The Six Lives of the Kitty League

They had names like the Pant Makers, the Railroader, the Hoppers, and the Swamp Angels. They played in wood and concrete ballparks with names like Hook’s Field, Cyclone Park, Miller Field, and Kentucky Park. They were the teams of the Kentucky, Illinois, and Tennessee Baseball League. Scattered over fifty years, they represented the small cities and towns in some of the most isolated regions of the three states. Over the first half of this century, and through six lives, the “Kitty League” earned the respect of the baseball world while forging its story into that sport’s long and colorful history.

The Kitty League was first formed in 1902 under the guiding hand of Frank Bassett, a young salesman from Hopkinsville, Kentucky. During his lengthy presidency of the league, Bassett studied medicine, became a doctor, and would later be elected county judge-executive of Christian County, Kentucky. When young Christian Countians decided to tie the knot Dr. Bassett administered the book test as well as the marriage service.

The first player Bassett signed to the league was a 20-year-old catcher he saw play on the sandlot fields around Huntsville, Alabama. The young receiver was tough and handled games like a seasoned catcher, and Bassett knew he had what it took to make Hopkinsville the anchor team in the new league. His name was Charles Evard Street and after his Kitty League days he would go on to have a long career with the Washington Senators. He caught Walter “Big Train” Johnson’s aspirin-like fastballs and became better known as Gabby Street. Although his big league career was stellar, he was lucky to collect his $35-a-month salary from the 1903 Hopkinsville Moguls.

Besides having a team in Hopkinsville, the first season of the Kitty League included teams in Paducah and Henderson in Kentucky, Clarksville and Jackson in Tennessee, and Cairo, Illinois. Financial records of the first year are not known to exist; however, two events indicate that it was successful. First, in what would become the most important barometer or success for the Kitty, it played ball the next season. Secondly, the owners met in the back room of a Cairo, Illinois saloon to divvy up the league’s profits. Witnesses recount the meeting stretching far into the night until it concluded in a fist fight among the team owners.

Although the first season seems to have been profitable, the following season must have been a bust because the league folded after the 1906 season. The die was cast, however. The league would come and go several more times, just like the west Kentucky summers it filled with entertainment, talent and competition. Earl Ruby, a long time sports columnist for the Louisville Courier-Journal, once wrote, “Born of a fight, it died with its boots on every time and came back swinging on each revival.”

In 1911, C.G. Gosnell, a native of Vincennes, Indiana reformed the Kitty League, this time including two teams from the Hoosier state. Fans in west Kentucky, hungry for professional baseball, launched door-to-door fund-raising campaigns to start local teams. Such efforts allowed Owensboro, Kentucky, which became one of the most successful franchises in the Kitty, to field its first team in the league for the 1913 season. Other cities were not as supportive as Owensboro, so the league dissolved because of dwindling profits and lack of interest. Dr. Bassett made another go of the league in 1916, but the looming presence of the war in Europe allowed only one season of life for the Kitty.

The league started to life again several years after World War I. In 1922, Mayfield, Kentucky opened its first season in the Kitty with adulation and fanfare. On opening day local businesses opened only for the morning, and special excursions were offered by the railroad so people could go to the Mayfield ball yard.

The team was called the Pant Makers because of the clothing mills in town, and they played their games at Cyclone Park, a wooden grandstand just north of town. A year before the city’s debut in the Kitty League, the citizens of Mayfield built the ballpark near the Illinois Central Railroad tracks. In March 1922 a tornado ripped the tin roof from the grandstand and smashed it to bits on the ground behind the ballpark. It was quickly repaired, but always known thereafter as Cyclone Park.

The fanfare did not last, and the Kitty used up its fourth life by 1924. Again, it seems to have been the lack of attendance that sent the league into another dormancy. Some might say that the people of the region were apathetic baseball fans, but it is likely to be something more significant than a disregard for the nation’s pastime. It is more likely to be a tangible shift in the social condition of the region.

Mayfield had been a farming community for almost a century. Tobacco and cotton farmers brought their crops to this rural Kentucky town to sell, bought the next season’s supplies, and then returned to their farms. In the summer, if their crops and farms were in order, they had time during the hottest part of the day to go to town and watch baseball. Mayfield had changed, however. Cotton and clothing mills had taken root in the once quiet town, and much more rigid working standards took hold. While small businesses and shopkeepers could turn their employees loose to watch an afternoon ballgame, the manufacturers could not afford to do so. Without adequate lighting systems for the ballparks, professional baseball disappeared from west Kentucky and Tennessee, and southern Illinois, which spelled doom for the Kitty League.

Baseball, however, flourished. Semipro and “Sunday leagues” sprang up in the Kitty League towns and the smaller towns of the region. In 1926 the Modern Woodmen of America fielded a team featuring several old Kitty League players and a curve-ball-throwing teenager named Jack Erwin. Erwin would later work his way up to the Detroit Tigers and would (many locals claim) strike out Babe Ruth during a spring training game.

Semipro baseball thrived. The teams usually played only on Sundays so fans could watch baseball after church. They also had no league rules regulating the kinds of players they had to have on the team, which allowed the Modern Woodmen team to use a teenage pitcher and other players that had played several seasons of professional baseball. The Kitty League, on the other hand, was a “developmental league” (also known as a Class D league) for the major league teams, so they had strict roster guidelines to follow. Each team was allowed six “veterans” on a 15-man roster, while the rest had to be playing in their first or second season of professional ball. The result was better play ing the semipro leagues in the region, which is why they outlasted the Kitty League.

In 1935, after an 11-year hiatus, the Kitty League came storming back, once again under the leadership of Frank Bassett. The old and practically forgotten league roared back to life and started into its golden age. The newly reformed league had teams in Portageville, Missouri, Paducah and Hopkinsville in Kentucky, and Union City, Jackson, and Lexington in Tennessee for its first season. In 1936 Henry Wise moved his Portageville Pirates team to Owensboro and named them the Oilers, and Mayfield and Fulton, Kentucky each put a team in the league. The Lexington, Tennessee team moved to Bowling Green, Kentucky in 1929 and took the name Barons.

Several very fine ball players got their start in the league during the high tide of the Kitty. Vern Stephens played shortstop for the Mayfield Clothiers and led them to the 1937 league championship. He belted 30 homers while hitting .361, and drove in 123 runs for the Mayfield team. The St. Louis Cardinals’ Hall of Fame second baseman Red Schoendienst broke into the professional ranks with the Union City, Tennessee team. He was deft with the bat and foiled many batters with his prowess in the infield.

Over the next seven seasons the Kitty enjoyed increasing popularity as well as healthy returns at the ticket windows. Many teams were playing in new ballparks and under new lighting systems that afforded working class fans nightly trips to the ballpark. Everything looked promising for the Kitty, but Japan’s surprise attack on Pearl Harbor on the morning of December 7, 1941 sealed the fate of the Kitty League. The war dried up the talent pool in all of baseball; minor leagues like the Class D leagues evaporated. The Kitty ceased operations on June 16, 1942 because of a lack of ball players.

Once the war was over, the Kitty League came swinging back to life in 1946. Soldiers returned home, and many baseball-players-turned-soldiers tried to resume their professional careers. Many spent four years playing in the army, so they were well-equipped for professional baseball. For a few years after World War II, Kitty fans were treated to a different kind of baseball player. They were bigger, stronger, and more experienced that the players of the pre-war era. Men like Barry Craig, a hard-throwing southpaw from Knoxville, Tennessee were assigned to teams such as Mayfield in the Kitty when they were in their mid-20s. The quality of play in all minor leagues was excellent. Fans appreciated that and pushed through the turnstiles in record numbers, and many leagues shattered attendance records in 1946, 1947 and 1948.

Post-war Kitty League fans were treated to several different future major league stars. Dusty Rhodes, who played for the Hopkinsville Hoppers in 1947, hit a pinch-hit homer in game one of the 1954 World Series for the New York Giants. In 1954 Tony Kubek played outfield and shortstop for the Owensboro Oilers at the tender age of 17.

The love affair with the Kitty League did not last. Throughout the first half of the 1950s attendance leveled off and then started to decline. Talent in the league remained good, and cities like Mayfield and Owensboro continued to improve their ballparks to comfort the fans. Ultimately, they could not compete with three new components that forever changed the face of southern popular culture — drive-in movie theaters, air conditioning and, most significantly, television.

The first, drive-in movies, eroded the support of young baseball fans. For whatever reasons, taking a date to a movie, and staying in one’s own automobile, had a greater attraction than a night spent at the ballpark!  The effect of the drive-in theater paled in comparison to the other two inventions. Air conditioning and television proved to be a lethal combination to the Kitty League. People were more  likely to remain in their air-conditioned homes and watch a whole new realm of entertainment on their televisions than to spend a hot evening at the ballpark. The Kitty finished its sixth and final life by 1955. Professional baseball has remained extinct in west Kentucky ever since.