This Spring Isn't Very Green

It must have seemed like fall came real early to Texas this year. On April 25 the San Antonio Toros, who may well be the best pro football team in the country outside of the NFL, began their season by whomping the Fort Worth Braves 38-21. It was the first game of the Trans-American League, a spring pro football league composed of Dallas (the Rockets, not the Cowboys), Texarkana, Fort Worth and San Antonio, which barely makes it Trans-Texas.

"You are seeing history made," Henry Hight, the Toros' principal owner, said the day of the game. In saner moments, Hight is a partner in an auto-parts business in San Antonio. He has owned the Toros for four years, during which time the club has compiled a 64-10 record and has been perennial champion of the Texas League, in which it plays, more prosaically, in the fall.

"I think we could give an NFL team a good game," said Hight. "I don't say we could beat Baltimore at its best, but we'd do O.K. against some of the others. But they won't play us. We had a game lined up against the Houston Oiler rookies a couple of years ago. They decided against it at the last moment."

He looked up into the stands of San Antonio's Northeast Stadium, where the game was to be played. A sprinkling of fans had filed in; Northeast seats 10,200 and by game time it was roughly half full—at a $6 top.

The Trans-American League is playing a nine-game schedule ending June 26. As an article in the Toros' program puts it, "Why?" The answer: "1) By playing football in the spring and early summer, the Toros will not be competing with the dozens of other high school, college and pro teams in the area. This lack of competition we believe will be reflected in larger crowds. 2) Recognition for the team and league. This is the first bona fide attempt to play spring football. The Toros feel this will bring added local, state and national attention. 3) For the players' benefit. The spring season will end at approximately the same time NFL camps are opening. It will allow the better players in the league to move directly on to NFL camps."

"We got two players who will have a tryout with Oakland this year," Hight said. "Joe Lewallen, a defensive tackle, and Jerry Oliver, an offensive tackle. I think they can play in the NFL. We don't have as many good players as the NFL does, but we got some just as good. I don't know why they call us 'minor.' Who's to say what's minor and what's major? The NFL owners? What happened to the American dream, where anybody can start small and build big?"

Hight's dream is to get an NFL franchise. Failing that, he would like to expand the Trans-American League and make it a third major league. " San Antonio is the 15th largest city in the country," he said. "Who's to say we can't support a major league team?"

Hight once flirted with the idea of jumping north of the border. "I talked to the commissioner of the Canadian League," he said. "He was interested. We could have worked out the travel all right. It could have been a hell of a deal. When word got out I was interested, I must have got 100 phone calls from Americans in the Canadian League wanting to come to the Toros. But the owners in Canada got a little leery. They figured they'd get beat because I'd get all the Americans and they've got quotas on how many Americans they can use. I told them I'd play a quota of Canadians, but it didn't work out. What I figured was, why should I get run out of my own country?"

Despite his ambitions, Hight is no NFL fan. "I'd like to shoot 'em," he said, meaning the owners. "We're all competing for the dollar and they won't play us. How good are they, anyway? I used to be in love with the Chicago Bears, and I figured when they played AFL clubs they'd kill 'em. But Kansas City murdered the Bears.

"I'm like a mouse fighting an elephant. I try all kinds of gimmicks to put some butts in those seats. I offered O. J. Simpson $15,000 a game to play for us. He asked me did I have the money and I said yes. I had to say yes, even if I didn't. It got a lot of ink."