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‒ CITY OF SUGAR LAND AND FORT BEND COUNTY HISTORICAL COMMISSION ORAL HISTORY COMMITTEE Interviewee: T e r r y P u h l Interview Date: 05/13/2019 Interviewer: Jane Goodsill Transcriber: Marsha Smith Comments: City of Sugar Land Oral History Project and Fort Bend County Historical Commission 15 Pages This oral history is copyrighted 2019, by the Fort Bend County Historical Commission. All Rights Reserved. For information contact: Fort Bend County Historical Commission, Attn: Chairman-Oral History Committee, 301 Jackson St., 5th Floor, Richmond, TX, 77469. Terms and Conditions These oral histories do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the County Historical Commission or Fort Bend County. This file may not be modified or changed in any way without the express written permission of the Fort Bend County Historical Commission. This file may not be redistributed for profit. Please do not 'hot link' to this file. Jackie and Terry Puhl Please do not repost this file. Terry Puhl Page 2 05/13/2019 Transcript GOODSILL: Could we start with your date of birth? PUHL: July 8, 1956. I was born and lived in the city of Melville, Saskatchewan. It was a city of 5,000 and is a railway and farming community. The Canadian National Railway runs right through it so that was the main employer and still is. I knew everybody and everybody knew me. My dad, Frank Puhl, was a farmer and then he became the owner of the Massey Ferguson dealership and continued to farm. My dad was born in Melville in 1915 after his parents came over from Hungary. My mom’s maiden name was Margaret Gulash, a true Hungarian name. She was from Manitoba, the province just east of Saskatchewan, in the Swan River area. The two families, being Hungarian, knew each other. My mom is still alive. She's 94. My dad passed away when he was almost 94, about 10 years ago. GOODSILL: Tell me why they would leave Hungary? PUHL: I have no idea why my Puhl grandparents left when they did. Probably for the opportunity to get land. My grandparents had a considerable amount of farmland out in that area. I always tell people they lived quite comfortably during the 1930s because they grew poppies and shipped the poppy seeds down to eastern Canada, which was a very profitable business. They did not experience the Dirty Thirties like others did. EDITOR’S NOTE: Few countries were affected as severely as Canada during what became known as the "Dirty Thirties," due to Canada's heavy dependence on raw material and farm exports, combined with a crippling Prairies drought known as the Dust Bowl. --Wikepedia GOODSILL: Do you have brothers and sisters? PUHL: I have three sisters and one brother and they all live in Canada. I'm the second youngest. First was Delores, then Gerald, Valerie, me (my given name is Terrance), and then Catherine. GOODSILL: Tell me what your life was like growing up. © 2019 Fort Bend County Historical Commission Terry Puhl Page 3 05/13/2019 PUHL: My dad was quite active with all the baseball teams that I played on. We were very close to our relatives. All Hungarian on both sides so we spent a lot of our weekends with our relatives. My dad was a very hard worker and my mom raised the family. My dad was tough. When he said to do something, you did it. Growing up in Melville you had the flexibility to go anywhere you wanted. It was a safe environment with no issues at all. I grew up in the Catholic Church so I went to Catholic school all the way until high school. When I was in high school, they created a comprehensive school comprised of both the public and Catholic schools. It was grades 10 through 12 and my class was the first class to go through all three years. There was a very healthy competition between the public and the Catholic schools. I knew a lot of the kids because I had played baseball with them. GOODSILL: Did everybody in your family play sports? PUHL: They played some sports but not at the levels that I did. In high school I played basketball, volleyball, football. I was the quarterback on the football team and I thought that was what I was going to do, going to college at the University of Saskatchewan. But when I was 15 I went to a baseball try-out camp in a visiting city and the Cincinnati Reds said they would like to sign me. But at that time, in Canada, you were ineligible to sign at the age of 15. That kind of lit a fire under me. WOW! – baseball could be a potential career. However, when I was 17 and could sign with parental signature, the Reds didn't want to sign me. (laughs) But the Houston Astros did. I still remember the signing. We were playing in a national tournament in Barrhead, Alberta, and I was named the Most Valuable Player in the tournament and the Most Valuable Pitcher. The scout, Wayne Morgan, asked if I was interested in a professional career. I said, "Absolutely!" He said, "Well, I’ll come to your house in two weeks." I was starting my senior year. Two weeks to the day, I came back from school and he was sitting in our kitchen with my mom and dad talking. He wanted to go out to the local baseball field so he could see if I were throwing properly, how I ran, and how I hit. He said, "I know a lot about you but I want to make sure your arm is okay because you pitched a lot in that tournament." I ran though my paces and when I came back from that little try-out he sat me down in the kitchen and said, "I'd like to offer you a contract." © 2019 Fort Bend County Historical Commission Terry Puhl Page 4 05/13/2019 It required my signature and both my parents' signatures. My mom would not sign. She said later that she knew that if she signed, I would never come back, I would be gone. She had really good insight because I never really did go back after I left. My dad signed and she walked out of the kitchen, and I signed her name. (laughs) So that's how we moved on. The nice thing about Canada and the U. S. is there are so many similarities. It was a cultural shock for me to come down to the U. S. because whatever there is in Canada, there is ten times more of it down here. It doesn't matter what it is. Opportunities are ten times greater. It was a tough first year because it was the first time I'd ever been away from home. I didn't see anyone in my family for six months! I spent that time in Florida and in Virginia. GOODSILL: What is the day-to-day life of a young ballplayer like? Where did you live? What did you eat? PUHL: I ended up renting a house with three other players. We cooked our own meals, washed our own clothes, and rode the bus. There were a LOT of bus rides. GOODSILL: Did you have a signing bonus? PUHL: Yes. I did get a signing bonus. I got $1,000 to sign, a pair of spikes and a new glove. (chuckles) GOODSILL: Did you feel rich? PUHL: I did! But it was an opportunity that I knew I probably would not get again. I had to move on it. With the $500 they paid us a month I actually saved some money. (laughing) We lived pretty sparingly in the minor leagues. But it was okay. I just had to take care of myself. It's not like I had any other distractions. It was baseball, eight hours a day. GOODSILL: A lot of athletes today do weight training and all that. Was that a part of it back then? PUHL: It was a little bit different back then. Nowadays if you are a high draft pick, you are getting paid a lot of money upfront in a signing bonus. You have the flexibility to do a lot of things. I didn't. We did everything on our own when it came to conditioning. We didn't have a trainer other than the one on the team who took care of injuries. © 2019 Fort Bend County Historical Commission Terry Puhl Page 5 05/13/2019 It was a different era of baseball. It was old school. No nonsense. If you caused trouble you got your pink slip unless you were just such a great player. You had to do things the way they wanted you to do it. And that was okay. It wasn't like they were asking you do to anything drastic. But I was focused. I took care of myself. GOODSILL: How did you take care of yourself? PUHL: I made sure I got my rest and I ate okay and I didn't horse around. One thing about professional athletes, at least in baseball, if you try to burn the candle at both ends you can get away with it once in a while. But if you are doing it on a regular basis, you can't survive. It is just SO competitive. There are so many people who ARE taking care of themselves. So that was my life for the 3-1/2 years I spent in the minor leagues.