Local Legends: Hubbard’s Tris Speaker
MLB’s all-time career doubles leader hails from Hubbard, Texas, just 30 miles northeast of Waco.
HUBBARD, Texas (KWTX) - Tris Speaker, one of the best baseball players of all-time, hails from the small town of Hubbard, Texas.
Speaker, who spent 22 years in the big leagues, was a three-time World Series Champion with the Boston Red Sox and the Cleveland Indians. The “Gray Eagle” is fifth all-time in hits with 3,514. The Hall of Fame centerfielder also set one of baseball’s most unbreakable records with 792 doubles.
“That’s amazing that no one has broken that record,”said Texas Sports Hall of Fame curator Jay Black. “He’s like 40 or 50 doubles ahead of Pete Rose, who played for a long time and had a lot of hits, obviously the hit king.”
In 1951, Speaker was inducted into the very first Texas Sports Hall of Fame class. He was also a second ballot inductee into the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1937.
Speaker died of a heart attack while fishing on his boat on Lake Whitney in 1958. Many of his family still live in Hubbard today.
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