Express Field Temporary Team in Texas Collegiate League
June 11, 2020
The Round Rock Express announced that baseball is returning to Dell Diamond in the form of the Round Rock Hairy Men of the Texas Collegiate League (TCL). The club was granted an expansion team for the 2020 TCL season.
Ten teams comprise the league from across Texas and neighboring states. Five minor league clubs are forming teams to join the TCL in 2020, including Amarillo (Double-A affiliate of the San Diego Padres), Frisco (Double-A affiliate of the Texas Rangers), Tulsa (Double-A affiliate of the Los Angeles Dodgers), Round Rock (Triple-A affiliate of the Houston Astros) and San Antonio (Triple-A affiliate of the Milwaukee Brewers).
The league draws from players with one year’s collegiate experience with one remaining year of eligibility. Teams will be comprised of 35 active players for home games and will play a total of 30 games. The names of players and coaches will be announced in approximately one week. The season starts June 30, with the first home game at Dell Diamond on July 7.
“We’ve got so many strong college programs and former high school stars from this area that we can easily put together a solid team,” said Round Rock general manager Tim Jackson, a former TCL player. “We’ll have names you’ll recognize.”
“We want the atmosphere to be as close to an Express game as possible,” Jackson said. “We’re also looking into media opportunities, local and national. We might be about the only baseball going on in July.”
The news is especially welcome, given the uncertainty that surround the return of professional baseball this season. The owners of Major League Baseball (MLB) and the players union have yet to returns in the post-pandemic return of baseball. And the return of minor league baseball is less certain if MLB starts play.
“We still hope for some kind of minor league season, but we’ve got to be aggressive about scheduling new events,” Express president Chris Almendarez said. “Baseball is what we do best. So we will host 15 ballgames.”
The team is name for the Hairy Man legend. Legend has it that a young boy became separated from his parents as they traveled through Round Rock on their westward venture. The boy grew-up to be an unkept man, earning the name the Hairy Man. The Hairy Man would frequently chase away strangers and hide in trees to scare passersby, sometimes sitting in a tree canopy that over-hanged the road while dragging his feet on the top of stagecoaches. One day he fell in front of a stagecoach and was trampled to death. Hair Man Road in Round Rock was named in his memory and is a curvy lane that parallels Brush Creek.