Site of Phillips Field/Majors Stadium

Monty Stratton, whom the plaque names as pitching one game here in 1950, grew up near Greenville and pitched for the Chicago White Sox from 1934 to 1938. In 1937 he went 15 and 5 with a 2.40 earned run average and made the All-Star Game. A hunting accident on November 27, 1938 led to the loss of a leg. With his wife as catcher he worked out a new pitching motion, and in 1946 he won 18 games for Sherman in the East Texas League. Jimmy Stewart played him in the 1948 film The Stratton Story.

What the plaque says

Site of Phillips Field/Majors Stadium In 1929, Eula Lasater Phillips donated $3,500 to the Greenville Athletic Council to build an athletic field at this site in memory of her late husband, Frank Phillips. The first athletic event in Phillips Field was a football game between the Greenville High School Lions and the Leopards of Dallas Oak Cliff on Oct. 4, 1929. In 1930, the land transferred to the city, with management by the school district. Here, celebrated Coach Henry Frnka led the school football team to an undefeated season and the state championship in 1933. In 1946, the field was realigned to become the home of a minor league baseball team, the Majors, named for Truett Majors, the first Greenville resident killed in World War II. More than 160,000 people attended Majors games in 1946, and Greenville fielded a number of competitive teams in the late 1940s. In 1947, the football stands were razed and replaced with a baseball stadium. On April 10, 1949, the Majors hosted an exhibition game against the New York Yankees, defeating them 4-3. Among those who participated for the Yankees that day were Casey Stengel, manager, and Joe DiMaggio in center field. Another baseball great who played here was Monty Stratton, a Greenville native, who pitched a game for the Majors in 1950. Attendance at Majors games declined by 1950, and the team folded before the following season. Reorganized minor league teams, also named the Majors, played here in 1953 and 1957. Youth and amateur leagues used the field until the property sold in 1964 and the stadium was demolished. Today, the stadium's arched entryway, built by the Works Progress Administration in 1940, serves as a reminder of the countless athletes and fans who gathered here in the spirit of competition. (2003)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Audie Murphy / American Cotton Museum — 1.3 mi
  A Greenville museum of Hunt County's military heroes, including Audie Murphy, and of cotton, which keeps the engine of what it says was the world's largest inland cotton compress.
• Rockwall County Historical Foundation & Museum — 25 mi
  A small museum in Harry Myers Park that keeps the evidence on Rockwall's rock wall, sandstone dikes that geologists call natural and folk tales call built.
• Cooper Lake State Park — 29 mi
  Two units on Jim Chapman Lake, a Corps reservoir proposed in the late 1930s, stalled by a lawsuit until 1984 and dedicated in 1991, with a 10.5-mile equestrian trail and wildlife land around it.

More markers nearby

• The Seven Courthouses of Hunt County — 0.3 mi
• Lallie P. Carlisle — 0.4 mi
• Greenville's Electric Light Plant — 0.5 mi
• Greenville — 0.5 mi