Buryl Baty '46: Champion of the Barrio

10/13/15 UPDATE:  Author Gaines Baty will be at Lone Star Pavilion in College Station at 2:30 p.m. Oct. 23 for a book signing and discussion of "Champion of the Barrio." 

---ORIGINAL STORY BELOW---

"Champion of the Barrio" is the story of Robert Buryl Baty '46, an extraordinary man whose life story is portrayed from the perspectives of nearly 100 individuals who knew him, documented facts, and news reports.

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Baty was a decorated high school athlete and a talented Texas A&M quarterback. He threw a touchdown to tie Texas 14-14 on Thanksgiving Day 1948 at UT's stadium. Tom Landry was playing fullback for UT.

Buryl Baty played on A&M's freshman team in 1942. He went off to war in Europe and then returned to A&M to letter during the 1946-48 seasons.

He then became a high school football coach and in 1950, took over as the head football coach at El Paso's Bowie High School. Football players hailed from the Segundo Barrio and regularly faced extreme (and sometimes violent) prejudice. Baty took a pioneering stand against the rampant bigotry of the era and inspired his athletes to reach for the best inside themselves.

The team fought hard against all odds and won respect. They won important games. But, just as the team was in a position to win a record third district title in 1954, an unthinkable tragedy turned their world upside down.

Forty-four years later, these players acknowledged their former coach's role in molding them into honorable and successful men by dedicating their high school stadium in his name. In 2013, Baty was inducted into the El Paso Athletic Hall of Fame.

Buryl Baty, Coach Raymond Berry and Lowry Inzer Inzer celebrate the Paris Wildcats' 1940 victory over Sherman.

This book is the first released in the Texas A&M University Press Swaim-Paup-Foran Spirit of Sport series, which will examine all aspects of sports at A&M and peer institutions, high school sports, and post-collegiate sports.