Joe Macko: A Legacy in Minor League Baseball and the Texas Rangers (1928–2014)

Joe Macko, minor league baseball player and manager and longtime clubhouse manager for the Texas Rangers, was born in Port Clinton, Ohio, on February 19, 1928, to John Emory Macko and Barbara Elizabeth (Papcun) Macko. Standing 6’2” and weighing in at 205 pounds, Macko was a slugger, hence his nickname of Smacko. He was primarily a first baseman and secondarily a third baseman, positions usually occupied by power hitters. He hit 281 home runs in various minor leagues.

Education and Early Career

Macko played basketball, football, and baseball at Port Clinton High School, where he earned five varsity letters. After graduating from high school in 1946, he spent a year playing baseball and basketball on scholarship at Tiffin University in Ohio. In 1948 he began his professional career at age twenty after signing with the Cleveland Indians, who assigned him to the Batavia Clippers of the Class D PONY (Pennsylvania-Ontario-New York) League. In addition to playing first base at Batavia, Macko also pitched in fifteen games and recorded six victories in thirteen decisions. At that level his starting salary was a mere $150 per month, but he earned extra money by serving as the team’s bus driver, thanks to the experience he gained as a part-time truck driver while at Port Clinton High School. In the off-season he earned money by playing semi-pro basketball.

Advancement through the minor leagues to the major leagues was particularly difficult at the beginning of Macko’s career. The number of major league teams had remained at sixteen since 1901 while the American population had grown apace, players were returning from World War II military service, and major league teams began to sign Black players in 1947. Cleveland’s strong talent pool also limited Macko’s chances at reaching the major leagues. The Indians were on their way to a World Series championship in 1948, and during Macko’s association with the franchise they were second only to the Yankees in American League victories. Though there was not much room at the top, year by year Macko rose through Cleveland’s minor league affiliates, from Class D in Batavia to Class C with the Burlington Indians of the Central Association in 1949. In 1950 he rose to Class A with the Dayton Indians of the Central League. In 1951 he joined the Wichita Indians of the Western League and then went to Double-A with a late season promotion to the Dallas Eagles of the Texas League. He hit the first of his 141 Texas League home runs for the Eagles.

Height of Minor League Career

In 1952, his first full Texas League season, Macko hit sixteen home runs for the Eagles, who won the Texas League pennant. His performance was good enough to get him promoted to the Indianapolis Indians of the Triple-A American Association in 1953. Playing full-time, his power statistics of twenty home runs and seventy-four runs batted in were decent, but his .234 batting average was not enough to justify keeping him at that level, so he returned to the Texas League in 1954, this time with the Tulsa Oilers. Macko embarked on solid back-to-back minor league seasons with the Oilers. He hit fifty-seven home runs and drove home 194 runs across 1954 and 1955.

In 1956 Macko returned to the Dallas Eagles, where he had his best season in home runs (thirty-six) while driving in ninety-seven runs. He also had a sojourn (fifty plate appearances for the San Diego Padres) in the Pacific Coast League (PCL), the only league to ever be given the “Open” classification. At that time the PCL was considered by many baseball pundits as closer to the big leagues than other minor leagues. Macko split the 1957 season between the Portland Beavers of the PCL and the Louisville Colonels of the Triple-A American Association. The results were mediocre, but Portland, a Chicago Cubs affiliate, retained him to play for the Fort Worth Cats in 1958. At age thirty, Macko found himself back in the Texas League. In a pennant-winning season, he led the Cats in home runs with twenty-four.

Macko had a notable season in 1959. He began the year with the Cats, the franchise having been upgraded to Triple-A status in the American Association. In early August he was traded to the Minneapolis Millers, also of the American Association. As a member of the Millers, he helped his new team beat the Omaha Cardinals (4–2 in a best of seven format) in the first round of the playoffs; then he helped them polish off the Cats (4–3) in the championship round. Macko, batting clean-up, hit five home runs in the two post-season rounds. The Millers then went on to face the Havana Sugar Kings in the Junior World Series, the annual match-up between the International League and the American Association to determine a Triple-A champion. The series was plagued by frigid weather in Minneapolis and political turmoil in Havana (the franchise moved to Jersey City the following year), but the seven-game series proved to be a thriller, with two games going into extra innings and the seventh game ending in a Havana walk-off victory.

Managing and Coaching Career

In 1960 Macko remained in the American Association and spent the season with the Houston Buffs, who were now a Cubs affiliate. He hit twenty-seven home runs and drove home ninety-one runs, but it was obvious that, at age thirty-two, he was never going to be promoted to the major leagues. Macko decided on a career change. The Cubs signed him to serve as the player–manager of the St. Cloud Rox of the Class C Northern League. In 1962 he was bumped up to the Wenatchee Chiefs of the Class B Northwest League, and in 1963 he was back in the Texas League and helming the Amarillo Gold Sox. Through it all, Macko continued to play. The last seven home runs of his Texas League career were for the Gold Sox. He even went back to the mound for twenty-two appearances during the three-year span.

In 1964 Macko finally made it to the big leagues, albeit as a member of the Cubs’ College of Coaches, an ill-fated experiment begun in 1961. Having played and managed for the Cubs’ minor league affiliates since 1957, he was already familiar with most of the team’s personnel. After the season he went to work as a salesman for Hamm Brewing Company in Chicago.

In 1966, having made his permanent home in the Dallas area, Macko joined the Dallas-Fort Worth Spurs of the Texas League as a business manager and ultimately became general manager in 1970. The Spurs were created when the Cubs shifted their Fort Worth Cats franchise to Arlington, midway between Fort Worth and Dallas, the Dallas minor league franchise having moved to Vancouver (see DALLAS-FORT WORTH MINOR LEAGUE BASEBALL). In 1970, when the Spurs were a Baltimore Orioles affiliate, Macko made a brief comeback as a player, going hitless in ten plate appearances at age forty-two.

Texas Rangers and Family Life

In 1972, when the Washington Senators moved to Arlington and became the Texas Rangers, Macko found employment with the new team. He served as their clubhouse manager from 1973 through 1994, after which he was transferred to the visiting clubhouse, where he remained through 2001. Although he officially retired, he made hundreds of public appearances on the Rangers’ behalf as their goodwill ambassador. Smacko’s, an Arlington restaurant he started in 1980 with his son Steve, added to his prominence in the community.

On July 26, 1952, Macko married Dorothy Mae Kurtz, whom he met while playing for the Burlington Indians. They had two daughters, Karen and Linda, and two sons, Steve and Mike. Macko was preceded in death by his wife, who passed away in 2007, as well as his son Steve, who had also played baseball professionally. Steve starred in baseball at Bishop Dunne High School in Dallas as well as Panola College in Carthage. He later transferred to Baylor, where he led the Bears to the College World Series in 1977. Selected in the fifth round of the major league draft by the Chicago Cubs that year, he played briefly with the Cubs in 1979 and 1980 before succumbing at age twenty-seven to testicular cancer. In their son’s name, Joe and Dorothy Macko created a scholarship fund which endowed baseball scholarships at Bishop Dunne High School, Baylor University, the University of Texas at Arlington, and Texas Wesleyan University.

Joe Macko passed away on December 26, 2014, at age eighty-six at the Stayton Assisted Living Center in Fort Worth. Along with his wife and son Steve, he was interred in Moore Memorial Gardens in Arlington. Macko was inducted into the Texas Baseball Hall of Fame in 1984, the Texas League Hall of Fame in 2008, and the Tiffin University Hall of Fame in 2010. He was also inducted into the Port Clinton City School District Athletic Hall of Fame.