Cleburne Railroaders

78

Posted 2026 May 23

Patrick Cleburne (pronounced "clay burn") was born in Ireland in 1828, and moved to the United States in 1851. He landed first in Ohio but soon moved to Arkansas. He became a naturalized American citizen in 1860, and he was so grateful to the United States that he turned traitor almost immediately, joining a secessionist militia before Arkansas had even seceded. When Arkansas got around to seceding a few months later, that militia was absorbed into the Confederate Army. Cleburne proved to be a pretty good commander, and it wasn't long before he had risen to the rank of Major General.

By 1863 Cleburne could see that the Confederacy was losing the war, and came up with what I'm sure he thought was a brilliant idea: let slaves join the army and promise those who joined freedom "within a reasonable time". In early 1864 he actually proposed this to other generals. This went over like the proverbial lead balloon. One commander called the idea "revolting to Southern sentiment, Southern pride, and Southern honor". Another said the idea would "contravene the principles upon which we fight". (Remember these quotes the next time someone tries to tell you the Civil War wasn't about slavery, by the way.) Confederate president Jefferson Davis responded to the suggestion by ordering the generals to not even talk about it. The idea would resurface about a year later when Robert E. Lee suggested it as the Confederacy's only chance to survive. Cleburne probably would have felt vindicated by this but for the minor detail that he couldn't feel anything anymore, having been killed in battle a few months before.

As I said a couple of paragraphs ago, Cleburne had proved to be a pretty good commander. And since many of the soldiers from Johnson County, Texas has served under him, when they returned home after the war and founded a new town it seemed reasonable to them to name the town after him. They couldn't manage to pronounce it right (for some reason the town's name is pronounced "clee burn"), but it's the thought that counts and besides, he was too dead to complain about it. The town remained a fairly small agricultural center for a few years, and then railroads came to town. As a result, over the next forty years the town's size increased sevenfold, which sounds impressive until you realize that it was still only 13,000. Still, a sevenfold increase is a sevenfold increase, and it wouldn't have happened without the railroad, and so it's not surprising that when the city got a baseball team in 1906, the team was dubbed the Railroaders. The current team is of course named after the original team.

(That said, I'm not giving them the "Local" bonus. Lots of teams have a railroad, and while the railroad may have been important to Cleburne, I don't think Cleburne was ever important to the railroad.)

The team has gone all in on the train theme in their stadium. The stadium itself is known as The Depot at Cleburne Station. There is an actual locomotive by the front gates, and a Pullman car and caboose behind the first base bleacher seats. The concession stand is referred to as the Dining Car (I'm a little disappointed that it isn't an actual dining car, but I acknowledge practical considerations may have prevented that). Lots of teams do similar things, of course, but I think the acquisition of actual train cars indicates a certain dedication to the concept above and beyond what most teams do. It's a nice touch.

As for the logo...

Okay, that's not really fair. The logo isn't too bad, and it's certainly an improvement over the previous one, which featured an outline of Texas for no good reason, a standard baseball-in-circle background, and a false claim that this incarnation of the team dates all the way back to 1906. (As previously noted, that's when the first team in Cleburne was founded. This one is less than ten years old, having been founded in 2017.) This logo still feels the need to put a Texan flag in the logo (I remain convinced there's some state law about sports teams doing this; not every team does it, but perhaps there are tax incentives for those who do?), but otherwise it's a decent logo for a team with this name. It's a big capital R drawn to look sort of like a locomotive, which a cowcatcher for the right leg, rivets on the stem, and a nose on the bowl.* So all in all it looks good. I can even almost forgive the flag since logos on the side of a locomotive aren't unheard of and otherwise there'd be a hole there. But I'm only almost willing to forgive it because I'm just so sick of that crap out of Texas. Seriously, guys: You probably think it shows the rest of the country your Texas pride, but to those of us in the other forty-nine states it just looks like you're insecure.

*

Right leg, stem and bowl, incidentally, the technical terms among font designers for those parts of the letters. I looked them up because I suddenly wanted better ways to refer to them than "little diagonal bit at the bottom right", "vertical bar at the left", and "curvy bit at the top right". I wasn't entirely certain there ever were terms for all the parts of letters, but it turns out there are. This makes me wonder if there are actually technical terms for parts of a logo and a team name. I've just been making shit up for twenty-odd years. Maybe I should have looked this up back in the day. Oh well.

Final Score: 50 points.
Penalties: Ers, 26 pts; Letter, 24 pts. Bonuses: None.