The University of Texas at Austin Athletics
Hall of Honor
- Induction:
- 2016
Sport: Baseball
Inducted: 2016
If ever there were a perfect example of the standards required for admission into the Longhorn Hall of Honor, it would be Buddy New. When the Hall was founded in 1957, it was intended to recognize not only what an athlete did in the arena, but in his life beyond the game. Such was the case of Buddy New. New came to Texas after an outstanding career as a three-sport high school athlete in Odessa. He arrived at Texas on a full baseball scholarship in the autumn of 1959, as a left-handed hitting first baseman for legendary coach Bibb Falk. He came, however, at a time when the Longhorns (and all Southwest Conference teams) played a very limited schedule of games. So limited in fact, that the 1961 team went 20-5-2, the 1962 team was 22-7 and the 1963 team was 21-7-1. That's fewer than half the games played on most schedules today. All three years, the Longhorns won a Southwest Conference race that included a maximum of only 15 games, so it was hard to get statistics, and for that matter, playing time. That, however, is where the story of Buddy New begins. In the final regular season game in his junior season of 1962, the Longhorns faced rival Texas A&M in a contest at old Clark Field in Austin that would decide the SWC winner, and the team that would advance into the NCAA playoffs. Texas had trailed, 9-2, entering the seventh inning. In the bottom of the eighth, it was 9-3. Buddy New was a substitute first baseman whom Falk had put in the game "to give him a chance to letter." But when he drove a ball off the cliff in centerfield with a runner on and roared home (sliding in with an inside the park home run), he inserted himself smack in the middle of one of the greatest comebacks in Longhorn history. Texas battled on to tie the game, 10-10, going into the 10th inning. There were two outs in the bottom of the inning and nobody was on base when New ripped a ground rule double that bounced over the right field wall, and then scored the winning run on a double, sending Texas into the NCAA playoffs. It turned out to be the second of three teams on which New would play that would carry the Longhorn banner to the College World Series in Omaha. Realizing that professional baseball was not in his future, New earned his Texas degree and went into the manufacturing of cans, and later became a thoroughbred racehorse owner who took three horses to the Kentucky Derby. Despite all his financial success, he never forgot his Texas roots, devoting his time to his family and philanthropic causes and splitting time between Austin, La Jolla, Calif., and Kentucky. Buddy and his wife, Sandy, were significant donors to the remodeling project of UFCU-Disch-Falk field prior to his death due to a brain hemorrhage in 2012. His fame on the playing field was brief, but extremely significant, and his life left a legacy of what it means to be a Texas Longhorn.
