bonding.

BP: There was another story. There was a-- when I was playing there in Santa Rita, we always thought he lived at Santa Rita. We thought he was homeless.

CS: Oh, who?

BP: Fred.

CS: Yeah, Fred.

JP: Oh, Fred.

BP: I never know his last name. His name was Fred. We all called Fred. He was very hard to understand.

[mumbling noise]

CS: He was handicapped.

BP: Yeah, he was very, but, he lived by Pueblo. We finally-- that center that's back there? It's a housing--?

JM: Oh.

BP: But he would walk to Santa Rita every Tuesday, Thursday, because we were all playing, and we all knew Fred. He would chase the foul balls. He would run the homeless, when homeless would come. That was his favorite work.

"Get out of here! Get out of here!"

But I heard when he did pass away, Herb had him cremated, or he was cremated-- Herb-- and Herb threw his ashes out there. I'm not sure where. We always know him. And, like I said, we don't know. I didn't know if he had any family or what, but for a decade, man, he was always out there, always out there, Fred and I know they threw his ashes out there somewhere. Like I said, he was a homeless...

CS: Santa Rita was home to a lot of people, you know.

BP: It still is, but in a different way now.

And Luna's Towing. Luna's Towing was a softball team. They won a national title. They're from Tucson. They played at Santa Rita. They were national champions. Yeah. His name is Jesse Luna. Herb Wisdom, his son played on the Olympic team-- softball, men's fastpitch, and he was the second baseman on the Olympic team. He played, he played here.

Well, you know Santa Rita Park, Santa Cruz church is right there. Somebody was getting baptized, and he goes, "I'm okay, dude, I'm gonna play real quick okay, we should finish at 9:30, it starts at 10". That's what Santa Rita Park does to you, and he made it though, he was there!

CS: We were in a tournament in July. In July, fourth of July tournament we were in. I mean, when I get dark, I get dark. She threatened to put me up, put me in third base with an umbrella.

Because my daughter was getting married that weekend--

JM: Really, and you're still playing? Wow.

CS: --and I didn't go to the rehearsal dinner because I had a tournament. [laughs]

Mom, you're not going? I said, "no, I got a tournament!" [laughs]

MB: Do you remember how the game went?

CS: Yeah, I was, I think, I don't know if we won or not, but I was at the game!

She's the one that kept telling me-- I remember when we were looking for sponsors, I found a tire company, and she wanted to put that sponsor on me, because I got started. Oh, and I made all the uniforms. We were so poor. We were-- when we started the Pacers, we were we didn't have dime one! Bill is the one that, you know, went around. He knew a lot of people. He'd call me up and said, "hey, go see so and so, they'll give you some money". So, I mean, we, so her, her and I went to some little shop and I bought, we bought all the material, and I made all the uniforms.

JM: Wow.

CS: We didn't have any money. When we played with Jack Alice, we had short skirts. But when we had the Pacers, we had shorts, not short shorts--shorts. [laughs]

MB: [laughs]

CS: Yeah, shorts. [laughs] Not short shorts.

JM: And you had a jersey shirt, like a baseball shirt, like a T shirt?

CS: Just a shirt.

JM: Yeah.

CS: You know, and then we had to have a number on it. But we were so happy because Bill was going to coach us, and we finally were-- at that time, you know, Sesame Street was a big thing, you know, for the little kids on TV. So they had Big Bird, of course, you know. Every time she would walk somebody, or she threw a bad pitch or something, he would tell her, "come here, Big Bird!"

JP: My husband.

JM: Well, I think that concludes what we need to do today, you guys. I want to thank you guys.