On May 11, 1963, the loyal alumni of Oglethorpe University gathered at historic Hermance Stadium on the outskirts of Atlanta, Georgia, for a joyful occasion. They dedicated the verdant two-acre athletic flats—set deep in a natural amphitheater bounded by stair-shaped rubble-cement stands behind home plate—as Anderson Field. The guest of honor was a slightly jug-eared octogenarian, Coach Frank Anderson. Affectionately hailed on campus as the “father of Oglethorpe athletics” and more widely known as an illustrious “dean of Southern college baseball coaches,” he had long since retired. “In dedication to the zeal and talent of Frank B. Anderson, Sr.,” a bronze plaque reads, “who during his years as head baseball coach 1916–1944 helped place the name of Oglethorpe University within the highest ranks of College Baseball, the athletic field you overlook is hereby named Anderson Field.”[fn]“Anderson Field to Be Dedicated,” The Flying Petrel (National Alumni Association of Oglethorpe University, Atlanta, Georgia) 45:6 (April 1963) 5–6; “Anderson Field Dedication,” Albany (Georgia) Herald, 28 May 1963. Archives, Weltner Library, Oglethorpe University, Atlanta, Georgia.[/fn]

Frank Anderson, 81, looked out on the field where tiny Oglethorpe had won two Southern intercollegiate championships. “I was there [in 1916] when the school opened,” he recalled. It was not long before Anderson was to develop a powerhouse baseball program known as giant killers. The venerable coach briefly reminisced about his best Oglethorpe player, the legendary Luke Appling, who later became one of the greatest Depression-era shortstops in a Hall of Fame career with the Chicago White Sox. The old coach delivered one of his last quoted statements in 1963 at an Oglethorpe sports banquet. With clear blue eyes twinkling in his leathery face, Anderson exhorted the young men in his audience, “Dreams do come true . . . so keep on dreaming.”[fn]Ibid.[/fn] Anderson died three years after the field was dedicated in his honor.

Born on June 16, 1882, on a family farm near Powder Springs in Cobb County, Georgia, about seven miles from the Douglas County line, Frank Buttner Anderson grew up dreaming about baseball. His family moved to nearby Douglasville in Douglas County in 1890, when the baseball craze in America was underway. Anderson excelled not only on the ballfield but also in the classroom. In 1900 he enrolled at the University of Georgia (UGA) in Athens. He played three years of varsity baseball and was All-Southern second baseman in 1903 and 1904, when he captained the team.[fn]“Georgia’s All-Time Baseball Record, 1886–1949,” University of Georgia 1950 Media Guide, University of Georgia Athletic Department Records, Athens, Georgia.[/fn]

At UGA, Frank Anderson established an exemplary standard of the “gentleman” athlete that he was to encourage in all young men who later were to play for him as coach. He always stressed running for conditioning; indeed, his college record for the 440-yard dash was 51 seconds on an oval track, which was not to be broken for 30 years, and then on a straightaway. The ultimate recognition of Frank Anderson as a college gentleman athlete was his election by his peers into the UGA Sphinx honorary society—patterned after Skull and Bones at Yale—which was limited each year to only 13 outstanding young men.[fn]Program, Annual Awards Banquet, State of Georgia Sports Hall of Fame, Inc. Atlanta Biltmore Hotel, December 9, 1966; Bill Clark, “Hall Inducts Anderson, Suggs, Butts and Shiver,” Atlanta Constitution, 10 December 1966, 10. Anderson was inducted posthumously, having died about a month before, and his son Eddie accepted the award. Other inductees in 1966 were UGA football coach Wallace Butts, All-American I. M. “Chick” Shiver, and golfer Louise Suggs, amateur and LPGA champion.[/fn] His greatest sports moment as a collegian was on April 26, 1903, when he hit a ninth-inning, two-out home run to tie the game against arch-rival Georgia Tech at old Brisbane Park on Formwalt Street in Atlanta. With Tech leading 3–0 and just one out to go, Atlanta sportswriter Morgan Blake later recalled, fans had begun to “file to the turnstiles,” but Anderson “pulled a Frank Merriwell on Tech.” What happened was truly the stuff of baseball dreams.[fn]Morgan Blake, “Frank Anderson Pulled a ‘Frank Merriwell’ on Tech in the Ninth Inning: Thrilling Rally by Georgia with Count 3–0 Against Her in the Last Round—Anderson Tied the Score with Home Run over Left Field Fence—Game Was Played at Brisbane Park,” unidentified clipping; “Georgia Wins from Tech, by a Spurt in the Ninth and Tenth: Varsity Wins Her Third Game—Frank Anderson the Hero of the Occasion.” The latter article appears to be from the UGA student newspaper The Reporter, which was the predecessor to The Red and Black. Georgia’s 5–3 victory, the article relates, was “one of the hottest finishes ever seen on a baseball diamond.” Unidentified clippings, both from the Frank Anderson Scrapbook, Archives, Weltner Library, Oglethorpe University, Atlanta, Georgia. Frank Merriwell, to whom writers compared the young Anderson, was a mythical All-American heroic character created by Gilbert Patten (under the pseudonym of Burt L. Standish) for Street and Smith publishers about 1895. He was “frank for frankness, merry for a happy disposition and well for abounding health and vitality.” See Susan Ikenberg, “Education for Fun and Profit: Traditions of Popular College Fiction in the United States, 1875–1945,” in Susan Huddleston Edgerton, ed., Imagining the Academy: Higher Education and Popular Culture (New York: Routledge Falmer, 2005), 53.[/fn]

The story, as told with marvelous hyperbole by a UGA student correspondent, was to take on legendary proportions. Anderson was in a pressure-packed situation, but it “only made him smile.” And then, with a mighty swing, he “lifted the next pitch high and dry over the left-field fence and chased around the bases like the bailiff was after him.” After he crossed home plate there was reportedly so much excitement “that the game had to give way for a few minutes to the hundred or more men [fans] who rushed the field to embrace Frank.” Tech supporters bitterly alleged that the homer was the result of luck. The 3–3 score meant that “new life was injected into the team and victory was assured for the Red and Black.”[fn]Blake, “Frank Anderson Pulled a ‘Frank Merriwell.’”[/fn] Indeed, UGA won the game; Anderson’s teammates, in the custom of the times, later awarded Anderson a medal for his achievement, and it became one of his most prized sports mementos. More than twenty-five years later, UGA seniors were still telling underclassmen the classic baseball story of Frank’s home run.[fn]Willard Neal, “Biggest Thrills in Baseball,” Atlanta Journal Magazine, 24 May 1931, 11.[/fn]

After receiving his A.B. degree in 1904, Anderson began coaching in Georgia prep schools. In his first assignment, in 1904–5 with the University School for Boys at Stone Mountain, Anderson’s Bluebirds compiled a 12–1 championship record. Thus he began a forty-year coaching career and the first of his many championship teams. In five years of prep-school coaching, Anderson always held the title Athletics Director and Mathematics Professor. He believed that mental discipline was vital to learning mathematics and to playing sports, and he thought that academic and athletic endeavors should be closely related. Anderson never liked the term “star” and preferred to call his players “gentlemen” athletes.[fn]MS 23, box 19, folder 5, p. 17, Earle J. Moore Collection, Archives, Weltner Library, Oglethorpe University, Atlanta, Georgia (hereafter Moore Collection). Earle J. Moore graduated from Winder (Georgia) High in 1940 and remembered when baseball was such an integral part of life in the state that businesses regularly closed on Wednesday afternoons to allow employees and customers to watch small-town competition. Moore attended Oglethorpe University on a baseball scholarship and was a 1943 alumnus. He pitched in the last game Frank Anderson coached. Afterward, Moore played service baseball for the U.S. Army Lawson General Hospital team in Chamblee, Georgia. He became a mathematics teacher and coach at various secondary schools in the North Georgia area, including Woodward Academy, Douglas County High, and Rabun County High, where he became principal. Moore was a lifelong devotee of Frank Anderson and, like his coach, loved both academics and all sports, especially baseball. In retirement Coach Moore undertook an ambitious research project and completed an unpublished 858-page typewritten manuscript, complete with appendixes, index, and illustrations, entitled “Petrel Glory: The Early Athletic History of Oglethorpe University.” It deals primarily with Oglethorpe football and baseball, and Part I is entitled “Coach Frank B. Anderson, Sr.” The Earle J. Moore Collection consists of twenty-two boxes in a rich archive that has never been used for publication.[/fn]

Anderson married Lorena Walton Brown in Athens in 1905—she had attended the Lucy Cobb Institute there and was a UGA baseball fan of his—and the newlyweds moved to Thomaston, Georgia. Frank and Lorena raised a family of five boys, all of whom played college baseball as second basemen, like their father.[fn]Willard Neal, “Oglethorpe Coach Makes Stars: Frank Anderson Has Sent Twelve Men to the Major Leagues and Has Coached Twenty-one Players Who Have Entered Professional Baseball. In Addition He Has a Family of Five Second Basemen,” Atlanta Journal Magazine, 3 July 1927, 13. (The figure of twelve men “sent to the Major Leagues” apparently includes some players who signed but did not play.)[/fn] Anderson taught and coached at R. E. Lee Institute and in 1905–6 won his second prep-school championship, with a 12–2 record. There Coach Anderson recruited what he later called “[his] first real prospect.” Paul Stowers, Anderson remembered, “was six feet and five inches tall, as slender as a rail, and could throw a baseball like [a gun shoots] a bullet.” The coach, having somehow found Stowers guarding convicts on a chain gang in Upson County, Georgia, immediately brought him to R. E. Lee as a pitcher. “Connie Mack signed him right out of school,” Anderson remembered. Stowers later had a minor-league career, mostly in the South, from 1907 to 1912, winning ten games or more for four seasons.[fn]Unattributed, “Peachtree Road Big Leaguers: Frank Anderson Brought Plowboys, Waiters and School Kids to Oglethorpe and Turned Them into Big League Players,” Atlanta Journal Magazine, 18 May 1941; “Paul Stowers,” www.baseball-reference.com (accessed 21 December 2009).[/fn]

Anderson’s success as a prep-school championship coach put him much in demand throughout Georgia, and in 1906–7 he assumed duties at Gordon Military Institute in Barnesville. Assessing the talent, Coach Anderson scheduled a game between his juniors and seniors before the season opened. He had seen young Bradley Hogg, who had a “peculiar sidearm delivery,” playing catch on campus and, on an inspired hunch, asked him to pitch. “Nobody could hit it,” Anderson chuckled, so Hogg “pitched nearly all our games that spring and we never lost a one.” After a stellar career at Mercer University in Macon, Hogg played in the National League for Boston and Chicago. He was also successful in six years in the minor leagues, with a .620 winning percentage and two twenty-win seasons, including a 27–13 record in 1917 with Los Angeles of the Pacific Coast League. Hogg’s best major-league season was 1918, when he was 13–13 with three shutouts for the Phillies.[fn]Neal, “Oglethorpe Coach Makes Stars”; “Bradley Hogg,” www.baseballreference.com (accessed 22 December 2009).[/fn] 

In 1909, Anderson’s prep-school success was so great that UGA invited him to return to Athens to serve as head baseball coach. Anderson always regarded a 1910 contest hosted by Tech at The Flats, the historic old playing field in Atlanta, as the most exciting game he had ever coached. It was an ultimate defensive struggle, a 0–0 tie that went fourteen innings until the game was called. The two starting pitchers struck out ten and twelve batters. The bases were loaded seven times, yet superior defense prevailed. “There were a dozen times when it looked as if the tie might be broken,” Anderson recalled, “but the fielders worked as sensationally as the pitchers and every scoring threat was killed.” He was particularly proud of his catcher, who cleanly fielded seven bunts in front of home plate to throw men out at second every time. A scout from the Chicago Cubs who was there agreed with Anderson that it was the most exciting game he had ever seen. “It was certainly the Halley’s Comet in the baseball firmament,” wrote sportswriter Dick Jemison, “the brightest light that had ever shown in this section of the country.”[fn]Dick Jemison, “Georgia and Tech Fight Fiercely in Great Game: Fourteen Rounds of Brilliant Ball Ends with Neither Side Able to Tally. Collier and Brannan Twirl Superb Ball. They Were Given Great Support by Their Teammates—Both Teams Had Several Chances to Win—Rival Rooters Yelled Themselves Hoarse—Georgia Wins the Series.” Unidentified clipping, Frank Anderson Scrapbook. Archives, Weltner Library, Oglethorpe University, Atlanta, Georgia. Darkness brought an end to the epic game that was reportedly played before a crowd of 4,000.[/fn] In subsequent seasons, 1911 and 1912, Anderson compiled 17–5 and 15–6–2 records for UGA to win consecutive SIAA (Southern Intercollegiate Athletic Association) championships.[fn]MS 23, box 9, folder 4, Moore Collection.[/fn] 

Despite his success coaching at UGA, Anderson in 1913 relocated to Atlanta, moving his family to a residence at 224 East Ponce de Leon Avenue in Decatur, where Frank and Lorena were to live for more than thirty years. He taught and coached at Commercial High for the 1914 and 1915 seasons, but these won– lost records are not clear. By then Anderson had heard about the flamboyant educator Dr. Thornwell Jacobs (1877–1956), who had gained much publicity with his plan to “resurrect” Oglethorpe University. Old Oglethorpe, founded in 1835 near Milledgeville in the approximate middle of Georgia, ceased to exist during the Civil War. President Jacobs, having secured land nine miles northeast of Atlanta in the wilderness off Peachtree Road, opened the doors of a refounded Oglethorpe University in 1916 and hired Anderson to serve as registrar, professor of mathematics, and athletic director.[fn]Catalogue of Oglethorpe University, Second Year, 1917–1918, published by the University (Oglethorpe University, Georgia), 33. Archives, Weltner Library, Oglethorpe University, Atlanta, Georgia. Anderson’s hiring did not make the publication deadline for the First Year catalogue.[/fn] 

Jacobs wanted his college to be a “living memorial” to James Edward Oglethorpe, the founder of the original British colony of Georgia. The granite Gothic architectural style he favored was inspired by Oglethorpe’s alma mater, Corpus Christi, Oxford. The school yearbook was christened Yamacraw after the famous bluff near Savannah where Oglethorpe had arrived in Georgia. For athletic teams, Jacobs and Anderson chose an unusual mascot—the petrel, a small, persistent seabird that had inspired Oglethorpe when he was at sea. The nickname for the university teams, the Stormy Petrels (pronounced, idiosyncratically, “pea-trels”), is unique in American intercollegiate athletics.[fn]See Paul Stephen Hudson, “Flight of the Stormy Petrel: The Glory Years of Oglethorpe University Athletics,” Atlanta History: A Journal of Georgia and the South, 36, no. 2 (summer 1992): 13.[/fn]

As a late “start-up” baseball operation in 1917, Anderson was obliged to arrange a partial schedule. Oglethorpe practiced on its rough campus field and did not have stands or facilities for spectators. The Petrels played their home games in Atlanta at Spiller Field (later called Ponce de Leon Ball Park) or Grant Field at Georgia Tech. Anderson’s first collegiate victory was at Grant Field, a split of a doubleheader with Clemson University. His captain that year was catcher Lucien “Bird” Hope of Atlanta, a Tech High School graduate and astute student of the game who became a prominent Atlanta high-school coach and later would coach Luke Appling at Fulton High in Atlanta’s City League.[fn]MS 23, box 19, folder 9, pp. 57–58, Moore Collection.[/fn] 

In 1918 Anderson coached his first big win for Oglethorpe, a tight 1–0 victory over Vanderbilt at Spiller Field. “Yesterday I saw a dream come true,” Jacobs later exulted.[fn]Thornwell Jacobs, diary entry, 2 May 1918, Step Down, Dr. Jacobs: The Autobiography of an Autocrat (Atlanta: Westminster Publishers, 1945), 295.[/fn] Winning on the mound was freshman Absalom Holbrook “Red” Wingo Jr. of Norcross, Georgia, who really was a third baseman. Immediately after his only college season, Wingo signed with the Atlanta Crackers. He played briefly for Connie Mack and the Philadelphia Athletics in 1919, later logging five seasons (1924–28) for the Detroit Tigers, some of that time under player-manager Ty Cobb. For six major-league seasons and 1,326 at-bats, Wingo hit .308. His best year was 1925, when he compiled a .370 average.[fn]“Al Wingo,” www.baseball-reference.com (accessed December 23, 2009).[/fn] 

By 1921, Anderson was developing full schedules and had a record of 17–10–3, which included sweeps of doubleheaders at Ponce de Leon Ball Park against the Auburn Tigers and the University of Alabama Red Elephants. At the end of the season, Oglethorpe pitcher Lucas Newton “Chief” Turk of Homer, Georgia, signed with Columbia, South Carolina, of the old Sally League. Clark Griffith bought his contract in 1922, and Turk quickly (and briefly) became a major leaguer with the Washington Senators.[fn]MS 23, box 19, folder 10, appendix C, Lucas Newton “Chief” Turk’s 1922 Baseball Contract with the Washington Senators. The document is labeled “American League of Professional Baseball Clubs Uniform Players Contract . . . .” The Washington club agreed to pay Turk “for skilled services during the playing season of 1922 . . . $300.00 per month.” If he reported for Spring training on March 10, 1922, there would be a $100.00 per-month salary increase. It is signed in flowing script, “Clark Griffith, Pres.” However, Turk pitched in only five games in 1922 for Washington and gave up ten runs in eleven innings. “Lucas Newton Turk,” www.baseballreference.com (accessed 1 February 2010).[/fn] Eventually Turk, an excellent student in science as well as an outstanding pitcher, earned an M.D. degree from Emory University and became a prominent Atlanta doctor. One of Turk’s college friends, John Randolph Smith, once related a story from their undergraduate days. Several students were on a nature walk with Oglethorpe botany professor Eugene Heath. Spying a beautiful bloom on a tulip tree about forty feet away and knowing Turk’s reputation as a precision power pitcher, the professor asked his student if he could throw a rock to detach the flower—whereupon, Smith swears, Turk calmly picked up a rock, took aim, and threw it, clipping the stem holding the bloom![fn]John Randolph Smith to Earle J. Moore, 25 January 1985. MS 23, box 19, older 13, p. 143, Moore Collection.[/fn] 

Coach Anderson’s 1921 team captain, outfielder Roy Carlyle of Buford, Georgia, who played with Turk, also went on to the major leagues after a brief stint in the minors. From 1925 to 1926, Carlyle played for Washington, Boston, and New York in the American League. A collection of clippings, including one said to be from the Guinness World Records, located at the Old Timers Baseball Association in Norcross, Georgia, relates that on July 4, 1929, in Oakland, California, Carlyle hit the longest home run in professional baseball, off Ernie Nevers, a former Stanford All-American football player. Carlyle hit a fastball that left the park and landed on a roof outside the stadium. Witnesses noted the point of impact, a still-visible dent in a gravel rooftop, and then carefully measured the distance at 618 feet.[fn]Ibid., 141; “Roy Carlyle,” www.baseball-reference.com (accessed 23 December 2009). See Sally Toole, “Brothers in Baseball,” Remembering Norcross [Georgia]: Nuggets of Nostalgia (Charleston, S.C. and London: History Press, 2009), 70.[/fn] The college success of Georgians “Red” Wingo, “Chief Turk,” and Roy Carlyle at Oglethorpe from 1918 to 1921 began a sustained interest in Anderson’s Oglethorpe teams by major-league scouts. 

It was not until April 29, 1922, that Anderson, after more than five years, finally hosted a home game on the Oglethorpe campus. Trustee Harry Hermance in 1919 had made a pledge that he would donate $5,000 per year for ten years to begin building a stadium, and Oglethorpe, with the help of Anderson’s athletes, had hewn out a field on the wooded campus. Playing Wofford College, Oglethorpe had a 2–1 lead in the top of the ninth, but the Terriers loaded the bases with no outs. In the twinkling of an eye, Oglethorpe pulled a triple play on a ball sharply hit to an unidentified infielder for a sudden walk-off win.[fn]MS 23, box 19, folder 10, p. 164, Moore Collection.[/fn] In his unpublished history of Anderson’s coaching career, Earle J. Moore relates this remarkable story with no supporting details, and there appears to be no written account of this particular game. It is indeed difficult to envision any single baseball defensive-play scenario that would have made for a narrower margin of victory.

Meanwhile, Anderson continued to recruit excellent ballplayers from unlikely rural places. When he was in Mountville, Georgia, a farming community in Troup County near LaGrange, Anderson in 1920 met Jay Partridge working “between two plow handles” in a cornfield. Indeed, Atlanta writers believed “Anderson could watch a player plow a field and tell whether there was baseball in his bones.” And when he talked to the friendly, polite Partridge, the coach knew he wanted this young man on his team.[fn]Unattributed, “Peachtree Road Big Leaguers.”[/fn] Partridge, who was an honor graduate from Oglethorpe in 1924, later played second and third base for Brooklyn. His best year as a Dodger was in 1927, with 572 at-bats and a .260 batting average, but his career lasted only two years.[fn]“Jay Partridge,” www.baseball-reference.com (accessed 22 December 2009).[/fn] 

In 1924, Anderson’s Stormy Petrels became Southern champions when they won twenty of twenty-two games, compiling a .909 winning percentage. The only losses were splits in doubleheaders with Dartmouth and the University of Georgia. A turning point came early in the season when the Oglethorpe academic dean suspended “a certain student” for an infraction concerning a university rule and most of the team went “on strike.” The players met with President Jacobs in his office, asking for reinstatement of their teammate or they would leave college. “I rose and shook hands with all the squad and told them goodbye,” Jacobs wrote in his diary, “expressing my regret they were leaving us.”[fn]Jacobs later recalled this incident in a diary entry (5 October 1936) in Step Down, Dr. Jacobs, 495.[/fn] 

Undaunted, Anderson quickly rebuilt his team, primarily with scrub players, for a game against Wofford College. The coach knew he could depend on a few varsity regulars not to sit out the game. These included Jay Partridge and the outstanding pitcher Leonard “Lefty” Willis. Anderson, who as registrar knew all the Oglethorpe students, then recruited good athletes, especially track runners. The Stormy Petrel “Strikebreakers,” so termed by Jacobs, lambasted the Terriers 18–6. Afterward, the regular ballplayers apologized to Jacobs, who granted reinstatement in time for a second game against Wofford that Oglethorpe also won. Anderson’s biographer Earle J. Moore contends that this episode, more than any other factor, brought the 1924 players together with their coach and Oglethorpe to allow them to win the Southern championship.[fn]MS 23, box 19, folder 16, p. 218, Moore Collection.[/fn] 

The critical series for Oglethorpe in 1924 took place when the University of Alabama came to Oglethorpe’s Hermance Field. Alabama, with only two losses— the same as Oglethorpe—had a claim to the Southern championship. This distinction, before the Southeastern Conference, included all Southern colleges, members of the SIAA, the Southern Conference,  and those in the region playing as independents. The Petrels got off to a 7–5 lead with their second-best pitcher, sophomore Mark “Hump” Humphrey, on the mound. In the fourth inning, in a surprise move, Anderson brought in his ace, and “Lefty” Willis preserved a victory. In the second contest the Petrels, with a somewhat rested Humphrey pitching, easily won 6–1. Oglethorpe continued with two wins over rival Mercer University as well. The Stormy Petrels defeated Georgia Tech, coached by Alva “Kid” Clay, in a doubleheader to win the Atlanta City Championship and became undisputed Southern champions.[fn]Ibid., pp. 222–29; “Baseball Review: [1924] Dixie [Southern] Champions.” Yamacraw 1925 [Oglethorpe University Annual] published by the Senior Class, 104–5 (Archives, Weltner Library, Oglethorpe University, Atlanta, Georgia).[/fn] 

In 1925, Anderson competed well for the Southern championship with a 19–7 record that included sweeps in doubleheaders versus Vanderbilt, Georgia, and Mercer along with splits against Ohio State, Georgia Tech, and the Fort Benning service team. The college yearbook proudly observed that “Oglethorpe played a brand of ball that made her nines famous throughout the country.”[fn]“Baseball Review [1925],” Yamacraw 1926, 101 (Archives, Weltner Library, Oglethorpe University, Atlanta, Georgia).[/fn] Some of the best Oglethorpe players signed with major-league teams when they concluded their college careers, sometimes early or after graduation; these included Partridge (Brooklyn Dodgers) and Willis (Pittsburgh Pirates).[fn]Ibid., Yamacraw 1925 and 1926.[/fn]

Willis was Coach Anderson’s best southpaw pitcher. Born in the West End of Atlanta in 1902, he was a star athlete at Boys High. In three years, from 1923 to 1925 (freshmen were not allowed to play varsity), Willis logged records of 6–2, 7–0, and 8–0. His best game was a 1–0 victory against Georgia Tech at Grant Field to clinch the 1924 Southern college baseball championship. However, just as important as baseball to Anderson and to Willis were Willis’s studies at the unique Lowry School of Banking and Commerce at Oglethorpe, which attempted to bring “the best academic spirit along the lines of practical success in the country’s business activities.” In his senior year, Lefty’s classmates saluted his versatility and love of his commerce (business) major: “He has many original ideas and expects to use them in the advertising business after he has a fling with the Pittsburgh Pirates.” Unlike many talented athletes whom Anderson coached, Willis was never tempted to leave college early for baseball. As it turned out, the Pirates sold his contract to the New York Giants, which sent Willis to the Columbus (Georgia) Foxes—where he later would pitch against his old college coach.[fn]Yamacraw 1925 and 1926, 100 and 22–25; “The Baseball Career of Leonard ‘Lefty’ Willis,” MS 23, box 19, folder 19 p. 307, Moore Collection. Willis was to compile a 13–10 record in two years with the Columbus Foxes. “L Willis,” www.baseball-reference.com (accessed February 2, 2010).[/fn] 

Despite all the good students and athletes under Frank Anderson in the mid-1920s, the one destined to have the greatest impact on Georgia baseball played only on the junior varsity and dropped out of college. Otis Earl Mann (1904–90) “attended Oglethorpe University for two years, pitching for the baseball team,”according to an obituary.[fn]Darrell Simmons, “Earl Mann, Who Owned Atlanta Crackers in Pennant Years, Dies,” Atlanta Journal, January 6, 1990.[/fn] Mann was on the 1925 “Baby Petrels,” the first Oglethorpe freshman team with its own schedule, which had a 14–5 record and also played scrimmage games against Anderson’s varsity. Mann’s coach was Homer Chestnutt on Anderson’s staff. Soon after leaving Oglethorpe, Mann became assistant business manager of the Atlanta Crackers, later in the 1930s rising to president and owner of a phenomenally successful franchise that won ten Souther Association pennants. Mann developed an extensive scouting system. Earle Moore relates that Mann’s “scouts brought in players from farms . . . mill towns . . . school teams . . . everywhere.” The Crackers trained these players at Ponce de Leon Ball Park and then “their contracts were sold to the highest bidder of major league clubs.” This key element of Mann’s success, Moore contends, is reminiscent of what he terms the Anderson System of scouting baseball players on nearly every kind of team in Georgia.[fn]MS 23, box 19, folder 17, pp. 255, 307, Moore Collection.[/fn]

By 1927, Anderson’s teams were so consistently strong that he began to schedule professional teams, including the Crackers. Oglethorpe had long competed with the always tough Fort Benning in Columbus, Georgia, which fielded professional athletes on special service teams. Anderson’s recruiting and scheduling led to a blurring of the line between amateurs and professionals. Oglethorpe shortstop Earl “Shep” Shepherd, for example, started the 1926–27 school year with a contract to play for the Cleveland Indians (under player-manager Tris Speaker) whenever his college career ended.[fn]MS 23, box 20, folder 20, appendix D, “Life and Career of Earl Lenward Shepherd,” pp. 870–80, Moore Collection. Shepherd’s injury and subsequent turnover in the Cleveland Indians organization (the American League elected Cleveland president E. S. Bernard as AL president and Tris Speaker resigned), as well as Earl’s desire to finish his studies in 1928 (which he did), caused complications with his major-league aspirations. He later taught sciences and coached at Tech High in Atlanta, where his best player was Marty Marion, who was to play shortstop with the St. Louis Cardinals. In the 1930s Shepherd was a chemist for Atlantic Steel and played semipro for the company team, sometimes called Dixiesteele. He was on the 1937 team that won the Atlanta City championship. Moore based this section of his manuscript on interviews and correspondence with Earl Lenward Shepherd, 1984–90.[/fn] Anderson scheduled Oglethorpe’s opener that season against the Columbus Foxes. Hugh “Buck” Buchanan, from Tate, Georgia, pitched a threehitter to shut out the Foxes 6–0. But in the second game Lefty Willis defeated his alma mater.[fn]MS 23, box 19, folder 19, p. 307, Moore Collection.[/fn] Two days after the Columbus series, Anderson took his team to play the Atlanta Crackers. Anderson’s decision to pitch Buck Buchanan on two days’ rest looked good as he “mowed down . . . the professionals of Atlanta for six innings as if they were so many tin soldiers.” Meanwhile, the Petrels were demonstrating a stinging offense with one of their characteristically technical aspects of hitting. “Frank Anderson has trained his boys to bunt and squeeze with smoothness and precision,” effused sportswriter Guy Butler,” noting that “two of their three runs were pulled off on perfect bunts.”[fn]Guy Butler, “Hugh Buchanan Toys with Pros for First Six Innings; But Oglethorpe Ace Weakens in Seventh and Is Beater; Niehoff Goes on Batting Rampage,” Atlanta Journal, 29 March 1927; MS 23, box 19, folder 19, p. 310, Moore Collection.[/fn]

Playing professionals conditioned the Petrels marvelously to compete against college teams. Oglethorpe scored victories against Clemson and Furman and again won the 1927 Atlanta Championship, this time with 4–3 and 6–1 wins against Georgia Tech in a drizzling rain at Grant Field. Shortstop Shep Shepherd slipped on the wet turf when making a throw and hurt his arm, but Anderson shifted him to outfield for the next nine games. Shepherd reported to the Cleveland Indians on June 1, 1927, as scheduled.[fn]“Life and Career of Earl Lenward Shepherd,” MS 23, box 19, folder 19, p. 307, Moore Collection.[/fn] Meanwhile, alumnus Lefty Willis still aspired to play in the major leagues.

Tragedy struck young Willis in the 1928 offseason in Atlanta. After taking his new bride to dinner at the Atlanta Athletic Club one cold night, Willis found that their car would not start and tried to crank it. His left hand caught on the license plate on the front bumper, damaging his tendons and muscles severely and ending his baseball career. Rather than dwell on what had happened, Willis used his Oglethorpe degree, gained on a baseball scholarship, to begin a successful thirteen-year career in the circulation department with William Randolph Hearst’s Atlanta Georgian. Willis eventually realized a lifelong dream when he became the owner of a successful Atlanta advertising firm.[fn]“The Baseball Career of Leonard William ‘Lefty’ Willis,” MS 23, box 19, folder 17, pp. 256–57, Moore Collection. Moore based this sketch on correspondence and interviews with Lefty’s wife, Frances England Willis, and his son William Willis from October 1985 to June 1986.[/fn] 

The year 1929 had all the earmarks of prosperity for Anderson’s athletic program when the impressive first granite section of Hermance Stadium was ready for play. Oglethorpe dedicated it when the Stormy Petrels hosted the University of Dayton Flyers in a football game on October 26 of that year. Three days later, Harry Hermance lost his entire fortune when the stock market crashed. Hermance Stadium, which was intended to be bowl-shaped, never was completed and even today stands as a monument to the Great Depression.[fn]See Hudson, “Flight of the Stormy Petrel,” Atlanta History, 17.[/fn] 

In the Depression year 1930, Anderson again produced a Southern championship with a 17–1 record, scheduled against nearby teams as a cost-cutting measure. Oglethorpe opened with a doubleheader sweep against the Clemson Tigers at Hermance Stadium. The first game marked the collegiate debut of Petrel shortstop Lucius Benjamin “Luke” Appling Jr., who drove in three runs with a double. Oglethorpe swept a doubleheader from the Fort Benning Soldiers and also a three-game series against Georgia Tech at old Rose Bowl Field in Atlanta. It was clear that the Stormy Petrels were having a spectacular year. “As for Frank Anderson, I think he has one of the finest nines in Southern baseball,” opined sportswriter Morgan Blake, coining a term by dubbing Oglethorpe a “Sportanic Eruption.”[fn]Morgan Blake, “Sportanic [sic] Eruption,” Atlanta Journal, April 11, 1930.[/fn] Anderson, who had continued his practice of scheduling professional teams, led his Petrels against the Lindale (Georgia) Pepperells of the Georgia– Alabama League and split a doubleheader, the only Petrel loss that year. Oglethorpe rebounded with a sweep over the Carrollton (Georgia) Champs.[fn]MS 23, box 19, folder 22, p. 402, Moore Collection. Moore details Anderson’s 1930 championship season in chapter 20, “The 1929–1930 School Year.” (He used an academic calendar to organize much of his manuscript.) The Stormy Petrels lost a 9–8 game against the professional Pepperells. Stung, Oglethorpe responded in the second game with a resounding 16–4 victory, limiting the Pepperells to five hits.[/fn] 

When Anderson brought his 12–1 team, undefeated in collegiate competition, into Athens to play the University of Georgia, Oglethorpe faced a stiff challenge. In a twelve-year rivalry, the Bulldogs enjoyed a 12–6–3 advantage. But Hubert “Hot” Holcomb slammed the door shut with a one-hit shutout while Oglethorpe erupted for seven runs. Completing doubleheader sweeps against Georgia and Mercer, Oglethorpe won another state championship. With four games remaining, the Petrels were stunned when catcher and team leader Al Kimbrel abruptly signed a contract with the Brooklyn Dodgers and left school to play for the Johnstown (Pennsylvania) Johnnies of the Middle Atlantic League. Anderson characteristically wished Kimbrel the best, and Oglethorpe played on.[fn]Ibid., 406; “Albert Kimbrel,” www.baseball-reference.com (accessed 2 February 2010). Kimbrel caught and batted .283 with 339 at-bats. Because it was in 1930, this entry is almost certainly Coach Anderson’s Al Kimbrel. He also caught for Hartford in the Eastern League and the Atlanta Crackers in the 1930s. “Albert Kimbrel,” ibid.[/fn]

The Stormy Petrels ended the 1930 season against Mercer, as the teams helped dedicate the new Callaway Stadium at a neutral site in LaGrange, Georgia. Oglethorpe wanted to complete the season undefeated in college play to become undisputed Southern champion. The hero was Luke Appling, who in his last game as a collegian hit four consecutive home runs and later signed with the Atlanta Crackers of the Southern Association.[fn]MS 23, box 19, folder 22, p. 402, Moore Collection.[/fn] Hitting .326 in 104 games with Atlanta in his only minor-league season, Appling began his distinguished professional career, and the Chicago White Sox bought his contract. He ended his long 1930 season with a .308 average in six games with Chicago. It was to be the start of a twenty-year .310 Hall of Fame career as a seven-time All-Star White Sox shortstop.[fn]Ibid., “Lucius Benjamin ‘Luke’ Appling, Jr.,” 410–13. Because of conference rules, Appling could not play varsity sports until his sophomore year. “Luke Appling,” www.baseball-reference.com (accessed December 22, 2009).[/fn] In his only year of baseball under Frank Anderson, Appling was one of the greatest hitting college short stops of all time. As a right-hander, at times he could seemingly line, slice, or punch singles to the opposite field at will. Anderson once said, “Luke could watch a curve ball” better than any player he ever coached. Moreover, Appling had an ideal hitter’s temperament. “Some hitters miss their hits two days in a row and go into a slump from plain worry,” Anderson observed, “but Luke goes back on the third day to get his share.”[fn]Jack Kytle, “Appling Would Make Good in the Majors—Anderson,” unidentified clipping, Frank Anderson Scrapbook, Archives, Weltner Library, Oglethorpe University, Atlanta, Georgia.[/fn]

The innovative Anderson was such a widely respected coach in the South that by 1931 he was able to persuade his five major rival institutions—Georgia Tech, UGA, Mercer, Florida, and Auburn—to form the Dixie College Baseball League. He had in November 1929 proposed such an alliance as a cost-cutting measure. The League was designed with symmetry and mathematical precision: Each college was to play the other in two-game series on a home-and-home basis, a kind of massive round robin tournament for a twenty-game season in which individual statistics in common would be extremely meaningful.[fn]Ed Miles, “Petrels in Dixie League Debut Against Georgia,” Atlanta Journal, 6 April 1931. William A. “Alex” Alexander, Athletic Director at Georgia Tech, was president of the league.[/fn] 

The Dixie League arrangement meant that in 1931 Oglethorpe hosted Georgia Tech, the only time the Yellow Jackets ever visited Hermance Stadium. Anderson used a wicked bunt attack—teasing rollers down both baselines and in front of home plate—that bewildered Tech. Young Ralph McGill, destined for Pulitzer greatness as an editorialist for the Atlanta Constitution, covered the game and witnessed a “bloody second inning” when the Petrels netted five runs with six hits, three of them bunts. With a 6–5 lead in the eighth inning, Anderson again unleashed aggressive bunts for two more runs to ice the game. “The Petrels bunted the Jackets sick,” McGill reported.[fn]Ralph McGill, “Auburn Takes Dixie Pennant; Tech Is Beaten; Florida Upset as Tigers Win Flag; Petrels Victorious,” unidentified clipping, Frank Anderson Scrapbook, Archives, Weltner Library, Oglethorpe University, Atlanta, Georgia.[/fn] Indeed, as a college baseball strategist Frank Anderson was a notable exponent of the bunt, which he placed into three categories: “the hit (for clever players), the push (bat held tightly and pushed firmly), or the drag (down the baseline).” To players he advised: “Bunt only good balls.” To coaches he said, “Time to use: when score is tied or when you are ahead . . . never when you are behind.”[fn]MS 23, box 9, folder 21, Moore Collection. Moore about 1943 completed a thirty-seven-page handwritten notebook in ink that is a remarkable compendium of fundamental baseball techniques and strategy envisioning numerous scenarios: “The Coaching of Baseball: Notes from the Lectures of Coach Frank B. Anderson: Baseball Knowledge That He Has Accumulated thru 27 Years as Baseball Coach at Oglethorpe University.”[/fn] Oglethorpe’s “bunt victory” over Tech enabled the Stormy Petrels to place second to Auburn, the Dixie League champion. Moreover, with a 2–1 series lead over Tech and a rainout, Oglethorpe for a third consecutive year was the Atlanta City champion.[fn]MS 23, box 19, folder 23, p. 443, Moore Collection.[/fn] 

As the Depression deepened, Anderson’s dream of the Dixie College Baseball League ended in 1932 when Mercer dropped its program and UGA and Tech declined to continue. Anderson began to use his own money for equipment. He eliminated train travel and rented two cars that he and his players drove on short road trips. As colleges curtailed baseball, Anderson creatively scheduled other competition. In 1932 Oglethorpe played teams as diverse as the Atlanta Penitentiary Commodores (understandably restricted to “home” games) and the independent semipro Bona Allen Shoemakers. Sponsored by Bona Allen Mills, they were a dominating force in North Georgia baseball during the Depression, later becoming 1938 semipro national champs.[fn]MS 23, box 20, folder 1, pp. 621–23, Moore Collection. Anderson managed only one victory in four games against the Bona Allen Shoemakers in 1938. They defeated Enid, Oklahoma, that year in Wichita, Kansas, for the semipro championship. Several former Oglethorpe players, including catcher Al Kimbrel, who had left Oglethorpe in 1930 to sign with the Brooklyn Dodgers, were on the Buford team.[/fn] 

The greatest opposing team that Anderson ever scheduled for Oglethorpe was the St. Louis Cardinals, led by manager Gabby Street, in an exhibition game in Dublin, Georgia, on March 31, 1933. The Cards, popular in Georgia as the Southern-most major-league team, had been 1931 world champions and were destined to repeat that distinction in 1934. This “Gas House Gang” was returning to St. Louis after spring training in Florida. Georgia Governor Eugene Talmadge was special guest of honor for the occasion. One can only imagine the excitement of Anderson and his players when they took the field before an overflow crowd of 2,000 at the Dublin Fairgrounds against such major league stars as Ducky Medwick, Frankie Frisch, and Rogers Hornsby. Adding to the festive air, Dizzy Dean and Pepper Martin served on the umpiring crew. That the Cardinals won 4–0, with eight hits against Oglethorpe’s four, did not detract from a special day for Anderson’s Stormy Petrels.[fn]Ed Miles, “Dublin Home-Coming Proves Great Success: Cardinals Trim Petrels 4–0 in Well-Played Exhibition Game Before 2000 Fans,” unidentified clipping, Archives, Weltner Library, Oglethorpe University, Atlanta, Georgia. Miles reported “fans were convinced that Frank Anderson, peerless leader of the Petrels, has another championship team in the making.” MS 23, box 20, folder 15 Appendix G, Moore Collection. “Program of the Oglethorpe–St. Louis Cardinals 1933 Baseball Game”— Dublin Lions Club sponsoring Homecoming Day March 31 [1933] St. Louis Cardinals vs. Oglethorpe University Fairgrounds 2:30 P.M.[/fn] To those who criticized the coach for scheduling more experienced professional teams, he made no apologies. “You have everything to gain and nothing to lose,” he maintained, and such games were the experiences of a lifetime. Anderson also believed he could see how his players handled pressure while learning first-hand from professionals. Plus, he knew that everyone pulls for the underdog. Besides, the wise coach smiled, “You might get lucky.”[fn]MS 23, box 19, folder 20, p. 234, Moore Collection.[/fn] 

Oglethorpe fielded competitive teams during the Depression, but Anderson’s days of championships were over. His best player of the early 1930s was Elmer “Greek” George of Waycross, Georgia, who logged five seasons of major-league baseball for four teams as a bench player in the late 1930s and early 1940s.[fn]“Greek George,” www.baseball-reference.com (accessed 23 December 2009).[/fn] With U.S. involvement in World War II, colleges everywhere lost athletes to the war effort, and Anderson’s players enlisted, were in the Army Reserves and called to active duty, or took jobs in war-related industries. Anderson finished his distinguished coaching career anticlimactically, with a one-game season in 1943 at Hermance Stadium against an Army team, Lawson General Hospital from nearby Chamblee. Oglethorpe won 6–1, with Earle Moore pitching.[fn]MS 23, box 20, folder 12, p. 747, Moore Collection. Even in the unusual wartime one-game season, five members of Anderson’s last team went on to professional baseball in the Georgia State League, in cities such as Jesup, Fitzgerald, and Carrollton. Earle J. Moore played for Thomasville and later for the Lakeland (Florida) Pilots in the Detroit Tigers organization.[/fn] Anderson subsequently suspended all varsity sports at Oglethorpe, coaching only intramurals, and retired in 1944. 

Frank Anderson’s record at Oglethorpe over twenty-seven seasons was 296–210–14, a .575 winning percentage against a wide assortment of teams from large universities, small colleges, mills, Army service teams, semi-pro and professional ranks, all the way up to the St. Louis Cardinals. Against his major rivals, Anderson was competitive against UGA (31–34–3), Georgia Tech (20–22–1), Auburn (22–32–2), Mercer (24–15–1), Florida (12–12–1), and Clemson (10–3). He had shorter rivalries against Alabama (5–6), South Carolina (4–0), Tennessee (4–2), and Vanderbilt (4–1). Far more often than not in these series, Oglethorpe was the visiting team. While Anderson did not schedule small colleges as often, some ongoing rivalries were Furman (13–4), Wofford (8–1), Presbyterian (7–3), and Birmingham Southern (7–2). Other series were against the semipro Buford Shoemakers (6–5), Atlanta Penitentiary (8–0), Fort Benning (14–8), and the Atlanta Crackers (1–9).[fn]MS 23, box 20, folder 13, pp. 781–809, Moore Collection.[/fn] During his tenure at tiny Oglethorpe, which averaged enrollment of only a little more than one hundred full-time students, Anderson sent three pitchers and nine regular players to the major leagues for a combined total of about forty years’ playing experience, half of which Luke Appling performed in his Hall of Fame career.[fn]Oglethorpe University Registrar’s Office records; “Oglethorpe University Stormy Petrels (Atlanta GA),” www.baseball-reference.com (accessed 22 December 2009).[/fn]

Three years after his retirement from Oglethorpe, Frank and his wife, Lorena, relocated to Albany, Georgia, where he began a new career. He thrived on work, managing the Albany AAA Motor Club office for nineteen years. He relaxed by listening to baseball games on the radio while sitting in a favorite rocking chair on his front porch. Anderson continued correspondence with his “baseball boys,” including Earle J. Moore, his last Oglethorpe pitcher, who in his own retirement wrote a touching unpublished memoir about his old coach. Frank Anderson died on November 8, 1966, and he and Lorena are buried at Crown Hill Cemetery in Albany.[fn]MS 23, box 20, folder 14, p. 856, Moore Collection.[/fn] 

“Every baseball game is full of thrills,” Frank Anderson once said. “There is a whole lifetime of crucial situations, demanding quick and correct decisions, compressed into each game. That is why it is the greatest sport ever invented.”[fn]Unattributed, “Peachtree Road Big Leaguers.”[/fn] Anderson had the uncanny ability to convey his love of the game to those who played it. Oglethorpe player Jim Decker, who traveled with Anderson on a recruiting tour, commented on his rapport with all players. “Everywhere I went with him . . . Coach Anderson was greeted with outstretched arms. He was loved, whether he was at a small town stop sign in Georgia or anywhere we traveled.”[fn]Jim Decker graduated from Oglethorpe in 1939 and signed with the Chicago White Sox, where Jimmy Dykes assigned him to room with Luke Appling. Joe Cronin of the Boston Red Sox later purchased Decker’s contract and sent him to Greensboro, North Carolina, of the Piedmont League. MS 23, box 20, folder 8, p. 651, Moore Collection.[/fn] Announcing Anderson’s posthumous induction into the Georgia Sports Hall of Fame in 1966, Atlanta sportswriter Charlie Roberts saluted “the South’s best-known baseball tutor.”[fn]Charlie Roberts, “Butts, Anderson, Suggs, Shiver to Enter [Georgia Sports] Hall of Fame,” Atlanta Journal and Constitution, 20 November 1966.[/fn] Anderson Field, which now is lighted and used not only by Oglethorpe but also by various leagues and young players throughout the year, would no doubt make the old coach happy today. “If there exists a baseball heaven in the far beyond for greats that have contributed to the grand old American game,” Ross Wyrosdick of the Atlanta Constitution once wrote, then “surely a seat will be reserved for Frank Anderson.”[fn]MS 23, box 9, folder 1, Moore Collection. Ross Wyrosdick, “In This Corner,” unidentified clipping.[/fn]

PAUL STEPHEN HUDSON, associate professor of history at Georgia Perimeter College, has published extensively in “Atlanta History”, “The Georgia Historical Quarterly”, and the online “New Georgia Encyclopedia”.

I was fortunate to grow up in St. Louis, one of the truly great baseball towns, when kingly Stan Musial was in his prime (and the teen idol of my future mother-in-law). I had an occasion this past summer to travel from my home in Atlanta to St. Louis for a weekend series with the Colorado Rockies, stay at a downtown hotel within walking distance of the newest incarnation of Busch Stadium, and see a game with friends, one of whom was three stadiums shy of having been to a game at every Major League Baseball venue. Sadly, the Redbirds were crushed. But for the entire weekend, downtown was an undulating pedestrian sea of Cardinals jerseys and hats. Even during the Braves’ glorious run of championships and brilliant pitching, the energy in Atlanta rarely sustained the depth of the baseball passion of any given midsummer’s eve in St. Louis. Of course, when Atlanta was truly galvanized during the early years of the Braves’ 14-year streak of championships, the tomahawk chop and the chants of the often sleep-deprived Atlanta fans were phenomena to behold.

In the 1950s, like many youngsters, I pretended to the parental unit that I was off to sleep when in actuality I was listening to Harry Caray and Jack Buck broadcasting the Redbirds’ games on KMOX. My transistor radio and its earphone, an unwieldy and wax-stained dinosaur by today’s standards, was a precious item, especially during World Series games on school days in the afternoon. I am still bemused by Cubs fans laying claim to Harry Caray. That raspy, gravelly, nasal voice, seasoned and steeped in Busch beer inning after inning, was the sound of CARDINALS baseball as he Holy Cowed: “It could be . . . it might be . . . it is: A Home Run!”

Musial and his memorable wriggle and swing were priceless. The defense was often brilliant, especially with Curt Flood prowling the outfield and Tim McCarver behind the plate and (fortunately) not a microphone. And that infield: Ken Boyer, Julian Javier, and Bill White! (Of course, for Ken Boyer, my youthful bitterness still smolders. He never had a clutch hit during his entire career! And with that last sentence, I have achieved a life goal of avenging in print all those childhood nights of disappointing at-bats by Mr. Boyer. But then again, none of us are perfect or perfectly bad. Some fans might even remember and cite Boyer’s grand slam home run in the 1964 World Series; of course, facts cannot override cherished childhood prejudices.)

Yes, times and parenting were different then. As ten-year-olds, my friend Martin and I would ride our bicycles to my grandparents’ apartment on one of the main drags in St. Louis, where we would catch the Redbird Express bus, journeying to and from old Sportsman’s Park by ourselves to see a game. Once, we had the amazing good luck to be directly behind home plate, where we could watch the ever-glowering, always intense Bob Gibson at work, pitching a gem and yet another Cardinals victory. I doubt that any pitcher in all of baseball possessed a more intimidating demeanor, a fiercer, harder, meaner stare. Of course, all was not idyllic; one evening as the bus idled at a light in one of the rougher parts of town after a twilight doubleheader, we witnessed a knifing, in what appeared to be a love triangle gone tragically awry.

All those childhood years of following the Cardinals culminated in their being World Series champions in 1964, the team’s first title since 1946, but timing was not my friend. My family had moved in 1963 to Jackson, Mississippi, to an industrializing South. My father opened the first integrated factory in that state. (Think In the Heat of the Night without the murder plot.) By then, my transistor radio had lost much of its allure; despite the station’s long reach into the region, KMOX did not find me, nor I it. I felt exiled from that championship run and the subsequent ones in 1967 and 1968.

The game in the South, I quickly discovered, is not baseball: It is football. This perception is obvious to anyone with a passing interest in sports and was something that I would witness countless times as an adult after I moved to Atlanta in 1977. Two-a-day practices by the University of Georgia Bulldogs or even a prominent high-school team too often usurped a dramatic pennant race from the headlines of the Atlanta Journal or Constitution sports section. The physicality and brutality of football prevailed over the nuances, subtleties, and intellection of baseball. Still today in Old South Mississippi or New South Atlanta, except for a few cherished interludes thanks to the Braves, football remains transcendent: Football is king.

Several desultory years later after living in Jackson and elsewhere up the Mississippi River, I graduated from a high school in Minneapolis, but I could barely muster an interest in the American League and the team of the Twin Cities. My indifference to the Twins from the late 1960s later became something more malignant, however, when in 1991 they defeated the Atlanta Braves . . . because of dome baseball exacerbated by those ridiculous diapers that Twins fans waved. All baseball is not equal. National League does not equal American League to those with an allegiance.

That allegiance, not to the National League but to the Cardinals, was to face a brutal challenge. I moved to Atlanta in the late 1970s to attend graduate school at Emory University. The woeful Braves lost game after game before slight crowds (unless Phil Niekro was throwing his knuckleball in the vicinity of flailing hitters and an oversized catcher’s mitt). Attending games was easy. We could sit anywhere and loll comfortably across four seats. We could spot and wave to friends in distant corners of the stadium because they were the sole occupants. And the traffic congestion for which Atlanta is now infamous was never an issue going to and from Atlanta–Fulton County Stadium. Although Harry Caray and I were both many years removed from St. Louis by then, I found solace in Skip Caray, Harry’s son, broadcasting for the Braves and the transplanted St. Louis Hawks. Mindful of their history, the new Hawks proudly hung from the Omni’s rafters the retired jersey of Bob Pettit, who had been a scoring machine in St. Louis and the recipient of the NBA’s first MVP Award. I had seen him play many times in St. Louis with my uncle. Skip and I were connected. Although Skip did not voice the verbal idiosyncrasies and mispronunciations of his dad, he exhibited a biting wit in his early days that was wonderfully appealing and contemporary, especially when the flailing of those two dismal franchises made them ready targets. Unfortunately, I think his cynicism softened in his later years, eventually becoming the irksome shtick of Skip identifying fans catching foul balls as being from some locale or another in the surrounding area. That some talk-radio fans thought him psychic or asked him on pregame radio shows what his trick was, or even how he knew, could elicit Skip’s biting humor of old (or a quick hanging up of the phone), but those questioners also served as depressing and unwelcome commentary on the state of education in America.

A modicum of success finally graced the Braves in 1982. That year, the NLCS pitted the Cardinals, who had captured a playoff berth early, against the Braves, the last team to clinch, thanks to a Dodgers loss to the Giants on the final day of the regular season. St. Louis had last appeared in the postseason when they lost in the World Series to the Detroit Tigers in 1968; the Braves’ most recent trip to the playoffs was in 1969, the first year of divisional play. The St. Louis roster was formidable: Keith Hernandez, Willie McGee, Darrell Porter, Bruce Sutter, and the acrobatic wizard himself—Ozzie Smith; the Braves answered with the crafty Niekro on the mound, the portly but powerful Bob Horner, and a free-swinging Dale Murphy, who would garner the first of his two consecutive NL MVP Awards for his season’s work. I had tickets for Game 3 of the best-of-five series, the first two of which were happening in St. Louis. Niekro, of course, opened in Game 1 for the Braves and pitched masterfully as the Braves led 1–0, three outs from an official game. But then the rains came and refused to depart, washing away a likely victory by the Braves, the chance for Niekro to dominate the series, and any real hope that the Braves could vanquish the hot-hitting Cardinals, who would score 17 runs in the series compared to a paltry five by Atlanta. Baseball, that game of inches, was measured here not in slicing line drives toward the foul line but in precipitation.

Finally, after all those years of waiting, I was witnessing live playoff action for the first time. Before me was the team of my youth facing the team that, as an adult, I was coming to admire and then love. The Braves relied on a woebegone charm to attract charitable and tolerant baseball fans, because too often their play was far from stellar; just being consistently competent would have sufficed in those years. The Braves would not return to the playoffs again until 1991. What the Braves did have going for them was Ted Turner’s superstation. Because they were omnipresent, they became yet another team proclaiming themselves “America’s Team.” The whole country could witness their daily antics or feats, and the power of the familiar to generate loyalty should never be underestimated.

As I sat in the right center-field stands for 1982’s Game 3 with a native Georgian who had grown up with the Braves, I conceded, at first only to myself, that I was a fan torn by competing attachments. This dilemma gnawed at my brain and belly with a discomfort tinged with betrayal. The tension of the game itself, however, was short lived. Hernandez, Porter, George Hendrick, and McGee scored off Rick Camp in the second inning before manager Joe Torre pulled him. The feeling that the overmatched and rainthwarted Braves could not and would not counter that flurry was palpable, and the game took on that pastoral serenity that baseball offers when the conclusion is foregone, the weather is delightful, the field looks immaculate, and the joy of baseball becomes observing the nuances rather than fretting over the outcome. After that torching of Camp, I could candidly admit to my compatriot how difficult shedding the affections of youth can be. I felt an odd contentment. That yearning of my youth was partially fulfilled. This formidable St. Louis team, before my own eyes, was only four victorious games over the Brewers, the Braves’ replacements in Milwaukee, from being crowned the 1982 World Champion St. Louis Cardinals.

The Braves of 1982 seemed to have taken an important, albeit incremental, step as an organization to being a franchise with promise. Promises, of course, may be easily and cavalierly made, but the fulfillment of a promise is another thing entirely, a matter of time at first and then of timing. The change from worst to first (with staying power) came at last to the Braves in 1991, with the gradual emergence of a pitching staff that would dominate a baseball generation for a 14-year run of division and league championships like no other in sports history. Three future Hall of Famers fueled the momentum: Tom Glavine, John Smoltz, and then Greg Maddux.

The nature of hometown newspapers is, of course, to offer bountiful coverage of the local teams and exhibit a depth of knowledge about them, especially when compared to the cursory reporting on the franchises in other cities, which invariably seems limited to game results unless the scandal du jour lurks there. Thus time and coverage contributed to my growing attachment to the Braves throughout the remainder of the 1980s. But just as I had been separated from my resurgent Cardinals in the early 1960s, I was whisked away from Atlanta and the Braves in 1989 for postgraduate employment in the English department and honors program at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. For three years I watched UNLV’s Running Rebels dominate their opponents on the basketball court and win one glorious NCAA Championship with Jerry “Tark the Shark” Tarkanian at the helm, chomping on a waterlogged white towel. Larry Johnson, a future star in the NBA, soared above the competition, looking every bit like a grown man playing against boys. Presented with all the flash and pyrotechnics that Las Vegas could muster, UNLV basketball was clearly Showtime. Perhaps because a readership of gamblers found little to inspire a wager in the flailings of the Braves, coverage in the Las Vegas newspapers of Braves baseball was minimal. The Braves ended the 1990 season with the worst record in all of baseball (65–97). Las Vegas was a basketball and betting venue, a city pretending to be every other city: New York, Paris, Venice. The Las Vegas Stars, then a minor-league team of the San Diego Padres, were a delightful refuge from the tawdry, the tacky, or—to those generous of spirit—the postmodern glitz that is quintessentially Vegas. But the Stars (now the 51s—named for Area 51, that tourist destination in the Nevada desert for spotting aliens traversing the universe in UFOs—and an affiliate of the Toronto Blue Jays) were not going to satisfy my urge to witness championship baseball at the major-league level.

Meanwhile, back in Atlanta, the emerging storyline during the summer of 1991 was coming into focus; the Braves were clawing their way out of the basement and starting to roll. With surprising victories and unexpected rallies, the Braves became as hot as summer in Hotlanta or in the oven-like desert of southern Nevada. Telephone conversations with family and friends in Georgia buzzed with talk of the surging Braves. For a time, if football two-a-days were not exactly taking a back seat, they were only riding shotgun and not driving Atlanta’s sports vehicle. The magic of the Braves season, from all accounts, was astonishing, and I was missing it. My future wife, however, was not. Then finishing her graduate degree at Georgia State University in Atlanta, she was descended upon for every postseason game by a visiting family member from Florida or Alabama, wanting to share her playoff-ticket package and accompany her to each and every game. The magic was magnetic.

I was, of course, not on the scene to share in the fun: I missed out once more. The phrase “back-to-back seasons” resonates with ominous tones in Georgia. Typically the reference conjures the inept flapping of the afflicted Atlanta Falcons, who since their inception in 1966 never until 2009 enjoyed two winning seasons in succession, but the 1992 Braves would break that curse: They were poised by midsummer to repeat as champions. A 13-game win streak from July 8 through July 25 propelled them into first place, and around that same time, through those quirks of fate that often redirect professional careers, I was offered a position as a faculty member and honors program director back in Atlanta, at DeKalb College (now Georgia Perimeter College). I was returning for the Braves’ stretch run and a firsthand experience of the magic and the jubilation fueling the season and the city. For a second year in a row, these were heady times for baseball fans in Georgia, and this time I would be part of the madness.

While I may have missed the first go-round against the Pittsburgh Pirates in the 1991 NLCS, with stars Andy Van Slyke and a sleek, unenhanced, and playoff-beleaguered Barry Bonds, fate would not allow me to miss the 1992 reprise and what many observers, myself included, consider the greatest moment in team history for the Atlanta Braves: Game 7. The series began with an auspicious reversal of 1991’s first game when the Braves had succumbed 5–1 at Three Rivers Stadium. In 1992, the Braves, with Smoltz pitching, easily prevailed, 5–1, at Atlanta–Fulton County Stadium. Game 2 featured timely run production by Ron Gant, David Justice, and Terry Pendleton: Braves 13, Pirates 5. And for the second year in a row, my friends caravanned to Pittsburgh for the games played there, witnessing mixed results: The Braves averted a hometown sweep by winning one game behind the pitching and second victory of the eventual series MVP, Smoltz. Ahead three games to two and with Glavine and Smoltz slated to pitch Games Six and Seven at home, the Braves and their fans surveyed the prospects and enjoyed considerable optimism . . . until inning two of the sixth game when the Pirates scored eight runs on the way to Glavine’s second loss of the series and a blowout win, 13–4.

Perhaps the two late runs in the ninth inning of Tuesday night’s Game 6 intimated that the Braves bats were resuscitating, and that prospect, conjoined with Smoltz and his two previous victories facing the twice-defeated Doug Drabek, offered some strands of hope. The headline in the Atlanta newspaper read: “It’s now or never!” I, however, despaired; I did not have tickets to the game until the call came at noon on Wednesday. On the line was Hippie, one of the owners of my favorite neighborhood bar, the Euclid Avenue Yacht Club, in Atlanta’s Little Five Points. (The nautical motif, of course, in landlocked, often drought-riddled Georgia is irony incarnate.) Why he called me with the offer of two free tickets he could not use himself for Wednesday night’s Game 7 I will never know for sure, and this many years hence, I know Hippie will not remember why either. Nevertheless, thank you, fate, and thank you, Hippie.

The atmosphere at the stadium before the game encompassed all the clichés—charged, electric, dramatic, fraught—but clichés many times bespeak a truth. Jimmy and Rosalyn Carter shared the owner’s box with Ted Turner and Jane Fonda. Everyone was in place, including me. The ethereal Emmylou Harris sang “The Star-Spangled Banner,” which concludes with the perfect phrase for baseball games played in Atlanta: “and the home of the Braves!” And at the conclusion of the song, my friend Robert Byrd, a long-time season-ticket holder, uttered the refrain he, with his delightfully morbid charm, would sound often that night: “Oh, we’re doomed.” I was privileged to hear Bobby repeat that phrase as I was preparing to write this piece. Bobby found the video recording he had made of the game; it was located deep in the recesses of a storage closet, in a box of VHS cassettes commandingly labeled “Keep These.” We watched the tape of the game on his television while drinking beer from much-used and faded, but authentic, 1992 NL Championship Series stadium cups. In anticipation of the ninth inning coming our way, we left a Bud out on the kitchen counter to open and drink warm, in true late-inning stadium fashion, when Pendleton led off the final inning with a double to right field.

The first inning established the dominant motif for much of the game for Braves fans: anxiety and misery. The Pirates loaded the bases in the first and scored one run on a sacrifice fly by Orlando Merced; for only the second time in the series, they were ahead of Smoltz. Braves fans were not the only ones feeling queasy. John McSherry, the veteran plate umpire, was ill, and he went to the box of Bill White, president of the National League and a former Cardinals first baseman, to discuss being replaced; McSherry’s hospitalization that night was perhaps a sad and ominous precursor to his fatal heart attack at Riverfront Stadium in Cincinnati on opening day of the 1996 season.

That lone run gave license to two fans from Pittsburgh sitting one row behind and to the left of us. Somewhere, batches of these alien fans are cloned and then dispatched throughout home parks, one pair to every section. The mold is familiar: beer-bellied, loud-voiced, slovenly dressed, drunk, obnoxious, and emboldened when their team leads. (My caravanning friends to Pittsburgh, of course, were cast of finer stuff, a different, higher order of beings.) The futility of the Braves bats continued as the innings ticked past, tension and misery rising: “Oh, we’re doomed.”

Each pitch elicited a mercurial mood swing. The fans would cheer after a strike hurled by Smoltz or hold their breath in misery whenever he threw a ball, a Pirate reached base, or a Brave was put out. The fans were aching to chop and chant, and they would do so frantically for a bit, but then dread would prevail and misery return.

Van Slyke singled in Pittsburgh’s second run in the top of the sixth to extend the lead to 2–0. Bobby captured the collective gloom: “Oh, we’re doomed.” But in the bottom of that inning, the Braves displayed some much-desired signs of life. They filled the bases with no outs. The Braves chant and tomahawk chop exploded into the night; the sound was wild and passionate, then deadened and silent. Jeff Blauser lined into a double play that erased the runner at third, and Pendleton hit a line drive to Bonds for the third out. The increasingly inebriated pair from Pittsburgh again gave voice to their elation and the promise of certain victory.

The bottom of the seventh sparked some hope for the Braves and their fans. Runners occupied first and second with one out, but even this did not seem like much of a threat after the failure to score under better circumstances in the previous inning. My ominous premonition came true; the Braves on base were left stranded once more.

In the top of the eighth inning, David Justice’s great one-hop throw from right field on a double by Jeff King erased Merced at the plate, reinspiring some hope, as great defense can sometimes engender, that this talented Braves team might yet reappear with bats wielding timely hits before all opportunity and remaining outs were extinguished. At the very least, the succession of Braves pitchers to that point—Smoltz, Mike Stanton, Pete Smith, and Steve Avery—had kept the Pirates to only two runs. The bottom of the eighth, however, came and went. The Braves had mustered only five paltry and unproductive hits and nary a run, and those two Pirate tallies on the scoreboard appeared insurmountable. “Oh, we’re doomed.” Drabek was pitching a masterful game.

The changeover to the bottom of the ninth brought Braves fans to their feet yet again, and the chanting and clapping and chopping began in fervent prayer. More disaster had been averted in the top half of the inning when Jose Lind sent a long and terrifying fly to Gant at the wall in left field for the first out, and a runner was later stranded on second after reaching it on a walk and wild pitch by Jeff Reardon. Leading off the bottom of the ninth, Pendleton laced Drabek’s third pitch into the right-field corner for a double, making amends for his rally-ending out in the sixth inning. The chanting and clapping resounded with new vigor and mounting tension. Justice followed with a relatively routine grounder to second, but Lind, a talented fielder who had committed only six errors during the regular season, perhaps succumbed to the contagious tensions and pressures emanating from the Braves fans. His backhanded stab at the ball deflected it past him. Pendleton scurried to third on the error. Ray Miller, the Pirates pitching coach, and the infielders converged on the mound. Waiting to come to the plate was Sid Bream, hailed all the while by the screams of “Sid! Sid! Sid!” Bream had left Pittsburgh in 1991 for Atlanta, where his gangly frame and thick and distinguishing—if not quite distinguished—moustache immediately made him a favorite of Braves fans. Bream walked on four straight pitches. Manager Jim Leyland replaced Drabek with Stan Belinda. Gant, who had hit a grand slam in Game 2, jolted the crowd when he backed Bonds up to the wall in left. Pendleton tagged and scored, but the other base runners could not advance. Perhaps our fortunes were turning, but the anxiety was increasing—only two outs remained. Catcher Damon Berryhill, the late-season replacement for an injured Greg Olson, fouled off the first pitch and then walked on four straight, thanks to incredibly close calls by Randy Marsh, the umpire who had replaced the ailing McSherry.

Now, with the bases loaded, the crowd noise—the chopping and chanting—intensified. Brian Hunter, who in 1991’s seventh game against Pittsburgh hit a two-run homer in the first inning, was the pinch hitter and primed to be a slayer of Pirates once again. After fouling off the first pitch, he looped a soft liner that fans longed to see glide beyond the reach of Lind in short center, but he cleanly snared this ball. The crowd quieted for a moment after that out but then regrouped, and the chanting and cheering resumed with passion.

To the plate, thrust forward by manager Bobby Cox, came twenty-six-year-old Francisco Cabrera, the sole remaining position player on the Braves bench. He had spent much of the season in Richmond with the Braves farm team, where he hit .272. His major-league experience in 1992 amounted to 10 at bats in the 12 games he played.

The drama was palpable, and the crowd was roaring. But my pal Bobby Byrd’s thoughts of “Oh, we’re doomed” had dissipated. He confidently pulled the baseball card of one Francisco Cabrera from inside the front of his Atlanta Braves cap. Since his youth, Bobby had kept the baseball card of a favorite player for that year inside his baseball cap to maintain its shape and keep the front erect. Francisco Cabrera was his choice in 1992 because he was a hitter. Not much of a fielder was he, but he was a pure hitter. As Cabrera came to the plate, Bobby stood. He held Cabrera’s card at shoulder’s height with a straightened arm and slowly pivoted, showing that card to everyone around him.

After two balls and a vicious liner foul to the left that would have easily won the game if fair, Cabrera laced a line drive through the infield to Bonds in left field. Justice easily scored from third, and he and Otis Nixon, who edged over from the on-deck circle, frantically signaled to Bream to slide once he had laboriously galloped past third from second and rambled toward the plate.

Walk-off home runs are a memorable means of capping a victory; they have all the climactic finality of a heavyweight’s knockout punch. But even home runs cannot compete with a play at the plate in the ninth inning of a Game 7 when the World Series is on the line and the outs number two. The beneficiary—or victim—of five knee operations, Bream slogged toward home as if in slow motion, as if the steam driving him was barely sufficient to maintain his momentum. Bonds’s throw to the plate was off to the first-base side by several feet, and catcher Mike LaValliere’s diving tag was late.

Justice seemed to be the first to hug and then throw himself upon Bream, and his teammates piled on top in wild jubilation. Fans were screaming at their loudest pitch. There was high-fiving and hugging and kissing everywhere in the vicinity. Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed the two suddenly sobered Pittsburgh fans slinking away. Soon they would understand the curse of Bream and Cabrera and the Braves, as they were destined to endure the plummeting fortunes of the Pirates and their ensuing 17-year streak of losing seasons. Perched on one knee, Bonds watched the infield madness for several minutes before departing the field, and Van Slyke, with his cap propped high on his head, remained sitting in center field as if in a daze, staring presumably in disbelief.

The crowd cheered and screamed and stomped and high-fived and hugged and kissed some more. The decibel volume reverberated like the amplifiers of Spinal Tap, which were calibrated not to 10 but to 11. No one wanted to leave. No fans could leave, at least not until they were too hoarse to scream anymore, and that was easily 30 or 40 minutes after Sid! Sid! Sid’s! slide. The Braves would not win the World Championship that year against Toronto; in fact, they would win only once during their glorious streak, and thus finally bring home the first championship for a major league team in Atlanta’s history. In 1995, the Atlanta Braves defeated the Cleveland Indians in six games. Of course, I had tickets to Game 7. But of that or of missing any other game I will never complain: I had been a part of the Game 7, and this moment was truly the finest as a team for the Braves and their fans.

Broadcasting on the radio, Skip Caray immortalized this baseball event with his exuberant celebration after Bream’s slide: “Braves Win! Braves Win! Braves Win! Braves Win! Braves Win!” Even now that call remains the one most often played to conjure the magic and majesty of the Atlanta Braves, and at the end of each Braves victory in our household, and I suspect in many others where Braves fans reside, we acknowledge a fresh Braves victory and remember that fateful ninth-inning turn from despair to sheer joy with that same call: “Braves Win! Braves Win! Braves Win! Braves Win! Braves Win!”

JEFFREY A. PORTNOY, professor of English at Georgia Perimeter College, writes on popular culture and British literature of the Restoration and eighteenth century. His work on honors education has appeared in the “Journal of the National Collegiate Honors Council”.

Described by Atlanta Daily World sports editor Ric Roberts as the “most perfect” first baseman ever, Red was expert at handling ground balls, excelled at making a 3-to-6-to-3 double play, and was masterful at digging low throws out of the dirt and gloving other errant throws while making it look easy.

Buck O’Neil, a star first baseman for the Kansas City Monarchs and a contemporary of Moore, said of his rival: “He could pick it! He was quick around first base and had outstanding hands. He could handle that low throw in the dirt better than anybody. Nobody had better hands than Red Moore. Most first basemen back then used two hands, but Red was a one-hand first baseman. As far as playing first base, nobody was better. People came to see him play.” 

And Red, who liked to showboat on occasions, never disappointed them. Frequently, the fancy fielder would take throws behind his back in pregame infield practice and make other trick catches to entertain the fans. The home folks adored him, and he became a crowd favorite everywhere he played.

The second of four children born to James Benjamin Moore Jr. and Sadie Robinson Moore, Red reflects back over his early years living in the Bush Mountain neighborhood of southwest Atlanta. He learned his craft the hard way. As a left-handed youngster, he made his first mitt by taking apart a standard right-hander’s glove, turning it inside out, and restitching it. From that rudimentary beginning with a makeshift glove, the aspiring young ballplayer developed into a flawless “one-hand” fielder whose defensive skills would eventually attract the attention of top black baseball teams.

His creativity carried over to his hitting and, early in his professional career, he pioneered the use of a batting glove. Red describes his role in the development of this new piece of equipment: “The pitchers were throwing me inside and the ball came right in on my fists, right up on my left hand—my top hand—and when I hit the ball, it would sting. So I got a glove like we used to use in cold weather—a good leather dress glove we would wear in the wintertime—and cut the fingers off. I wore that on my left hand. I could grip a bat pretty good and when I hit the ball it would take the sting out of it. That was in ’36 or ’37, and I used it the rest of my career.” 

It was around this same time that Moore, as a raw rookie with the Newark Eagles, received an unforgettable welcome to black baseball’s big time from Satchel Paige. Red now laughs when he recalls the first time he faced Satchel. Speaking to a group of schoolchildren in the Hank Aaron Room at Turner Field in 2006, the aged veteran looked back 70 years to that first encounter with the legendary pitcher.

Actually, it was an encounter with two legends. Satchel’s batterymate that day was Josh Gibson, the great slugger known as the “Black Babe Ruth.” Gibson was noted for talking “trash” to hitters—especially young ones—in an attempt to intimidate them or at least to shake their confidence and break their concentration. This time was no exception, and Gibson bantered with the “green” batter as he stepped up to the plate. Red remembers his initiation vividly: “Josh said, ‘Young man, I heard you’re a pretty good hitter— can you hit laying down? When Satchel faces a rookie the first time, he kinda lays ’em down. You better watch, young buck, we’re going to have to check you out.’ Satchel was on the mound and I’m listening to Josh and then all of the sudden the ball popped like a shot in Josh’s mitt. He said, ‘That was pretty close and next time it’s going to be a little closer. You know you can’t hit laying down.’ And while Josh is talking, another fastball zipped by me. Then another one. I just kind of waved at ’em.” 

After Satchel hummed three straight fastballs by him before he had really settled into the batter’s box, the rookie had to face his manager’s ire in the dugout. A smile creases Red’s face as he describes his discomposure at the time: “W. Bell was manager then. When I got back to the dugout he said, ‘You’ve been hitting good ’til now—what happened?’ I said, ‘Mr. Bell, Josh is back there and he made me nervous. I was listening to him and didn’t watch the ball.’” The old warhorse chuckles, recalling the experience, and adds, “The first time I faced Satchel, I didn’t do nothing. And I never did do much against him.” Red’s rookie experience was not unique. Few players—rookies or otherwise—hit Satchel.

After this disquieting experience, Red settled into his role with the Newark ballclub. The fielding wizard added finesse to his team’s defense everywhere he played, but nowhere was it more apparent than with the Eagles in 1937, where he was part of their famed “million dollar infield.” Slugger Mule Suttles divided his time between first base and the outfield during his career but, when Red arrived on the scene, the big slugger spent more time in the outfield in deference to the youngster’s sterling defensive skills.

Once ensconced at the initial sack, Red teamed with second baseman Dick Seay, shortstop Willie Wells, third baseman Ray Dandridge, and catcher Leon Ruffin to give the Eagles Gold Glove quality at each infield position. Dandridge said, “Now, when he was at first base, that was our million-dollar infield.” Wells echoed that sentiment, praising Red’s defensive play lavishly. Dandridge and Wells are now members of the Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, New York. Two of Moore’s other teammates at Newark, Leon Day and Monte Irvin, are also among the Cooperstown elite, and both concurred with their former teammates’ assessment and added their own high praise of Red’s superior defensive prowess.

Following his stint in Newark, Red returned to his hometown in 1938 and helped the Atlanta Black Crackers become the first Atlanta team in any major league sport to win a championship. Although winning his greatest acclaim with his superb defensive skills, the left-handed batsman also had some good seasons at the plate, batting .320 with the 1938 Atlanta Black Crackers, when the team captured the second-half championship of the Negro American League’s split season. The resulting playoff with the first-half champion Memphis Red Sox was not completed, and the NAL president subsequently declared a co-championship.

Although he could pilfer a base when the game situation called for it, Red did not present a base-stealing threat. In fact, a base-running mishap led to an injury sliding into a base and put him on the shelf for an extended time during the Black Crackers’ title run. The irony is that this occurred in an exhibition game. Red describes the incident: “I cracked my left ankle going into second base. I made a late slide, and my spikes hung up under the base. I was out about six weeks, and it kept me from playing in the East–West game. I wore an ankle brace, and that kind of stabilized it. They didn’t put it in a cast, but I was on a crutch for awhile. I was in the dugout for our home games, but I didn’t do no traveling. I was kind of incapacitated. I wasn’t a fast man anyway, even before the injury. After I got back in the lineup is when we began our big winning streak and won the second-half championship.” 

Although Ted “Double Duty” Radcliffe was 102 years old and in poor health, his memory remained sharp about the 1938 Atlanta Black Crackers and one of the best first basemen he ever saw: “They had a heck of a ballclub. I managed the Memphis Red Sox in the championship playoff against them. Red Moore was a great fielder. He could pick it! And he was a good all-around ballplayer.” 

Off the field, Red was quiet, unassuming, and practical. Radcliffe also voiced his respect for his opponent as a person and spoke of how well liked he was. “He was one of the best fellows I ever met.” Buck O’Neil concurred: “I knew Red on the field and, after he stopped playing, I’d see him every time we would play in Atlanta. Red was always a good person. He was always a churchgoer.” 

This admiration of the Black Crackers’ star was not isolated, and Red Moore’s contribution to the team’s success did not go unnoticed in Atlanta, where the fans held a special day for him at Ponce de Leon Park to show their appreciation. Despite the restrictive economics of the Great Depression, the grateful fans presented the star first sacker with $350 worth of gifts and merchandise.

In addition to the fans, another Atlantan who admired the way that Red Moore played the game was Earl Mann, president of the white Atlanta Crackers, who earlier in the season had tried to sign the flashy fielder to a contract with his ballclub and pass him off as a Cuban. Red explains why he declined the offer: “Earl Mann wanted me to learn a little Spanish to help the ruse to succeed, but I knew that wouldn’t work. Everybody around Atlanta knew me. They all had seen Red Moore play, and I knew what would happen. They would’ve been calling me all kind of names, and I didn’t want any part of that. I stayed where I was with the Black Crackers.” 

The press also noted his sterling performance, and at the end of the season, the Southern News Service selected Moore to the Negro American League’s AllStar team. What more could a young ballplayer ask than to be an All-Star in his hometown? 

In 1939, the Black Crackers relocated to Indianapolis and played briefly as the ABCs before disbanding early in the season. Afterward, Moore was quickly signed by the Baltimore Elite Giants, where he roomed with Roy Campanella, who later became an All-Star catcher with the Brooklyn Dodgers and subsequently was voted into the Hall of Fame.

Both players were respected by their opponents and well liked by their teammates, and their similar personalities made them compatible roomies. Red remembers the years with his young roommate fondly: “I was about six years older than Roy. At that time he was just a teenager. He was a nice young fellow, good to be around. He was always telling jokes. He loved baseball—he loved the game. His dad would ride with us on the bus. He loved the game like we did and would be with us. He was Italian, but there was no problem with meals, accommodations, or anything— he would go where we would go.” 

Both young players were easygoing off the field but competitive on it, where the Elites battled Red’s old team, the Newark Eagles, and the dynastic Homestead Grays for the Negro National League pennant. In the end, the Elites lost out to the defending-champion Grays. Absent a championship playoff, the top four teams played a postseason tournament, and this time the Elites emerged victorious over the Grays to claim the championship trophy. Photographs snapped after the final game, which was played at Yankee Stadium, show the jubilant young roomies in the front row of the team picture.

When I mentioned his old roommate to Campy one year at Cooperstown, his face lit up and a smile spread across his face. “Yes,” Campy agreed emphatically, “He could pick it!” 

Both Campy and Red returned to the Elites the following spring and, at that point in Red Moore’s life, the world looked rosy to the young star. Little did he know what changes lay just around the corner.

Late in 1941 Red was married, but soon afterward the United States entered World War II, and he was inducted into the army in 1942. During the next three years, he served in England, Belgium, and France in a combat-engineer battalion attached to General George Patton’s Third Army. After the war ended, he was discharged in 1945 and returned to Atlanta. However, the years of athletic rust had taken their toll and, although he resumed his baseball career on a part-time basis, he never again played at the major-league level.

Leaving baseball in 1948, Red took a job in Atlanta with Colonial Warehouse until retiring in 1981. In retirement, he has retained a quiet demeanor and still loves chicken dinners, his favorite meal.

At age 93, Red resides in Atlanta with his wife Mary and remains active in his church and community. He serves as Deacon Emeritus at the Springfield Missionary Baptist Church and has given talks about his baseball career at a wide range of venues, including public schools, colleges, civic clubs, and SABR meetings. During the past four years, he has spoken to over one thousand school children in the Hank Aaron Room at Turner Field, as part of the Atlanta Sports Hall of Fame educational program.

Recognition came late in life for Red Moore. Once ignored to the point of invisibility, the Negro Leagues legend is belatedly receiving honors and recognition all across the country. He has appeared at numerous special functions and has been featured on television and in newsprint. In his hometown, the Mike Glenn Foundation presented him with a Pioneer Award, and the Georgia House of Representatives honored him at the state capitol with a resolution acknowledging his accomplishments. All of these recognitions were gratifying to Red, who was genuinely appreciative in accepting the accolades. Only in recent years has he come to grips with the fact that he is truly deserving of the awards.

The honor that was most personally fulfilling for him came when he was inducted into the Atlanta Sports Hall of Fame in 2006. When he received the call informing him of his election, Red shouted with joy. “I was so elated, I just shouted,” he explained. “I’m living and I can get to smell the roses. I’m glad that I will be able to do that. A lot of time some of us get awards and everything after we’re already gone.” 

JIM RILEY, the author of six books, including “The Biographical Encyclopedia of the Negro Baseball Leagues” (Da Capo Press, 2002), is research director of the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum. He has contributed to “The ESPN Baseball Encyclopedia” and the official program of the Major League Baseball All-Star Game.

Sources

The information for this article came primarily from the author’s interviews with Red Moore, Roy Campanella, Ray Dandridge, Leon Day, Monte Irvin, Buck O’Neil, Ted Radcliffe, and Willie Wells.

The origins of industrial baseball lie in the aftermath of the Civil War. In the decades following that conflict, Southern entrepreneurs, funded by Northern investors, sought to create a “New South” by transforming the existing agrarian economy into one grounded in industry and cash-crop capitalism. Beginning in the 1880s, industry in the South grew at an exponential rate, with textile mills as the keystone in the region’s industrial base.[fn]Douglas Flamming, Creating the Modern South: Millhands and Managers in Dalton, Georgia, 1884–1984 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1992), xxvii; Pete Daniel, Standing at the Crossroads: Southern Life in the Twentieth Century (New York: Hill and Wang, 1986), 42.[/fn] To attract rural people to work, mill owners constructed mill villages soon after they established each business. These villages evolved into self-sustaining communities, providing workers with places to live, eat, and shop. As with the mill villages, the mill-sponsored baseball teams extended the influence of the company into the personal lives of the workers. 

Historians offer two very different interpretations for the motives behind mill baseball. Many support the idea that company management created baseball teams in order to promote teamwork, to keep workers away from labor unions, and to teach immigrant workers how to be “real Americans.” In addition, these scholars argue that organized sports such as baseball helped workers fresh from the fields become more dependent on and accustomed to mill and village life as opposed to the often nomadic, seasonal schedule of the agrarian worker. These historians believe that mills organized baseball teams “in an effort to transform sandlot games into a sport sponsored by and identified with the company.” The same authors contend that baseball kept workers from being “idle” outside of business hours, encouraged them to stay at the mill for longer periods of employment, and, according to one manager from a South Carolina mill in 1910, taught employees from rural areas the “rules” of mill life.[fn]Geoffrey C. Ward and Ken Burns, Baseball: An Illustrated History (New York: Knopf, 1994), 124; Daniel, Standing at the Crossroads, 42; Jacquelyn Dowd Hall, James Leloudis, Robert Korstad, Mary Murphy, Lu Ann Jones, and Christopher B. Daly, Like a Family: The Making of a Southern Cotton Mill World (New York: Norton, 1987), 135–37.[/fn] 

Other scholars argue that mill baseball was not an advantage for the company alone. They believe mill baseball was more worker oriented than some people have realized, at least for the players. Many mill baseball managers and players in South Carolina had the bargaining power to secure good financial support for the team each season. In Dalton, Georgia, players seemed to have more control over their situation in the mill, using their talents on the field to alter the “rules” of their lives off the field. For example, the best players enjoyed some opportunities for mobility within the mill network as different companies sought to recruit them from competitors.[fn]Thomas Perry, Textile League Baseball/South Carolina’s Mill Teams 1880– 1955 (Jefferson, Mo.: McFarland, 1993), 50; Flamming, Creating the Modern South, 163–64.[/fn]

While there is little debate that mill baseball teams in Floyd County were started in order to bond workers even more strongly with the company, by the time these teams were formed into an organized league in 1931, the players were able to exert some control over their relationship with the mill. Even with the economic stresses of the Great Depression, mill baseball players earned extra pay for their abilities on the field and could even be granted less arduous jobs in the mill.[fn]Beth Gibbons, Videotaped interview by Heather Bostwick, 19 September 2000, Special Collections Department, Rome–Floyd County Library, Rome, Ga.; Harry Boss, videotaped interview by Beth Gibbons, 1995, Special Collections Department, Rome–Floyd County Library, Rome, Ga.[/fn] 

As an industrial area, Floyd County illustrates the traditional ideals that appear to be common to many areas that supported industrial teams because of the shared values that often emerged in mill communities. The situation in Floyd County closely mimics, in terms of structure and community function, the textile-mill baseball teams and communities in South Carolina described by Thomas Perry in Textile League Baseball: South Carolina’s Mill Teams, 1880–1955. However, certain factors—the unusually high concentration of teams in the area, the participation of those teams in an official league, and the fact that the region was considered the best in the country for fierce competition among industrial teams—made the Rome–Floyd County area of northwest Georgia an atypical but significant example of Southern industrial baseball. Thus, the community of Floyd County offers an excellent case study to examine the relationship between mill teams and the people they represented from the 1920s to the 1950s.[fn]Flamming, Creating the Modern South, 167. Douglas Flamming suggests that mill communities, because of the close proximity of the families and similar backgrounds of the workers, create their own system of values and social standards not unlike those of rural communities. At Crown Mill in Dalton, Georgia, some of these behavioral “rules” included no drinking and keeping both house and yard clean. Flamming asserts, however, that these social norms were by no means followed by everyone in the mill village but did serve as a set of basic guidelines for mill families to judge one another in the community. In many cases, this set of behavioral rules is reinforced by mill regulations as well. The mill villages of Floyd County created their own set of social rules not unlike those of Crown Mill in Dalton. Also, see Rhonda Sonnenburg, “When Textile Mill Athletes Were Champs,” Fiberarts 25, no. 5 (March/April 1999): 8.[/fn] 

Floyd County’s long tradition of baseball laid a solid groundwork for the Northwest Georgia Textile League. By 1868, organized baseball was in full swing in the area, with early clubs like the “Constellation Base Ball Club” meeting other local teams for games in the city of Rome. In 1910, Rome became a charter member of the newly formed Southeastern League; the “Romans” (later the “Hillites”) played against teams from Gadsden, Alabama; Knoxville, Johnson City, and Morristown, Tennessee; and Asheville, North Carolina. That team folded along with the league during the 1912 season, but the city had professional baseball again in 1913 when the Morristown (Tennessee) Jobbers of the Class D Appalachian League relocated to Rome and became the “Romans.” That relationship was short-lived, as the team moved again after one season, but Rome switched over to the Georgia Alabama League (also Class D) in 1914 and maintained membership until the league folded early in the 1917 season, like many other minor leagues affected by manpower shortages, travel restrictions, and reduced fan interest brought on by World War I.[fn]Lloyd Johnson and Miles Wolff, eds., The Encyclopedia of Minor League Baseball (Durham, N.C.: Baseball America, 1993), 137.[/fn] During that final season, the team represented both Rome and nearby Lindale but retained the nickname Romans. 

The area was without professional baseball for a few years, but in 1920 both Rome and Lindale became charter members of the Class D Georgia State League, which had been resurrected following two earlier incarnations (1906 and 1914). [EDITORS’ NOTE: The latter version of this league was a “continuation” of the Empire State League discussed elsewhere in this journal.] This time, the league and the two teams from the Rome area (and a team from Cedartown in neighboring Polk County) lasted for two years, but after the 1921 season, the area’s baseball fans once again had to rely on semiprofessional and amateur versions of the game. 

Professional baseball returned to the area in 1928, when a revitalized Georgia–Alabama League fielded six teams from northeastern Alabama and northwest Georgia, including teams from Lindale and Cedartown—but not Rome, the area’s largest city. These teams testified to continued local interest in the sport, and when the league folded following the 1930 season, the crowds of spectators migrated to the Northwest Georgia Textile League.[fn]Rome (Ga.) News Tribune, 27 March 1868: 1, 19 May 1868: 19 July 1895: 4 July 1901: 1902 Industrial edition: 28 May 1912: 9 April, 4, 10–11 May, 7 June, 21 July 1910; Michael McCann, “Minor League Baseball,” Michael McCann Minor League Baseball History, www.geocities.com/big_bunko/total.htm, 2000; Polly Gammon, A History of Lindale (Rome, Ga.: The Art Department of Rome, 1997), 28–29; Baseball Reference, www.baseballreference.com.[/fn] 

Over the years, various industries in the Floyd County area, from local divisions of well-known companies such as Coca-Cola to smaller institutions such as Battey Hospital, had sponsored baseball teams, but it was the textile mills that created the most organized and most popular teams. By 1900, the first textile mill–sponsored teams appeared in the Rome area, beginning a traditional mix of baseball and business that eventually culminated in the formation of the Northwest Georgia Textile League. 

By 1931, many of the local mills had been established long enough to support fully organized athletic programs. With so many area mills sponsoring baseball teams and with professional ball no longer conveniently available for the fan base, organizers saw an opportunity and took advantage of it. The Northwest Georgia Textile League was born, and (after its original Opening Day was rained out) the six-team league began play on April 11. From then until August 28, 1954 (except for a three-year hiatus during World War II), textile-mill teams dominated the baseball scene in the northwestern corner of Georgia.[fn]Gammon, A History of Lindale, 28–29; Harry Boss, audiotaped interview by Rome Braves Historical Research Team, 14 February 2003, Rome Area History Museum, Rome, Ga.; Rome News Tribune, 18 June 1976.[/fn]

The six charter members of the league included the Tubize–Chatillion (Celanese) and Anchor Duck mills in Rome, Pepperell Mill in Lindale, and three Goodyear teams located in Rockmart, Cedartown, and Cartersville, the latter also being known as Atco Mill. Each team featured a roster of seventeen players, and the 30-game schedule was equally divided between home and away games all played on Saturdays. After that first year, Brighton Mills in Shannon, Georgia, which had reluctantly dropped out of the inaugural season to create a balanced six-team league, replaced Anchor Duck, and the league composition did not change for four years, until Aragon Mills joined in 1936, bringing membership to seven teams. The odd number of teams allowed each club to have an occasional “off weekend . . . to play games outside the league.”[fn]Rome News Tribune, 10 March 1936.[/fn] The opportunity for “outside” games was enhanced further by reducing the schedule from 50 [fn]In 1933, the league had authorized Sunday games and had expanded the schedule to 50 games.[/fn] games to 36. After two years, Anchor Duck returned, creating an eight-team league and a 42-game schedule for one year. When Aragon dropped out after the 1938 season, the league again had a 36-game schedule for seven teams, who stayed together for three years, until World War II. Chart 1 lists league membership over its entire life span; the accompanying map shows the proximity of the teams to each other.[fn]Klenc, Tom. Northwest Georgia Textile League (1931-1954): Research Guide, June, 2007. Unpublished document in Rome-Floyd County Public Library. Map courtesy of Magnolia SABR member Bill Ross.[/fn] 

Over the years, NWGTL officials made a few other changes that affected the way the game was played. In 1935, the league eliminated the umpiring system that had hometown umpires travel with their teams and work games with a local umpire for the home team. Understandably, this system had generated criticism from fans and players alike. Under the new system, the league designated six umpires (each nominated by one of the league’s teams) who would work games in pairs but would never call a game in which their hometown team was involved. Since this system required that the umpires travel separately from the teams, their pay was doubled—to $4.00 per game. In 1938, the league introduced a mid-season All-Star Game, pitting the league-leading team against a team composed of the best players from the other league teams. The players split the gate receipts (after expenses were deducted), each earning some eight or nine dollars [fn]Rome News Tribune, 27 July, 1939.[/fn] in addition to the honor of being recognized as an elite player. Starting in 1939, the league used a Shaughnessy-style four-team playoff to select the league champion rather than a series between the champions of the first and second halves of the season. 

Throughout these refinements, all teams in the textile league followed one ground rule: all players were white men employed by the mill. Starting in 1935, each team’s roster could include up to three young players whose parents worked for the mill that sponsored the team.[fn]Ibid., 31 March, 1935.[/fn] Jobs for players varied from mill to mill, the type of job depending upon which mill and mill manager the players worked under. In some cases, players like “Powerhouse” Jim Hammonds had intense jobs such as welding, working regular eight-hour shifts each day, with regular practice and occasional weekday afternoon games following work. However, it was not uncommon for the players to be assigned to lighter tasks on game days to make sure that they would be well rested for the game. The granddaughter of one industrial-league player remembers hearing her grandfather explain how his team would be given the task of painting a house in the mill village on game days, which really meant, according to her memories, “a day full of relaxation and plenty of beer.”[fn]Stacy McCain, ed. PastTimes: Hometown Heroes of the Playing Fields (Rome, Ga.: Rome News Publishing Company, 1996), 31; Hall et al., Like a Family, 135; Beth Gibbons interview, 19 September 2000.[/fn] 

Textile-league players were compensated for their time on the field in addition to their regular salary. During the Depression era, players would make anywhere from $12 to $14 per week from their mill job, with an extra $4 to $7 per week for playing baseball. This extra pay added an incentive for mill workers to play well and make the team each year. These stipends also illustrate both the value placed on players by the mills and the dual strategies of both encouraging talent and imposing an economic control over the players in the league.[fn]Harry Boss interview, 14 February 2003; James C. McClanahan, audiotaped interview by Rome Braves Historical Research Team, 14 February 2003, Rome Area History Museum, Rome, Ga.; William Primm, Videotaped interview by Rome Braves Historical Research Team, 14 February 2003, Rome Area History Museum, Rome, Ga.[/fn]

Textile-league events were literally at the center of the industrial communities and mill life in the Floyd County area. Initially games took place on Saturdays and Sundays, but once the Tubize Mill added lights at its park in 1938, night games during the week became fairly common. Games were not allowed to interfere with the work day, since production was the top priority for the mills. Scheduling games after working hours and on weekends ensured that workers would not be encouraged to shirk their job duties. Most mills had their own baseball fields, all located near the mill building itself, at the heart of the mill village. Many of these playing fields were large enough to support bleachers, full grandstands, and concessions and could be examples of community pride, as was the case with the Tubize Mill field, where mill workers raised funds for building materials and then supplied the labor themselves. Some of the mill fields were known for special characteristics such as trees in the outfield or a particularly deep center field that made it next to impossible for a ball to clear the fence. At least one field had a canvas fence built around it to keep fans who did not pay for a ticket from witnessing the game for free. The field at Anchor Duck Mill was known for having an outfield full of “cow patties,” since the land was also used for mill workers to graze their own livestock. Concessions such as popcorn and peanuts were sold at games, and many families would often bring picnic lunches to the ball park.[fn]Harry Boss interview, 1995; William Primm interview, 14 February 2003; Kenneth Forbus, letter to Heather Bostwick, personal collection of Heather Bostwick, Silver Creek, Georgia, 25 April 2001; Margaret Brannon, letter to Heather Fincher, Rome News Tribune archives, Rome, Ga., 2003; Tubize-Chatillion Mill, Tubize Yarns (April 1945): 12–13.[/fn]

Play was intense and rivalries ran deep in the Northwest Georgia Textile League. Each season culminated in a league championship, and winning it not only signified the athletic achievement of that team, but it also assured “bragging rights” for that particular mill community as a whole and secured the place of players on the winning team for the following season. Champions of the Northwest Georgia region would often go on to play industrial and minor-league teams from other states. On occasion, teams from the minor leagues, such as the Atlanta Crackers, or college teams from schools such as Oglethorpe University would come to Rome and play a textile-league team, offering fans another variety of play.[fn]Robert Gregory, “Diz”: The Story of Dizzy Dean and Baseball during the Great Depression (New York: Penguin Books, 1992),42; Harry Boss interview, 14 February 2003; Tubize-Chatillion Mill, Tubize Yarns (Rome, Georgia; March 1946); James C. McClanahan interview, 14 February 2003; Rome News Tribune (Rome, Georgia; 8 May 1940).[/fn] 

Textile-league games could draw up to 2,000 or more fans per game during the regular season. It was not unusual for fans of both competing teams to fill the stands, paying 25 or 50 cents per game for adults and 10 cents for children. If seats were full, fans often sat along the baseline in order to see the game. Crowds that witnessed textile-league games appear to have been composed mostly of the textile workers, mill managers and supervisors, and their families, but citizens of the city of Rome, the heart of Floyd County, were also fans of the game. One local businessman, C. J. Wyatt, not only owned a store that sold sporting goods to the mills but also acted as league statistician for several years. It was common for the rural citizens of the county to attend the textile-league games, although exact numbers are not available.[fn]Harry Boss interview, 14 February 2003; William Primm interview, 14 February 2003; C. J. Wyatt, Personal communication with the author, 28 February 2003; Jackie P. Shores interview, 20 October 2000.[/fn] 

There is no evidence, however, that the textileleague games drew or allowed any African American fans. Photographs of the stands during a game do not show an African American presence, and interviews with former players revealed no evidence that black citizens of Floyd County were regular attendees of the textile-league games. This does not mean that African Americans never attended the games, but the racial norms of the day would have prohibited black fans from entering into any social interaction with whites. It is more likely that African Americans in the area participated in their own recreational events. The later years of the Depression and the early 1940s saw the first vestiges of organized African American baseball teams in the area, perhaps as an offshoot of the successful professional Negro Leagues, which enjoyed their greatest success between the years 1933 and 1947. While not part of the Northwest Georgia Textile League, African American teams associated with industries and mills did exist in the Floyd County area, including the Black Giants from Tubize and the Fairbanks Eagles. These teams were not fully supported by the mills in the same manner as the white teams; the players were not paid for their efforts, but the mills often donated equipment and material to make uniforms, and photos and news stories would often be included in the mill newsletter.[fn]Harry Boss interview, 14 February 2003; William Primm interview, 14 February 2003; James C. McClanahan interview, 14 February 2003; Harold Bowman, audiotaped interview by Rome Braves Historical Research Team, 14 February 2003, Rome Area History Museum, Rome, Ga.; J. M. Culberson, audiotaped interview by Rome Braves Historical Research Team, 14 February 2003, Rome Area History Museum, Rome, Ga.; James “Slugger” Howren, audiotaped interview by Rome Braves Historical Research Team, 14 February 2003, Rome Area History Museum, Rome, Georgia; Robert Kinney, audiotaped interview by Rome Braves Historical Research Team, 14 February 2003, Rome Area History Museum, Rome, Ga.; Julius Locklear, audiotaped interview by Rome Braves Historical Research Team, 14 February 2003, Rome Area History Museum, Rome, Ga.; Hubert Stepp, audiotaped interview by Rome Braves Historical Research Team, 14 February 2003, Rome Area History Museum, Rome, Ga.; Elliz Z. Woods, audiotaped interview by Rome Braves Historical Research Team, 14 February 2003, Rome Area History Museum, Rome, Ga.; Nathaniel McClinic, Personal communication with Doug Hamil, 4 March 2003, Doug Hamil Advertising, Rome, Ga.; G. Edward White, Creating the National Pastime (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1996), 139.[/fn] 

Fans who did not attend the games could still keep up with textile-league play. Games were broadcast on Rome radio station WLAQ, with announcer Lee Mowry behind the microphone. Announcing textile-league games was not easy; to call a game, Mowry would often take a taxi to the park, only to sit on the ground behind the umpire or on a rough platform fenced in by chicken wire. Well known by both players and fans, Mowry was not beyond the reach of pranksters on the field. Pitcher J. M. Culberson was known to throw warm-up pitches against the boards near Mowry’s head to “make sure he was awake.” Through thick and thin, Mowry stayed with the game. During one game between Brighton and Pepperell, Mowry broadcast for four hours and twenty minutes before the game was called because of darkness. Such was the fierce dedication of the players and the announcer to the textile-league games, the broadcasting of which shows how important the textile league and its games were to the communities surrounding Floyd County.[fn]Broadside (Rome, Ga.), 17 February 1977; Lee Mowry, personal communication with the author, 7 February 2003; McCain, PastTimes, 30, 34.[/fn]

In Floyd County, despite radio broadcasts of regional and national baseball, the textile-league teams remained the center of attention. Even in the mills with villages that provided amenities such as electricity and paid workers enough to be able to afford radios, local sporting events like industrial baseball games still held precedent over their national counterparts. “We paid attention when the World Series was on,” one man stated, “but the rest of the time local teams were more important.”[fn]Jackie P. Shores interview, 29 October 2000.[/fn] 

Another method for keeping Floyd County fans in touch with the national baseball scene in a time before television was the “Playograph” that the City of Rome installed in the City Auditorium. This device was composed of a three-dimensional rendering of a baseball diamond, with individually moving pieces representing the players on a ballfield. When a play was made, a person controlling the device would move the corresponding pieces to represent what had happened during the game, while an “announcer” relayed a play-by-play commentary. Used primarily during the World Series, the excitement inspired by the mechanical action of the “Playograph” paled in comparison to the thrilling live games of local teams.[fn]Jackie P. Shores interview, 29 October 2000; McCain, 29.[/fn] 

The press also emphasized local teams and provided another way that local citizens could keep up with the action in the Northwest Georgia Textile League. Industrial-league teams received prominent placement in the local newspaper, the Rome NewsTribune, garnering big headlines and even comic strips devoted to the games. National teams, on the other hand, were often given scant coverage in the press, even such prominent events as the opening celebration of the National Hall of Fame in 1939. In addition, the paper sponsored a local All-Star ballot that encouraged Floyd County residents to recognize their favorite industrial-league players. The annual league championship was also a highly publicized event for the area, its popularity placing it on the same level as the Dixie Series in the South and the Major League’s World Series.[fn]Rome News Tribune (Rome, Georgia), 11-13 June 1939: 30 June 1947: 6 September 1947.[/fn]

Practical matters may also have contributed to the popularity of the Northwest Georgia Textile League, particularly during the Depression era. A lack of transportation was one factor that kept people close to home. Baseball fans typically were limited to watching the games played in close proximity to their homes or workplaces, although it was not unheard of for a mill family to travel to Atlanta for a sporting event or entertainment. Before the Atlanta Braves existed, there were few professional baseball teams near northwest Georgia; Birmingham, Chattanooga, and Atlanta were the closest cities with minor-league teams. However, major-league teams including the Cincinnati Reds, Washington Senators, Cleveland Indians, and New York Giants played exhibition games at the Tubize Mill baseball field, giving Floyd County residents a chance to see national teams close to home.[fn]25. Tubize-Chatillion Mill, Tubize Yarns (Rome, Ga.) October 1946; Rome News Tribune (Rome, Ga.), 4 April 1940); Flamming, Creating the Modern South, 163; Sonnenburg, “When Textile Mill Athletes Were Champs,” 8; Gammon, A History of Lindale, 29.[/fn]

Textile-league games were popular not only because of the athletic spectacle they presented; they served other community functions, too. The nature and frequency of the ballgames gave Floyd County industrial communities a recreational activity through which they could pursue other social interests. Games were played in the heart of the mill village, offering employees a chance to visit with neighbors and friends, exchange local gossip, or court a favorite sweetheart. Games were important community occasions where the village could come together. The ladies dressed up, hoping to catch a player’s eye. “My grandmother and her sisters wouldn’t think of going to a game without dresses, hats, and gloves,” one woman remembers. “In that community, you only dated ball players.” Clearly, textile-league players enjoyed advantages beyond the extra cash.[fn]Hall et al., Like a Family, 139; Beth Gibbons interview, 19 September 2000.[/fn]

At the heart of every textile-league game were the players themselves. The fiercely competitive league fostered talented players and entertained northwest Georgia with a brand of baseball still remembered today. Most players came from the local area and ranged in age from eighteen to thirty-six, although mills would recruit college players to work and play for the company each summer. “College boys” were usually recruited from Southern schools such as Vanderbilt, Auburn, and Oglethorpe. Most of these players became aware of the Northwest Georgia Textile League through college teammates with ties to the Floyd County area. A summer job and the chance to play in a popular baseball league were good enough incentives to lure several college players, such as Harry Boss of Vanderbilt and James “Mac” McClanahan from Oglethorpe University, to Floyd County, and many of them returned to the area to settle when their college days were over. The use of college players worked well for both parties—the players had a chance to continue their training away from school, and the mill enjoyed access to fresh talent every baseball season. In turn, the textile league offered local players a chance to hone their athletic skills, which often led to college scholarships and a recurring spot on a college baseball team, as was the case of Willard Nixon, a Floyd County native who used his experience on a textile-league team to earn a scholarship to Auburn University. [EDITORS’ NOTE: See Wynn Montgomery’s article “Georgia’s 1948 Phenoms and the Bonus Rule” in the summer 2010 issue of The Baseball Research Journal.] 

At times, popular players would switch teams in the league in order to make additional money. A winning team was so important that mills would try to out-pay each other for the top players. For example, six supervisors at Brighton Mill in Shannon once pledged a dollar from their salaries each week in an attempt to lure the future major-leaguer Rudy York away from the Atco Mill in Cartersville, Georgia, to play for the Brighton Mill team.[fn]Harry Boss interview, 14 February 2003; James C. McClanahan interview, 14 February 2003. Harry Boss and “Mac” McClanahan were not originally from Floyd County. Mr. Boss’s family moved to Floyd County when his father was transferred to Tubize Mill. Boss played baseball at both Vanderbilt University and for Tubize Mill, eventually returning to Floyd County after college, where he still resides today. “Mac” McClanahan had no ties to the Floyd County area prior to his college years. While on a baseball scholarship at Oglethorpe University, McClanahan was asked to play on the Tubize Mill team for a summer. McClanahan played for the Tubize team for a few seasons, but was so impressed by the people of the area that he moved to Floyd County after his college career and baseball career ended. Also, see McCain, PastTimes, 46–47.[/fn] Having a winning baseball team in such a closely knit and competitive area proved that a particular mill community stood out above the rest and helped raise all those associated with that community above their typical social status. The players represented all of the workers in the mills, helping them overcome the pejorative label of “lint-head.”[fn]Jackie P. Shores interview, 29 October 2000; Beth Gibbons interview, 19 September 2000; McCain, PastTimes, 46–47; Sonnenburg, “When Textile Mill Athletes Were Champs,” 8.[/fn]

Players were popular both on and off the field. These “hometown heroes” lived and worked with their fans, inspiring countless local children to be the new generation of baseball players. “These great players were the people we saw every day,” one community member remembers fondly. “Star” players enjoyed upward social mobility within the community and also helped to raise the status of the community as a whole. Some players from the Floyd County area went beyond the textile league to have careers in both the minor and major leagues, elevating them to a new level of local fame. Yet the status of local hero was enough for at least one player; “Lefty” Sproull turned down a spot on a professional baseball team to remain a mill worker and player for the Goodyear plant in Rockmart, Georgia. Others (including Rudy York, Leon Culberson, Willard Nixon, and Joe Tipton) used their textile-league prowess to follow their dreams to the big leagues. 

For some citizens in the Floyd County area, textile league baseball provided not only a source of community pride but also a way to survive. Especially during the Depression, a number of unemployed Georgians used their baseball talents to try to win a spot on a mill baseball team and thereby secure a job in the mill itself. As one former player recalls, “If you could play, you got a job.” Reflecting on that time, the same player added, “Today players get paid millions of dollars. Back then, we were just lucky to have a job.”[fn]Harry Boss interview, 1995.[/fn]

Even with all of the opportunities it afforded to both the players and the community, the Northwest Georgia Textile League was not impervious to the economic turmoil of the Depression. The General Textile Strike of 1934 reached the South in early September with 200,000 mill workers eventually participating in it. Although Floyd County was never at the center of activity during the revolt, the “Strike of ’34” did cause snags in the fabric of mill life and mill baseball in that area of northwest Georgia.[fn]Michelle Brattain, The Politics of Whiteness: Race, Workers, and Culture in the Modern South (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001), 53.[/fn]

Floyd County textile mills and their baseball teams were unaccustomed to the nuances of organized labor when the General Textile Strike began. Labor unions had never been a strong force in the community. The two earlier strikes that had affected the textile mills in Floyd County had been brief and disorganized. The first strike had taken place at the Lindale Mill in 1896, when white workers had protested management’s decision to let a black worker fill in as a machinery operator. The other strike had occurred in 1933, when several workers at Anchor Duck Mill organized a walkout in protest of increased workloads and a decrease in shift hours.[fn]Ibid., 37–38, 64–65.[/fn]

The widespread organization of the textile strike in 1934 caused a ripple effect in Floyd County mill life. The workers, according to the historian Michelle Brattain, were generally confused and disorganized by the strike—if they bothered to participate in it at all. Both Brighton Mill and Anchor Duck Mill employed significant numbers of workers who supported the strike. However, Brattain maintains that only 40 percent of the total textile workforce in Floyd County participated in strike activities, and most of those workers became involved only after the strike had already begun. For those Floyd County mills that had striking workers, production halted briefly, if at all. Most workers were indifferent to the strike. Floyd County experienced no real conflict as a result of the strike, and the only violence stemmed from a clash between a mill guard and a drunken deputy at Lindale Mill. Even when that story appeared in the local newspaper, millhands in Floyd County still reported to work.[fn]Ibid., 53, 68–71, 78–84.[/fn]

The General Textile Strike of 1934 did affect the Northwest Georgia Textile League in two major ways. When managers at Lindale Mill feared that a “flying squadron” of union organizers might arrive at the mill, they deputized the baseball players as mill guards. The squadron never appeared, suggesting that the players were respected enough by the community that their presence alone could dissuade union violence during the strike. When the strike began, league officials decided to cut the 1934 season short and to cancel the annual championship series, declaring Shannon and Lindale co-champions. By the following spring, play resumed for the Northwest Georgia Textile League, and it again was baseball as usual in Floyd County.[fn]Ibid., 68–69.[/fn]

Throughout the Great Depression, Northwest Georgia Textile League baseball proved to be the most popular form of organized recreation in the Floyd County area. In an era when helplessness and poverty were everyday occurrences, the game provided a medium through which textile-league players and the community of workers they represented could survive the rough economic conditions of the time and maintain a sense of social pride. However, by the beginning of the 1940s, world events were set in motion that would forever change the face of mill life and textile league baseball in Floyd County and elsewhere. 

As America entered World War II, focus shifted from the economic troubles at home to the fighting in Europe and the Pacific. With many players trading baseball uniforms for military gear, professional baseball in the United States faced a precarious situation. In Floyd County, the stresses of the war took their toll on mill baseball. In 1941, league officials shortened the NWGTL season by six weeks, creating a 24-game schedule for each of the seven teams, to accommodate the Goodyear mills’ increased production requirements.[fn]Rome News Tribune, 12 March 1941.[/fn] As the war intensified, the league rosters lost more and more players as the citizens of Floyd County answered the call to arms. In March 1942, the NWGTL announced that it would not operate that year “due to local as well as general wartime conditions.” At the same time, the Rome News Tribune announced the creation of a new league, the Floyd County Textile League, which would “provide the local fans some enjoyment of their favorite local pastime”[fn]Ibid., 29 March 1942.[/fn] and would play with “retreaded” baseballs—used balls with new covers.[fn]Ibid., 12 April 1942.[/fn] This new league had only four teams, all of which had been members of the NWGTL: Tubize, Lindale, Anchor Duck, and the Orphans.[fn]C. J. Wyatt, personal communication with the author, 28 February 2003.[/fn] 

The Orphans were a team unique to the time. Composed mostly of players from Brighton Mill or any of the three Goodyear mills who were either too old or too young for military service, the Orphans were the creation of Rome businessman and league statistician C. J. Wyatt. A baseball fan, Wyatt provided uniforms and equipment to the “orphaned” players, allowing them to split whatever profits they earned from playing baseball games. According to C. J. Wyatt’s son, the Orphans were the only team in the history of the area’s textile leagues for which players who did not work in the mill were allowed to compete.

At the end of the abbreviated season, the Anchor Duck team collected its first championship trophy— and the only Floyd County Textile League trophy ever, as the league did not return in 1943. Some of the larger mills (notably Pepperell, Tubize, and Brighton) continued to support teams made up of veteran players too old for military service and high-school athletes, allowing teenagers like Willard Nixon, who later pitched for the Boston Red Sox, to get an earlier-thanusual start by filling the ranks of the textile teams.[fn]Wyatt, 28 February 2003; McCain, PastTimes, 46–47.[/fn] These “independent” teams gave local fans some baseball, but no organized league existed in the area until the war ended. 

On the front lines of the war, ball players from the Northwest Georgia Textile League acted as ambassadors of the sport. One example is Jack Gaston, a textile player turned enlisted man who helped organize baseball games while stationed in England. Another Rome native, Nath McClinic, played on an African American military team that won the “Island Championship” in Iwo Jima.[fn]Max Gaston, letter to Heather Fincher, Rome News Tribune archives, Rome, Ga., 2003; Nathaniel McClinic, Personal communication with Doug Hamil, 4 March 2003.[/fn]

While local textile mills proudly supported players and workers serving their country, the U.S. government’s demand for increased production breathed new life into the industry and called for an increased focus on matters at home. Floyd County mills competed for the coveted Army-Navy “E” Award for production records. Mill baseball parks became venues for commemorating the community war effort in addition to hosting games. Parades of local military groups, ceremonies surrounding the Army-Navy “E” Award, and patriotic celebrations were held on mill baseball fields for the duration of the war.[fn]Gammon, p. LXVII, LIII.[/fn] 

With the end of the war, baseball in Floyd County shifted roles once again. As players came home from active duty and returned to the mills, interest in the Northwest Georgia Textile League revived. By 1946, the league had regrouped, with five of the seven 1941 teams back in the fold. The Rome News Tribune predicted that it would “be rated as one of the strongest and oldest ‘loops’ in Georgia.”[fn]Rome News Tribune, April 14, 1946.[/fn] The teams played 32 of the scheduled 40 games, with weather canceling the others, and Pepperell (Lindale) won the first of two consecutive league championships. 

Despite a successful season, only Lindale, Shannon, and Tubize were willing to commit to the league for the 1947 season. The teams that withdrew cited “fulltime working conditions” and their inability to attract the players needed to field competitive teams.[fn]Ibid., March 7, 1947.[/fn] League officials considered postponing the start of the season but avoided that prospect by adding a mill team from Bremen, Georgia. The league entered the 1947 season with only four teams, the fewest ever, and by mid-June the newest of those teams had withdrawn. Summerville replaced Bremen, and the league was able to finish its season. 

The NWGTL was back to six teams for the 1948 season, but four of the teams were new. Lindale and Shannon were back, but the other stalwart league member, Tubize, was now part of a new league in the northwest Georgia area. The West Georgia Textile League also fielded six teams, including three other teams (Aragon and the Goodyear teams from Cartersville and Rockmart) that had been members of the NWGTL at some point in the past. Thus, northwestern Georgia was now asked to support two organized leagues totaling twelve teams. 

The instability of the various leagues and the mobility of the teams continued in 1949. The Northwest Georgia Textile League again had six teams, but only three (Lindale, Shannon, and Trion) were returnees from the previous year. The other three transferred back from the West Georgia Textile League. Once again, however, the NWGTL did not offer the only games around. Rome, the geographic and population center of northwest Georgia, fielded a team (the Red Sox) in the North Georgia City League, which sported teams in four other nearby towns—Calhoun, Chickamauga, Dalton, and Summerville. Rome left this league in June to play “independent, semi-pro ball.”[fn]Ibid., 8 June 1949.[/fn]

During the eleven years that the league existed before disbanding during World War II, five teams were part of the league every year, and another joined in the second year and remained for the next ten years. Only two other teams participated before the war, and they played for three and four consecutive years, respectively. Following the war, only two teams were in the league for all nine years, while thirteen other teams came and went, with only two being league members for as many as four years. Two others lasted less than a full season. These fluctuations in league membership reflect the changing times and the many reasons that the Northwest Georgia Textile League was never able to recapture the popularity it had held for local citizens prior to the war. According to the announcer Lee Mowry, factors such as the growth of community youth baseball and the loss of friends and family to the war kept the league from reclaiming its special role in the area.[fn]Broadside (Rome, Ga.), 17 February 1977; Rome News Tribune, 20 February 1947, 23 February 1947, 30 June 1947, 2 July 1947, 6 September 1947, 4 April 1951, 23 April 1951, 26 April 1951, 4 June 1952, 22 November 1953, 4 June 1954.[/fn]

A change in perception by returning players also fed the decline of the Northwest Georgia Textile League in the Floyd County area. Their war experiences had changed their perspective of the game. Former player Billy Primm explained his mindset after the war: “After what I had seen overseas, baseball just didn’t seem that important anymore.”[fn]William Primm interview, 14 February 2003; personal recollections of Heather Bostwick. The author lived in Floyd County for twenty-eight years, attended Pepperell High School in the Lindale community between August 1989 and May 1993, and witnessed a shift in focus from highschool baseball to high-school football in the area.[/fn] 

Another factor to consider in the decline of the Northwest Georgia Textile League is the shifting role of the mills themselves by the late 1940s. The boom in demand for textile goods during the war decreased sharply when the conflict ended, creating a slump for some textile mills, many of which changed ownership in the years following the war. In turn, the economic losses for textile mills decreased their dominance of the economy in many areas of Georgia, including Floyd County. 

The mill workers in Floyd County were also changing in post–World War II Georgia. Workers could now find better pay and improved working conditions in places other than a mill village. In addition, the GI Bill allowed workers who could not afford an education before the war to go beyond the mill village and find other occupations. These circumstances served not only to end the Northwest Georgia Textile League but spelled the beginning of the end for traditional millvillage life in Floyd County.[fn]Brattain, The Politics of Whiteness, 165.[/fn]

As the strength of the textile league continued to wane, professional baseball returned to northwest Georgia. The city of Rome entered a team, the Red Sox, in the Class D Georgia-Alabama League in 1950. That team, which included some veterans of textile ball, lasted only two years; the textile league itself continued to operate through 1954, fielding four teams some years and six teams in others. The Pepperell (Lindale) and Brighton (Shannon) Mills were the only constants, and league membership was never the same from one year to the next. 

Even after the league was no more, the last few mill-sponsored baseball teams in the area played their games against other community teams. With the arrival of the former Milwaukee Braves in Atlanta in 1966, the major leagues no longer just visited northern Georgia. Now they had a permanent home in the hearts and minds of fans with a new “home team” to rally behind. On a local level, the Floyd County community’s focus shifted from mill teams to high-school baseball, which enjoyed several years of popularity before eventually being replaced as the top sport by high-school football. Although many of the mills in the Floyd County area continued production well past World War II, beginning in the 1950s and 1960s, mill villages became less cohesive as worker houses and businesses were sold off to individuals. By the turn of the twenty-first century, the mills had become only parts of larger communities rather than the communities themselves. As of 2009, the former Brighton Mill at Shannon, Georgia, is the only one of the original buildings that remains in use as a textile company, now Gayley & Lord.[fn]Floyd County Heritage Book Committee, 134; Rome News Tribune, 22 November 1953, 26 February 1982; Senior Times (Rome, Ga.), October 1989.[/fn] 

The Northwest Georgia Textile League lives on in the collective memory of the community. The Floyd County area houses a network of folklore and folklife traditions surrounding baseball, from the years of the Great Depression up to the present day. Floyd County now boasts its own Hall of Fame, founded in the late 1960s to showcase the achievements of local athletes, many of whom were textile-league players.[fn]Rome News Tribune, 22 January 1971, 4 March 1975, 2 March 1976, 21 September 1989, 23 February 1996), Baseball Reference, www.baseball-reference.com.[/fn]

Although no formal history of the Northwest Georgia Textile League has been written, oral traditions perpetuate the stories and legends of the teams and players throughout the Floyd County community. Often the players themselves relate their own stories to younger fans through reunions and community interaction, thus contributing and adding to their legendary status. Former player Harry Boss stated, “When we get together and start talking, we seem to become much better players than we really were back then.”[fn]Harry Boss, interview, 1995; Rome News Tribune, 13 March 1983.[/fn] The stories associated with the Northwest Georgia Textile League also help remind the community of its industrial ties, since many of the mills are no longer in business and the mill villages were divided into private lots long ago. 

During the years that the Northwest Georgia Textile League was active, the customs surrounding the players, the teams, and their fans served to unite the members of the Floyd County community and bolster the community spirit of the industrial families within the area. The All-Star players, the game rivalries, the community social patterns, the mill owners, the fans—the many elements that created and supported this baseball league—each represents a different tradition in the historical collage of northwest Georgia. Their interaction created an outlet that allowed the people of that region to persevere during times of economic hardship, especially when faced with the Great Depression, when pay was low and chances of advancement were few. 

Overall, the traditions and activities of the Northwest Georgia Textile Baseball League demonstrate a dynamic baseball tradition in the Floyd County area and paint a picture of a close-knit community that found that baseball played close to home gave a more personal face to the game, a face that was not unlike their own. Community itself was an important element from the tough times of the 1930s through World War II, giving mill workers in the area a medium for bonding with neighbors who shared similar backgrounds and experiences. For the Floyd County area, the traditions that surrounded local baseball during this time instilled a sense of community pride while elevating the importance of baseball to which members of the community still bear witness today. 

The three decades of the Northwest Georgia Textile League represent the ultimate combination of business and baseball. For the mill owners and managers, baseball represented a “safe” leisure activity that tied workers to their jobs and communities and granted “bragging rights” to mill administrators who produced winning teams. For the players, the league served as an economic buffer against the hardships of the Depression, a method for securing an elevated place within their community, and a chance for a few to use their athleticism to propel them out of the mill village and into the big leagues. For the mill villagers as a whole, baseball provided a break from the monotony of the work week, a social outlet for the community, and a way to enjoy improved social status vicariously through winning teams and famous players. 

This symbiotic relationship served to elevate mill baseball to an unprecedented height within the Floyd County area, resulting in almost thirty years of league activity that even the labor unrest of the Depression could only minimally affect. The bond forged between textile-league baseball and the Floyd County area was so strong that the memories of this brand of baseball still live on, decades after the last inning has ended and the last fan has left the stands. Player reunions, newspaper articles, and the stories handed down through the generations have helped preserve the memory and importance of mill baseball in the collective consciousness of the Floyd County community.

HEATHER S. SHORES is assistant director of the Bandy Heritage Center for Northwest Georgia at Dalton State College. Her research on baseball in Northwest Georgia is on display in the exhibition “Homefield Advantage: Memories of Professional Baseball in Northwest Georgia” at State Mutual Stadium in Rome, Georgia.

The Atlanta Constitution reported: “Nearly every preacher in Atlanta has joined the movement and they say that they will not stop until there is no such thing as Sunday baseball at Fort McPherson, Sunday concerts or any other form of amusement that they regard as demoralizing.”1

Indeed, the Atlanta Evangelical Association was aiming at prominent targets, including the federal government. The Constitution reported that the most important target “and the one that would be most widely felt if successful is the abolishment of Sunday mails [which] they claim . . . is unnecessary and totally in violation of the law laid down in the scriptures.” The group even declared, “The war is on and . . . Sunday must be respected in Atlanta.”2

As serious as that sounds, things were peaceful in Atlanta compared to other communities throughout the country where preachers pushed for quiet Sabbath observance. The baseball magnates who operated teams all united in pushing back—the amateurs in pursuit of pleasure, the professionals in pursuit of dollars.

Fort McPherson, headquarters of the U.S. Army in the South, was an important and integral part of Atlanta’s economy and social life. The city had worked hard to land the fort and was proud of it, although its presence was not without problems. In April 1897, thirty gamblers came before Judge John D. Berry in the City of Atlanta’s criminal court for indulging in their favorite pastime at the fort. Their defense was that city and state courts had no jurisdiction over offenses committed on a government reservation.3

Gambling, however, was not the target of the Evangelical Association. Dr. R. V. Atkisson, pastor of the Central Congregation Church, had identified that target for the association a month earlier when he decried “the evils of the practice [baseball games], showing that large crowds went out from the city every Sunday; that as a rule, an objectionable class of people were at the garrison on that day; that by the yelling and noise the whole place was disturbed.”4

The Evangelical Association had first gone about its business quietly, appointing a committee to call on the fort commander, who had in turn referred them to the War Department in Washington, D.C. While the ministers undoubtedly resorted to prayer, they also turned to a more earthly source of help in high places. They wrote to Col. Alfred E. Buck, a former Republican chairman in Georgia, who was then in Washington. Buck immediately took the letter to the War Department. That approach worked like an answered prayer.

Dr. Atkisson soon reported that “an order had been received at the fort preventing any more games. The Constitution added: “There seems to have been no game Sunday, and the order has gone forth that no more shall be played. The other ministers of the city are equally jubilant, and consider it a great victory for their cause.”5

The biggest change in the local baseball scene, however, wasn’t due to the ministers’ victory. The Atlanta team in the Southeastern League, which hadn’t been playing on Sundays anyway, played its last game on May 29, because the entire league had folded due to “poor patronage.”6

The Fort McPherson baseball team continued to play, just not on Sunday. And the fort continued to be an integral part of Atlanta society. The Constitution reported on Sunday, June 6: “Next Saturday afternoon the ladies of the Episcopal church of West End will give a bicycle meet at Fort McPherson. Captain Cook has generously consented to keep open the fort till 10 o’clock in the evening.”7

Moreover, Atlanta continued to have Sunday entertainments, including two separate band concerts on Sunday, August 1. Extra streetcars were scheduled to run for both events.8

Despite losing Sunday baseball thanks to help in high places, Atlanta’s other Sunday amusements continued, demoralizing or not.

RICHARD MCBANE, a retired newspaperman, is the author of “Glory Days: The Akron Yankees of the Middle Atlantic League, 1935–1941” (Summit County Historical Society, 1997), and “A Fine-Looking Lot of Ball Tossers: The Remarkable Akrons of 1881” (McFarland, 2005).

Notes

Ponce De Leon Park, home of the Atlanta Crackers, became home to another team shortly after the 1919 season began: the Atlanta Cubs, the predecessor to the Black Crackers. That team consisted of Atlanta players and college athletes brought together by a group of local businessmen.[fn]Atlanta Constitution, 14 September 1918.[/fn]

Atlanta Crackers general manager Frank Reynolds realized that he could lease the ballpark to the black ballclub when the Crackers went on the road and thereby increase the Crackers’ profits. The Cubs were a hard-hitting team that got off to an immediately strong start against a variety of opponents. While playing a series in Birmingham, the Cubs so impressed area fans that they came back to Atlanta with a new name, the Atlanta Black Crackers.[fn]Allen E. Joyce, Atlanta Black Crackers, MA thesis, Auburn University, 1975, 14–15.[/fn] By the end of the summer season, the Black Crackers had played all over the South and had beaten teams from New Orleans to Florida and many places in between. 

The Atlanta Black Crackers posing for a team photo before a game. (COURTESY OF THE NEGRO LEAGUES BASEBALL MUSEUM)

Insurance man W. J. “Bill” Shaw took over the Black Crackers in 1920, for their second season. Shaw moved to Atlanta from Brunswick, Georgia, and added to his insurance work a social club that held dances in the rooftop garden of the Odd Fellows Building and Auditorium on Auburn Avenue. This avenue was the heart and soul of the African American community in Atlanta. “More financial institutions, professionals, educators, entertainers and politicians were on this one mile of street than any other African American street in the South.”[fn]“Sweet Auburn Avenue: Triumph of the Spirit,” http://sweetauburn.us/ intro.htm; Gary Pomerantz, Where Peach Tree Meets Sweet Auburn (New York: Scribner, 1996); Cynthia Griggs Fleming, Soon We Will Not Cry (Lanham, Md.: Rowman and Littlefield Publishers, 2000).[/fn] The social club’s profits helped finance the ballclub, and a number of the players played in the club’s orchestra. Shaw helped the Crackers line up games to play at Morris Brown University Field and at Ponce de Leon Park. Many of the early ball players joined the club from the local colleges, including Morris Brown and Morehouse. He ran the team on a shoestring budget with twelve players and handme-down equipment and uniforms from the white Crackers team.[fn]Joyce, Atlanta Black Crackers, 17; Clifford M. Kuhn et al., Living Atlanta: An Oral History of the City (Atlanta: University of Georgia Press, 2005), 266–67.[/fn]

When the Black Crackers played at Ponce De Leon Park, they attracted good crowds, including a sizable number of white fans. When the Black Crackers played, fans could sit anywhere in the park, but when the white Crackers played, the seating was segregated. Black fans sat in the bleachers in left field, an area they called Buzzard’s Roost, according to former player Gabby Kemp.[fn]“Black Crackers Get Second Straight Win Over Black Barons,” Atlanta Constitution, 8 July 1921, 10; Kuhn, Living Atlanta, 272.[/fn] Even with good fan support the Black Crackers struggled, because they could not afford to travel north to play the major Negro League teams, and those teams did not regularly include a swing through the South in their season schedule. As a result, the Black Crackers played all but one season outside the major Negro Leagues and spent much of their playing time traveling to wherever a paying gig could be found. Atlanta sportswriter Ric Roberts described the importance of the Black Crackers to the local community, saying: “Baseball was an outlet. To sit where the whites sat—it was a moment of escape. . . . Blacks have always loved baseball. . . . And it gave them a chance to look at their heroes.”[fn]Joyce, Atlanta Black Crackers, 10.[/fn] 

When the Negro Southern League (NSL) formed in 1920, the Black Crackers became members, paying the $200 franchise fee and hoping for a successful first season. Unfortunately the club struggled, and by August their record only stood at 39–37. While not a success on the field, the Black Crackers proved that a team could survive in Atlanta. They returned for another year, opening the 1921 season in early April with a win against the Federal Prison Indians. They also ended their season by defeating the Federal Prison Indians[fn]Atlanta Constitution, 4 April 1921.[/fn] again, 3–2. Big Preacher Davis struck out sixteen for the winners. Although they spent much of the season on the road, where they made better money due to larger crowds and not having to pay to lease ballparks, their financial struggles caused the team to dissolve before the end of the season. 

The Black Crackers did not return to league play until 1925, because the college players lost their eligibility if they played for money. Thus the club could not find enough good players to field a team, and without a strong team they could not afford the rental fees for a park.[fn]“Wildcats and Black Crackers Cross Bats,” Savannah Tribune, 11 and 18 June 1921; “Black Crackers Defeat Indians,” Atlanta Constitution, 3 October 1920; 3B; Joyce, Atlanta Black Crackers, 20–21.[/fn]

New money and organization came to the team in 1925 in the forms of businessmen H. J. Peek and George Strickland. The team still spent a lot more time on the road because Atlanta’s blue laws meant that Sunday baseball had to be played in other towns. Due to the Black Crackers’ long absences from home, little about them can be found in the papers, and fans found it difficult to follow the team’s progress. The weekly Atlanta Daily World did not start coverage until 1928 and did not become a daily until 1932. The Atlanta Constitution gave only sporadic coverage. 

The club disappeared again before the end of the 1925 season. Peek brought the club back in 1926 with one major change: no more traveling by rail, which was expensive. Instead, the team rode in automobiles and saved money by driving themselves. Even this cost-saving measure did not help, and the Black Crackers went bankrupt before the end of the 1926 season. 

The Black Crackers returned to play in the NSL in 1927, opening the season with a loss and then defeating Chattanooga 7–4. The club knocked out eleven hits in their win. By midseason, the Black Crackers were back to traveling and playing local teams and still not garnering much attention in the newspapers.[fn]“Chattanooga Loses to Black Crackers,” Atlanta Constitution, 4 May 1927, 8.[/fn]

From 1928 to 1931, Atlanta had no league black team, but there were a number of local sandlot and semipro clubs that kept black baseball alive. The Atlanta Grey Sox made a short-lived league attempt in 1928, but they only played a few games before financial troubles closed them down. H. J. Peek tried again in 1930 to revive baseball with a team called the Black Panthers, but most players were content playing in the local city league. The Panthers managed to survive through the beginning of the 1931 season before the worsening depression led to them shutting down. They might have delayed their demise somewhat by being the first black team in the city to play night games at Ponce de Leon Park, which meant that fans could come after work to see the Panthers play.[fn]Joyce, Atlanta Black Crackers, 29–30.[/fn] 

Even with the history of struggles for Atlanta’s black baseball teams, the NSL granted the city another franchise in 1932. The new club got off to a rough start and never recovered, forcing the league to abandon the team in July. For example, they lost 11–1 to a rival club, the Montgomery Grey Sox, in early May.[fn]“Black Crackers Lose to Grey Sox,” Atlanta Constitution, 4 May 1932, 10.[/fn] Most of the players continued to play in the city league, which in 1933 was flourishing, led by the East City Blues and their star first baseman, Red Moore. 

In 1935, the NSL met in Memphis to organize for the new season, with W. B. Baker representing Atlanta. Baker promoted other sports, such as basketball and amateur baseball, in the city and wanted to try to revive the Black Crackers. He tried something many of the earlier teams had not: he went outside Atlanta to sign players. He thought some new talent and big names might help draw in the fans. He signed Sammy Thompson from Memphis, Norman Cross from the Chicago American Giants, and George Bennette, a 16-year veteran of the Negro Leagues. The home opener looked promising: the Crackers beat the Memphis Red Sox 7–6. Unfortunately, the next few games were losses. As attendance and revenue declined, the Crackers threatened to remove the privilege of Sunday baseball at Ponce de Leon Park. A big victory and larger payday helped end that threat at mid-season. The Black Crackers managed to entice local black businesses to help them advertise, and they drew their largest crowd in a winning game against Birmingham, which convinced Cracker president Earl Mann to continue to allow them to lease Ponce de Leon Park. Their success was short lived, however, and once again the Black Crackers could not sustain the necessary fan support. By early August their season was over.[fn]Atlanta Daily World, 1 February 1935; Joyce, Atlanta Black Crackers, 34.[/fn]

Unwilling to give up on the dream of the Black Crackers, businessman Percy Williams vowed to finance the club. After securing interest from other local businessmen, he decided to try again in 1936 but would use local talent and try to find another park to lease. Unfortunately, this revival hinged entirely on Percy Williams’ leadership, and he died unexpectedly on April 26, 1936. With the verbal support of his widow, the other owners tried to keep his dream alive. Some early victories behind the strong pitching of Snook Wellmaker kept the team afloat, but then Cum Posey signed him to a Homestead Grays contract in early June, and the ballclub floundered.[fn]Joyce, Atlanta Black Crackers, 44–45; Atlanta Daily World, 29 May 1936.[/fn] 

In 1937, filling-station owner John Harden, with his wife Billy, took over ownership of the ballclub, and the team’s fortunes improved. Harden, whose gas station was located on Auburn Avenue, got into the action due to a local feud over who had the rights to use the Black Cracker name. Other businessmen were interested in owning the rights to the team, but Harden won the day, and by 1938, the team was winning. Instead of traveling in cars to games, the team now had a bus and new uniforms. The roster also jumped to 15 players and, in some years, as high as 17. The Black Crackers played as many of their games as possible in Ponce de Leon Park, setting their schedule around the white Atlanta Crackers. Harden worked with Earl Mann to continue to lease the ballpark and to arrange payments that benefited Harden’s team. Their best financial success came when the Kansas City Monarchs came to town: fans wanted to see this famous Negro League team and its stars.[fn]Kuhn, Living Atlanta, 270.[/fn] 

Harden’s first season in 1937 saw his team revive a lot of interest in Southern black baseball as his players traveled north and showed that they could compete with the Negro National League (NNL) clubs. In two contests with the Chicago American Giants, the Black Crackers won 8–2 and 6–1 respectively. After watching his team lose, Giants manager Candy Jim Taylor had nothing but praise for the Black Crackers and their solid play. He thought that the Crackers might have been the best team that the Giants had faced that season. Reporter Ric Roberts added to this praise by claiming that the Crackers’ top two twirlers, Ping Burke and Ewelosh Howard, could match the great Satchel Paige pitch for pitch. Later in the season, Manager Gainor of Hammond, Indiana, even brought in extra players for their exhibition game with the Crackers to ensure a good contest.[fn]“Atlanta Black Crackers Test Mills Sunday,” The Garfieldian, 26 August 1937, 8; “Night Game in East Chicago,” Hammond Times, 27 August 1937, 18.[/fn] 

During the 1938 season, the Black Crackers joined the Negro American League (NAL). They enjoyed immediate success when they won the second-half championship before losing two games of the playoff series to the Memphis Red Sox, the first-half winners. That series ran into financial conflicts, and Negro American League president Dr. R. B. Jackson canceled the series when neither team was willing to play in the other club’s home ballpark, where their success had been limited. Since only two games were played, no season winner was declared. 

The papers described the 1938 Black Cracker squad as “a team that possess [sic] small but speedy ball hawks, whose keen eye at the plate make [sic] them dangerous hitters at all times, even if they do not have the sheer power that nines like to depend on.”[fn]“Atlanta Crackers Play Chairs Thursday Night,” Sheboygan Press, 3 August 1938, 10.[/fn] Their team’s success both on the field and off seemed to rest squarely on the shoulders of their catcher, Jim “Pea” Green, described by the press as a giant of a man who could hit a ball a long way and make their pitchers look good no matter what they threw, even if it was the 6-foot-7 Duncan. The infield was anchored by Gabby Kemp, a former football star from Morris Brown who also managed the club, while the outfield had speedsters who could cover a lot of ground. The strong play of center fielder Red Hadley, who had also played football at Morris Brown, helped the Crackers win. Don Pelham, called by some the “Colored Ruth,” took care of the left-field duties, and Don Reeves, a graduate of Clark University, tracked down the ball in right field. Pelham led the team with 16 homers. Red Moore, who was later inducted into the Atlanta Sports Hall of Fame for his accomplishments, played first base. Shortstop Pee Wee Butts made the tough plays up the middle and could turn a mean double play with Kemp. Butts used a sidearm delivery and sharpened spikes to keep oncoming runners from trying to take him out.[fn]Ibid., 10; Bill Banks, “Extra Innings,” Atlanta (March 2007), 114; “Atlanta Black Crackers Boast ‘Colored Babe Ruth,’” Milwaukee Sentinel, 9 August 1938.[/fn] Their best play of the season came in August, when they beat the Monarchs in four straight contests. They immediately followed that series with a sweep of the Memphis squad that had won the first-half championship.[fn]Atlanta Daily World, 14, 16, 18 August 1938; “Atlanta Black Crackers Boast Colored ‘Babe Ruth,’” Milwaukee Sentinel, 9 August 1938.[/fn]

In 1939, due to financial troubles, the club moved to Indianapolis and played as the ABCs before returning to barnstorming. The league had wanted the club to move to Cleveland, but Harden refused. Louisville was the next suggestion, but the Louisville Black Caps did not want to share their stadium. By default, the Crackers went to Indianapolis. They quickly fell to the cellar, and little news made it back to the Atlanta papers because of the distance and cost. Harden decided to move the club back to Atlanta late in the year, and the owners of the league kicked him out for the move. Harden decided to disband the team and gave all the players their release to sign with other clubs.[fn]Joyce, Atlanta Black Crackers, 73–74.[/fn] The next three seasons saw no professional black team play for the city. Baker left for Utah, taking his financial support with him, and Harden gave up because of his financial losses. Black baseball continued with the city league and other amateur efforts. Fans did on occasion get the opportunity to witness big-league-caliber play when Negro League teams came to town. A highlight in 1940 involved two appearances by future Hall of Famer Satchel Paige, to the delight of the locals.[fn]Atlanta Daily World, 27 May and 14 June 1940.[/fn]

By 1943, the Crackers seemed to be back on track with a solid group of young players led by their flashy shortstop, Harvey Young from Baltimore. Young joined center fielder Dave Harper, left fielder Fred Sheppard, and right fielder Dusty Owens in what the press dubbed Atlanta’s “murderers’ row.” Eugene Jones and Adolphus Grimes helped by making the all-star team. The team spent a hefty sum purchasing new players to regain their reputation in black baseball. John Harden was convinced by other local businessmen to get involved again, and they built a team made up of the best players from the Atlanta All Stars and the Scripto Black Cats, sponsored by the Scripto Pencil Factory, known infamously as the scene of the 1913 murder of Mary Phagan. The club played independently and used Northern booking agents to help them organize contests that would prove profitable. They began the season with a 9–6 victory over the Cincinnati Clowns. They played in a three-team doubleheader at Yankee Stadium in August, taking on the St. Louis Stars and the New York Black Yankees.[fn]“Atlanta Black Crackers Make New York Debut Sunday,” Afro-American, 14 August 1943; “Colored Game Here Tonight,” Gastonia Daily Gazette, 22 July 1943, 9; Joyce, Atlanta Black Crackers, 83–84; Stephen J. Goldfarb, “The Slaton Memorandum” American Jewish History 88, no. 3 (2000), 325–39; “Black Cracker Aces to Play for All-Stars,” Atlanta Constitution, 30 September 1943, 15.[/fn]

Due to the financial success the Black Crackers had in 1943, the club returned in 1944 with high expectations. The opening-day gala started with a band concert that the club hoped would attract 12,000 fans. John Harden became part owner of the New York Black Yankees and planned to use that relationship to help the Atlanta Club secure opponents. One of the highlights came early in the season, when the Black Yankees came to town, with Satchel Paige expected to make a guest appearance. Unfortunately Paige never showed up, but 6,000 fans came for the game and stayed. Harden offered special discounts to soldiers and their families, and he extended promotional efforts such as family days to encourage fan attendance. To keep the park owners happy, Harden encouraged the Crackers ownership to book other teams into Ponce de Leon Park when there were open dates. Felix Manning pitched a no-hitter against the St. Louis Stars and won 5–0. He came back to lead the Crackers to victory in the second game of the doubleheader, taking over in the third inning as the Black Crackers won 5–3. Another highlight came when the club got a chance to play in the Polo Grounds in September, although they lost to the New York Cubans, 16–5.[fn]“Black Crackers Plan Gala Opening,” Atlanta Constitution, 6 May 1944; “Black Cracker Pitcher Hurls No-hitter,” Atlanta Constitution, 1 June 1944; “Lose to NY Cubans,” Baltimore Afro-American, 12 September 1944.[/fn] 

In 1945, Harden had the luxury of being invited to join two leagues. He chose the NSL because of the close geographic proximity of the other league entrants. He was made treasurer of the league; Dr. Jackson served as president. As treasurer, Harden hoped to work with Jackson to create a favorable schedule for his Crackers. Led by some big bats and a stellar pitching staff, the Black Crackers won both halves of the season and were declared the NSL champions. They defeated Knoxville in the first half by two games.[fn]“Homestead Grays at Forbes Field Friday Night,” Monessen Daily Independent, 23 July 1945, 5; “Atlanta and Ashville Negro Clubs Meet at Stadium Sat. Night,” Gastonia Daily Gazette, 10 August 1945, 9; “Southern Clubs Form new Baseball League,” Atlanta Daily World, 17 February 1945; “Southern Baseball League Formed with Eight Team Slate,” New York Amsterdam News, 17 February 1945.[/fn] Manager Sammy Haynes guided the team to their early-season triumphs and brought back most of the team intact for the 1946 season, when they hoped to repeat their initial success. In both seasons, clean-up hitter Lomax “Fence Bustin’” Davis led the team offensively while southpaw Robert Branson anchored the pitching staff, relying on the solid play calling of catcher Harry Barnes.[fn]“Here Are Hurling and Batting Aces of Atlanta Nine,” News Palladium, 30 July 1946, 5; “Atlanta Club Boasts All Southern Talent,” Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, 24 July 1945.[/fn] 

When the Brooklyn Dodgers signed Jackie Robinson at the end of the 1945 season, interest in baseball around Atlanta in 1946 surged, as it did in many places. Fans were excited by the changes taking place in baseball, and the black community wanted to see their stars play in the majors. Vernon Jordan recalls getting a chance to see Robinson play at Ponce de Leon Park in April 1949. “Robinson’s arrival was a big moment, and there was no way my father, Windsor, or I would have missed it. We went to Ponce de Leon Park, thrilled at the prospect of getting a glimpse of Robinson.”[fn]Vernon Eulion Jordan Jr. et al., Vernon Can Read! A Memoir (New York: Basic Civitas Books, 2002), 57.[/fn] The opening game, between the Dodgers and the white Atlanta Crackers, drew an overflow crowd of 15,119 fans, including more than 5,000 blacks, at Ponce de Leon, which seated only 14,500. Large crowds did not always come out to see the Black Crackers play the Homestead Grays, Cleveland Buckeyes, and other Negro League opponents. Barnstorming and playing league contests during the 1946 season kept the Black Crackers alive and hoping for a good 1947 team, under new management. 

John Harden saw the large crowds who came out to see Robinson play and did not know how that might affect his ballclub in the long term. He worried that the integration of the majors might hurt Black Crackers attendance, so he sold a portion of his shares in the club to local businessman Claud Malcolm. Harden made other changes as well. Sammy Haynes gave way to Bill Perkins as player/manager. As a veteran catcher, Perkins brought a strong knowledge of his own hurlers and opposing batters to the helm along with a savvy gained while playing with the Philadelphia Stars and New York Black Yankees and catching Satchel Paige.[fn]“Jacksonville Eagles to Be Saturday Foe,” Chester Times, 1 August 1947, 14; Joyce, Atlanta Black Crackers, 100.[/fn] While no final-season records have been found, the Black Crackers further solidified their reputation as one of the finest Southern ballclubs in the country with solid play against a range of opponents such as the Birmingham Black Barons, the Indianapolis Clowns, the Jacksonville Eagles, and others. 

The Black Crackers’ fine play carried over into 1948 under their manager Curry and their sensational rookie pitcher “Double Duty” Wyndner, an 18-year-old phenom. Reporters claimed his fastball kept hitters guessing, and he was also a consistent hitter at the plate. The Black Crackers joined the NSL in place of the Danville Aces, but by midseason they had gone back to barnstorming as a more lucrative opportunity. With the help of the radio, fans could now follow the pitching exploits of their ace “Lefty” Bell even when the Black Crackers were on the road. Bell won 15 games for the team in 1948.[fn]“Southern Negro Nine Face Buds at 8:30,” News Palladium, 7 July 1948, 10; “Black Crackers Will Play Here,” Miami News, 14 August 1948.[/fn] 

In 1949, the Black Crackers got some new competition: a new club that became the Atlanta Stars (formerly the Scripto Black Cats) and compiled a 42–10 record by midseason. The Stars benefited from the reputation of the Black Crackers, as their opponents clearly respected them and were willing to book games with them. A Michigan writer before a game in Benton Harbor described the Stars as “loaded in the pitching department and bringing in themselves an array of fine hitters.”[fn]“Colored Nine Will Invade Colony Park,” News-Palladium, 12 July 1949, 10.[/fn] The leading player on the club was infielder Harry Hatcher, a former college player at Alabama A&T, while the pitching staff boasted the services of former Memphis pitcher William Morgan and former Black Barons hurler John Wade. This would be the last season for this Atlanta ballclub, as black baseball gave way to the integration of the major leagues and the growth of television, which allowed fans to follow their favorite players wherever they played. The Atlanta Cubans replaced the Stars and played through 1952 before also folding due to financial struggles. 

After the Crackers called it quits in the Negro Leagues, for many years, few wrote or talked about the team or the leagues. It was not until Robert Peterson’s book Only the Ball Was White revived an interest in the Negro Leagues that researchers started looking for the old players and their stories. This focus led people to well-known teams such as the Kansas City Monarchs and Homestead Grays and eventually to lesser-known clubs like the Atlanta Black Crackers. Former player George McFadden explained why people should be interested in the Crackers in a 2005 interview, saying, “I shut out the Atlanta Black Crackers, and they had a big name. They was a big name in baseball.”[fn]Ed Gordon, interview with George McFadden, NPR, 2005.[/fn] The city of Atlanta responded to this interest. 

A reunion of Southern ball players from Atlanta, Memphis, and Birmingham took place in Atlanta in 1989. The weekend celebration was called the “Living Legends of Baseball.” Players were honored between games at Atlanta Fulton County Stadium. One of the players present was Chico Renfroe, who helped push the idea for the celebration. In 1990, the Alliance Theater also recognized the former Black Crackers players at the premier of August Wilson’s play Fences. Again, one of the players present was Chico Renfroe, star shortstop of the Kansas City Monarchs, who went on to become a writer for the Atlanta Daily World and a radio broadcaster for WIGO. Renfroe got his start in the Negro Leagues as a batboy for the Black Crackers.[fn]Donald Lee Grant et al., The Way It Was in the South: The Black Experience in Georgia (Athens: University of Georgia Press), 546; “Veterans of Negro Leagues Revisit the Bad Old Days, Atlanta Journal and Constitution, 4 June 1989, C1; “Former Negro League Stars Gather for Reunion, Tribute,” Gadsden Times, 5 June 1989; “In a League of Their Own,” Atlanta Journal and Constitution, 2 February 1990, C1.[/fn] These were opportunities for the city to say thanks for the fine talent of the Black Crackers and other local black teams who played in the city for over 30 years. These reunions and other such gatherings have also helped rekindle an interest in the history of black baseball in Atlanta and the rest of the country. 

LESLIE HEAPHY, associate professor of history at Kent State University, Stark Campus, has written or edited four books on the Negro Leagues and women’s baseball. She is editor of the peer-reviewed journal “Black Ball: A Journal of the Negro Leagues.”

PARTIAL PLAYER LISTS 

The list that follows is not complete.[fn]31. These rosters were compiled by the author from a variety of newspapers and other sources: Atlanta Constitution; Atlanta Daily World; Chicago Defender; Joyce, Atlanta Black Crackers; Gastonia Daily Gazette; Brent Kelley, The Negro Leagues Revisited: Conversations with 66 More Baseball Heroes (Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland, 2000); Pittsburgh Post-Gazette; Milwaukee Sentinel; and Pittsburgh Courier.[/fn] There are no official records of the Black Crackers, and newspapers such as the Atlanta Daily World did not become dailies until 1932. Northern African American papers such as the Defender and Courier did not tend to cover the NSL teams unless they were playing one of the major black teams. This list is meant to give readers and researchers a glimpse of the talent and to show how much research still needs to be done to tell their story.

Thus, in 1884, Macon, Georgia, was merely one among the thousands of places, large and small, throughout the United States that had ordinances banning the playing of baseball on Sunday. And, just as would happen in those other communities, a group of boys gathered on a vacant field, just outside the city limits, on Sunday, July 13, for a game of ball. There weren’t enough boys to make up two full teams, so this became a game called, in the local vernacular, “scrub.”1

Whatever it might be called in other locales, in this game two or three boys were the batters, and the others took defensive positions. When an out was made, the batter who was put out went to the outfield, and the other players moved up in position, with the pitcher being the last stop before becoming a batter. It sounds simple enough, but in Macon on that Sunday afternoon, an argument arose over who was going to pitch.

Oney Cauley and Dan Lucas, each 20 years old, both claimed to have been playing first base, and therefore they both insisted on advancing to the post of pitcher. In the heat of the moment, Lucas removed a knife from the pocket of another player and stabbed Cauley in the chest. As the Atlanta Constitution described it: “The blade struck the breast bone and would not enter and Lucas then drew the blade across the left breast and arm of Cauley, cutting a deep and fearful wound and severing an artery from which a stream of blood freely flowed and Cauley was in great danger of bleeding to death, had not parties present tightly bound cords above the cut artery and stopped the flow of the life crimson fluid.”2

The Constitution began its story by quoting the Biblical line “Remember the Sabbath day and keep it holy” and reported that Cauley, when first cut, endeavored to get a bat but was so weakened from the loss of blood that he could not raise the bat to strike Lucas. Cauley was confined to bed at home; Lucas was not arrested.3

The newspaper made no further reference to the incident, but ironically, about a month later, the Constitution took editorial notice of Sunday baseball problems in Memphis, Nashville, and Chattanooga, gloating: “Fortunately we have no trouble over the Sunday law in Georgia. As a rule our people are in favor of properly observing the Lord’s day.”4

But a year later, Macon residents were still complaining about games of baseball being played on Sunday afternoons by crowds of boys, white and black, who “disturb the quiet of the day by yells and shrieks emitted, while handling the ball and bat.” Added the Constitution: “As the police will be called on to abate the nuisance it is probable that next Sunday will be a quiet one in the neighborhood of the park.”5

Of course, there was no mention of Lucas and Cauley; they’d had their moment of notoriety.

RICHARD MCBANE, a retired newspaperman, is the author of “Glory Days: The Akron Yankees of the Middle Atlantic League, 1935–1941” (Summit County Historical Society, 1997), and “A Fine-Looking Lot of Ball Tossers: The Remarkable Akrons of 1881” (McFarland, 2005).

Notes

• Related link: Wynn Montgomery updated this story in the Fall 2011 edition of the Baseball Research Journal. Read about a 31-minute professional game in 1916 that he discovered in the article “Quicker Than Quick”

Despite his well-deserved reputation for efficiency, however, Maddux never came close to matching the efforts of an earlier Atlanta moundsman and his teammates. That last word is the key—because playing a game quickly is a team effort. In truth, it is a twoteam effort; both teams must consciously work toward a timely conclusion.

On Saturday afternoon, September 17, 1910, at Ponce de Leon Park, the Atlanta Crackers and the Mobile Sea Gulls demonstrated how quickly a baseball game can be played. Newspaper accounts of that game do not discuss the players’ motives, but we know that the game was the season finale for each team, both of which were out of contention for the Southern League crown. The New Orleans Pelicans, led by 20-year-old Shoeless Joe Jackson (who was in his third and final year of tearing up the minor leagues),2 had long since clinched the pennant. Atlanta was in third place, three games behind second-place Birmingham and comfortably ahead of Chattanooga, and sixth-place Mobile was one game behind Nashville. Atlanta’s standing could not change with a single victory or loss; Mobile had no hope of escaping the second division.

Perhaps the players simply wanted to break the existing record for rapidness—a 44-minute game played by Atlanta and the Shreveport Pirates on September 24, 1904.3 Perhaps some players had big plans for Saturday night. Perhaps some had a train to catch; it is true that many of them left immediately after the game.4 Perhaps a wager was involved—or is it mere coincidence that on that same day two teams in the same league played a nine-inning 6–3 game in only 42 minutes?5 Whatever their motivation, the two teams completed the game in only 32 minutes, setting a new record for “the fastest nine innings ever played in the organized baseball world.”6 The game received coast-to-coast attention, from the New York Times and the Washington Post to the Oakland (Calif.) Tribune. It even made the front page of the Nevada State Journal.7

According to the New York Times, both teams ran on and off the field Atlanta’s Ponce de Leon Park in 1910, site of the fastest baseball game ever played. between innings. Batters even “came to bat on the run” and typically swung at the first pitch they saw—and usually hit it.8 They mostly hit grounders, allowing the fielders to record 35 assists, including nine by the pitchers.

Both pitchers—Atlanta’s Hank Griffin, a 23-year-old Texan with a .500 record, and 29-year-old “Big Bill” Chappelle, whose 18 wins made him one of Mobile’s aces—“pitched excellent games . . . and despite the terrific pace, each was as steady as the old clock in the belfry, and that’s some steady.”9 The batters’ aggressiveness minimized strikeouts (Griffin recorded the game’s only one) and walks (one by Chappelle). The defense contributed “some sensational stops and throws as well as some clutch catches by the outfielders.”10

The defensive gem of the day came in the second inning, when Mobile turned an unusual (9–3–2) triple play. After Pete Lister and Scott Walker singled to put runners on first and third, John Berkel hit a fly to right field, where Julius Watson made the catch and then doubled Walker at first base. Lister tried to score on the play, but first sacker Harry Swacina gunned him down at the plate.

Both pitchers worked “like demented steam engines,”11 and each limited his opponents to five hits to ensure a lowscoring contest. Atlanta took the lead in the bottom of the first inning. Dick Bayless led off with a double to center (or, as described by the Atlanta Journal, “Don Ricardo Bayless slammed one to the middle meadow for the keystone sack”). He then moved to third on an infield out. After another out, Atlanta’s leading hitter12 Pat Flaherty drew a walk as “four punk ones floated past.” Bayless then scored on a perfectly executed “double Raffles” (a double steal).13

That lead held up until the top of the sixth inning, when Mobile’s Charlie Seitz, who had started the season with Atlanta, tripled and scored on a wild pitch as “Griffin tried to knock a hole in the pressbox with one of his fast ones.”14

The Gulls scored the winning run in the ninth when Howard Murphy sandwiched a single between two flyouts and then “burglarized the second story [i.e., stole second]. Wagner was then so ungentlemanly as to swat the sphere to the left garden for one base, and Murphy meandered home.”15

Chappelle retired the Crackers in order in the ninth to nail down a 2–1 victory. The teams had given the fans an exciting game with a bit of everything (except a home run) and had set a still unequalled (and probably unapproachable) benchmark for baseball brevity16 by playing a nine-inning game in less time than most teams now take to complete two frames. Each plate appearance took an average of approximately 30 seconds;17 watching the game must have been akin to a preview of the frantic pace of the “Keystone Kops” movie chase scenes that became popular a few years later. The Atlanta Journal, whose coverage of the game contained so much flowery language throughout, became the epitome of understatement, saying simply, “viewed from every angle, the game was a hummer.”18

THE BOX SCORE (Atlanta Journal, September 18, 1910)*

Summary: SO (by Griffin, 1); Walks (by Chappelle, 1); Wild Pitch (by Griffin, 1); Doubles (Bayless, Wagner); Triple (Seitz); Sacrifice Hit (Watson); Stolen Bases (Bayless, Flaherty, Lister, Murphy); Double Play (Berger-Seitz-Swacina); Triple Play (Watson- Swacina-Shannon). Umpire: Bill Hart. Game Time: 32 minutes.

*First names added by author

WYNN MONTGOMERY, author of the biography of Willard Nixon for SABR’s BioProject, has seen ballgames in every major-league city except Arlington, Texas, and in almost fifty minor-league parks. His article “Georgia’s 1948 Phenoms and the Bonus Rule” appears in the Summer 2010 issue of the Baseball Research Journal.

Sources

Baseball-Reference (www.baseball-reference.com) was my source for team records and the first names of most players.

Retrosheet (www.retrosheet.org) allowed me to review Greg Maddux’s game times and provided the information on modern-day game times.

Notes

Terry was born into a prominent Atlanta family. His great-grandfather, Tom Terry, ran the only sawmill in the city before he died from injuries sustained in an assault. His grandfather, William M. Terry, was an alderman, police commissioner, and founder of the Decatur Street Bank—and did so well that he bought a large house a few blocks from the Atlanta Crackers’ ballpark.[fn]Peter Williams, When the Giants Were Giants: Bill Terry and the Golden Age of New York Baseball (Chapel Hill, N.C.: Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill, 1994), 17–20.[/fn] Terry’s father, William T. Terry, was less successful and moved his family in and out of his father’s house several times before settling there permanently around 1915. By that time Terry’s mother, Bertha, had left for good, and he was ready to strike out on his own. He had little contact with his parents after that time, and neither of them attended his Memphis wedding to Elvena Sneed, who grew up in the same area of Atlanta as Terry.[fn]Ibid, 22.[/fn] 

The young Terry sometimes sought escape by watching Crackers’ games from the trees beyond the outfield fence—when he wasn‘t busy loading trucks at the railroad yard to make money or playing for the Edgewood Avenue squad in the Grammar School League. However, he had a much closer view of the field in 1914, when the Crackers signed him to his first pro contract on the recommendation of former Cracker Harry Matthews. Terry worked out in the park but did not get into any games that year. “During the early practice at Ponce de Leon” the next year, according to the Atlanta Journal, “he showed a bunch of stuff, and older members of the team predicted that he would develop into a great pitcher with a few years of experience.”[fn]Atlanta Journal, 1 July 1915.[/fn] But Terry was only sixteen at the time, and he struggled with his control. The Crackers farmed him out to Dothan, where he suffered through a terrible start to the season, with an ERA over 15.00 in his brief time in the Florida–Alabama–Georgia (FLAG) League. But Matthews still liked the hard-throwing youngster and arranged to sign him for his Newnan team, where Terry played his first game on June 16.[fn]Atlanta Constitution, 17 June 1915.[/fn] 

The star pitcher on the Newnan team was Jack Nabors, who led the league with 12 wins in 1915,[fn]The Encyclopedia of Minor League Baseball (Durham, N.C.: Baseball America, 1993), 142.[/fn] but Terry began to attract attention in his own right after his no-hitter on June 30. According to the Newnan Times-Herald: 

Scout Bobby Gilks, of the New York Americans, was in Newnan yesterday looking over Pitcher Jack Nabors, who recently twirled the 13-inning no-hit game against Talladega. Mr. Gilks was in Anniston last Wednesday to observe the work of Pitcher Glazier [sic], of the Anniston team; but while there he saw Southpaw Terry, of the Newnan team, shut out the Moulders in a hitless game. We understand that Mr. Gilks was sent here to watch Pitcher Nabors in action, but since young Terry has risen to a place in balldom’s hall of fame he will have two of Newnan’s pitchers under observation.[fn]“Baseball, Baseball, Baseball!” Newnan Times-Herald, 2 July 1915.[/fn]

Terry later remembered “the last guy up hit a line drive into right field, and I knew it was a no-hitter, you know, and it scared me; but the right fielder came up with it, anyway.”[fn]Williams, 29.[/fn] 

The Newnan paper opined the no-hitter was “due to the coaching of Matthews,” [fn]Ibid.[/fn] who had seen Terry pitch in Dothan and was determined to teach him to pitch to spots. When Terry joined the Newnan club, Matthews took him to a drug store and bought a bottle of ink that he used to mark a spot in the middle of his chest protector. Matthews told Terry he was to throw to that spot no matter how Matthews set up— with good results.[fn]Ibid, 31.[/fn] The importance of having a target like this should not be discounted: the authorities at Schiphol Airport in Amsterdam had the image of a housefly etched into the middle of each urinal at the facility—and later found spillage was reduced by 80 percent.[fn]Richard H. Thaler and Cass Sunstein, Nudge: Improving Decisions about Health, Wealth, and Happiness (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2008), 4.[/fn] Terry’s control did improve during his first season pitching for Newnan; he walked only 1.9 batters per nine innings in his eight starts for the club, while striking out 4.0 batters per game. Terry did not allow more than two runs in any of his starts, four of which were shutouts.[fn]Robert C. McConnell, “Bill Terry As Pitcher,” In 1989 Baseball Research Journal, 53.[/fn] 

Newnan won the pennant with a 39–20 record, beating out Talladega, which finished 39–22. Matthews was awarded fifty dollars in gold by Newnan fans before the final game of the 1915 season, which Terry won 1–0 ,[fn]Ibid.[/fn] as Newnan defeated LaGrange for the 11th time in as many games that year. After receiving the gold, Matthews told his Newnan fans that their town was the best he’d ever played in.[fn]“Newnan Winds Up Ball Season in a Blaze of Glory,” Newnan Times Herald, 16 July 1915.[/fn] Terry seemed to enjoy his time with Newnan as well. He later remembered a night when he and three friends, all of whom could sing well, went to the fair in Anniston and walked around the fair, singing and taking in the sights. Matthews was waiting up for them when they returned to the hotel, wanting to see what kind of shape they were in, and found they had enjoyed themselves without touching alcohol.[fn]Williams, 29.[/fn] 

Terry pitched for Newnan again in 1916, compiling an 11–8 record for a second-place team. After the short-season Georgia-Alabama League ended play on July 21, his contract was purchased for the stretch drive by the Shreveport club in the Texas League, and he went 6–2 over the rest of the season for a team that missed a pennant by a single game. Terry went 14–11 for Shreveport in 1917 but no longer saw much of a future in minor-league baseball.[fn]Ibid, 31.[/fn] Over breakfast at a Shreveport coffee shop, Terry and his wife decided that he would seek a more promising line of work if he didn’t receive any major-league offers.[fn]Reidenbaugh, 244.[/fn] He did not, and so he went to work for Standard Oil, first as a clerk and eventually as a salesman. While working there, Terry managed and played for the company baseball team until 1922, when he finally got his major-league offer. 

John McGraw, acting on the recommendation of former big-league shortstop Kid Elberfeld, wanted to sign Terry.[fn]Red Barber, “Bill Terry Remembers John McGraw,” In From Cobb to Catfish: 128 Illustrated Stories from Baseball Digest (New York: Rand McNally), 89.[/fn] Typically, Terry asked, “For how much money?” When McGraw pointed out he was offering an opportunity to play for the New York Giants, Terry responded: “That doesn’t mean a thing to me, Mr. McGraw. I’ve got a wife and baby to support. I quit in the minors because it didn’t pay enough. I’ve got a good job with Standard Oil and a nice house here in Memphis. If the Giants make me a better offer, all right.”[fn]Lee Allen, The Giants and the Dodgers, the Fabulous Story of Baseball’s Fiercest Feud (New York: Putnam, 1964), 151.[/fn] Fortunately for both, they came to an agreement. 

Terry sometimes gave McGraw the credit for his move to first base, but at other times insisted it was his own idea. In any case, Terry made the most of the change. The Sporting News described him as the “leading batter in the National League” when announcing him as National League MVP for 1930.[fn]The Sporting News Record Book for 1931 (St. Louis: Charles Spink and Son, 1932), 42.[/fn] Longtime sportswriter Fred Lieb, in choosing the greatest first baseman from 1926 to 1950, would not “declare anything other than a tie. Lou [Gehrig] had a clear edge in every batting statistic except lifetime average, where Memphis Bill edged him, .341 to .340. But Bill Terry was the greatest fielding first baseman I ever saw.”[fn]21. Fred Lieb, Baseball As I Have Known It (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1996), 276.[/fn] This was high praise from a man who saw most of the great players of the twentieth century, especially since he was a close friend of Gehrig. 

Life after baseball was also good for Terry, who was married for 67 years and said he never fell out of love with his wife.[fn]Williams, 26.[/fn] Keeping a home in Memphis after his wedding, Terry bought and sold real estate in the area quite successfully during his playing career and parlayed the profits and his baseball earnings into a fortune. He eventually owned a Buick dealership in Jacksonville, Florida, and worked there right up to his death at age 90. Terry proved he could excel at many positions. 

SCOTT MCCLELLAN has been a SABR member since 1988. He works as a land-title examiner when not attending Braves’ games.

But baseball is not just the romance of victory and defeat on the playing field; it is also a business. The game was intertwined with business promotion. Following the Cotton States Exposition of 1895 in Atlanta, town fathers, elected officials, and chambers of commerce across the state were under local pressure to get on board with the growing industrialization of the South and to attract Northern business investment to their communities. Among other tools, they sought to use baseball as a national calling card for their cities. The local team was the public face of the town. A city with a professional baseball team was a city to be reckoned with; a city with a winning professional team was a winner. This, too, was South Georgia baseball in 1913.

THE LEAGUE 

The Empire State League did not emerge fully formed and without precursors. The sandy soil of the region had proved to be fertile ground for baseball. The sport was long popular in South Georgia, and amateur nines had been playing the game for several decades before the league was organized. Amateur and semipro teams played in many South Georgia cities by the last decade of the nineteenth century. Most towns had a local team, as did many churches and schools. The larger towns and county seats also had teams sponsored by local businesses and associations (YMCA, Elks, etc.) or organized around certain professions (waiters, firemen, etc.). It was the “town” team, however, that proved most important to the fans. These groups of home-grown talent would play nearby towns for prizes and bragging rights, and the contests were often part of a larger celebration. The teams were organized to take on all comers and typically looked for challengers of equal status and ability, most often from a similarly sized town. County seats, such as Thomasville or Valdosta, often met one another for contests that had repercussions beyond the playing field, not unlike modern-day high-school football in the region. 

Attempts to organize these “town” teams into a league went back at least to 1900, when a Southeastern Base Ball League was proposed; it never began play. In 1903, two attempts failed: a Wiregrass League and a South Georgia League. In 1906, the Georgia State League, Class D, got off the ground, played a partial schedule, and then collapsed as teams failed and dropped out. Five of the towns that would later make up the Empire State League—Americus, Brunswick, Cordele, Valdosta, and Waycross—were members of this six-team league.[fn]Seven cities were represented in the 1906 league; Columbus and Albany were the other two. The Columbus franchise relocated to Brunswick in June. Albany and Columbus were in the South Atlantic League in 1913. Thomasville’s Empire State League entry was that town’s first minor league team.[/fn] The breaking point for the 1906 league was the Fourth of July holiday. Traditionally, teams would play a doubleheader on this date, sometimes traveling between towns for a home-and-home series. With most workers off for the day, box-office receipts could be high, as games were played amid picnics and other outdoor events. Excluding any postseason play, this holiday was a team’s largest payday. For the Georgia State League, this was also the time to cash out. Following the holiday, the 1906 league collapsed, with Waycross left as the lone solvent team, issuing a challenge to other nines in a bid to keep going. It would be six years before another attempt was made to assemble a league. 

Population and employment growth, spurred by civic promotion, may be the least recognized component of the drive to professionalize the town teams. New jobs, especially in the timber and related industries, attracted workers to the area; banking and other services followed. Between 1900 and 1910, population in each of the six towns that would make up the league grew by an average of 49 percent; between 1910 and 1920, each town continued to grow by an average of 26 percent. Even with high growth rates, these were still small towns, with populations ranging from 6,000 (Cordele) to just over 15,000 (Waycross). The “boomtown” of the group, Waycross, had increased in population by 145 percent between 1900 and 1910. Brunswick (11,000 residents in 1913) and Valdosta (8,300) had population growth rates of 41 percent from 1910 to 1920, and employment in Brunswick grew by 93 percent between 1909 and 1914. These high growth rates were partly the result of, and further argument for, the self-promotion of the region, with the towns vying with one another to attract Northern investment. In general, business in this era and region meant employment based on extracting natural resources, such as cotton and timber, in order to provide raw materials to Northern factories. Much like the contemporary view that a modern city is “major” if it has a major sports franchise, the presence of a professional baseball team became part of the self-image of these towns. 

The Empire State League was the brainchild of one man—James Sinclair—carried to success by many other men. An executive with the South Atlantic Line Railroad in its Waycross offices, Sinclair sought to gain entry for his local team into the South Atlantic League (Sally) for play in the 1913 season. The Sally, stretching from South Carolina to Florida and including four teams in Georgia, had no room for another member, and no team was looking to be replaced. By August 1912, the rebuffed Sinclair was publicly contemplating creating a new league in the southern part of the state. He envisioned a six-team circuit that would include five of the cities that were later part of the league, with Tifton, Moultrie, or Fitzgerald originally considered instead of Thomasville. At Sinclair’s invitation, representatives from the interested cities met several times in different locations to discuss the idea. James Sinclair was elected chairman of the committee formed at these meetings. The circuit would be named the Empire State League.[fn]Georgia’s Empire State League should not be confused with the longerlived league of the same name in New York, which was operating as an “outlaw” league in 1913. The league names are the same because the root nickname is the same. New York is and long has been referred to as the “Empire State.” Georgia business promoters adopted the nickname “Empire State of the South,” a sobriquet in common use from the late nineteenth to mid-twentieth centuries. The National Association denied entry to the New York Empire State League, based on the reputation of the proposed owners, at the same session where it allowed entrance to Georgia’s Empire State League.[/fn] Teams would pay $100 to the league as an entry fee, demonstrate that they had at least $300 on hand, and post a $500 bond to guarantee compliance with the salary cap. Each team was required to have local ownership. Six teams, representing Americus, Brunswick, Cordele, Thomasville, Valdosta, and Waycross, raised the required funds and formally joined the league by the end of February. In a hint of things to come, however, Americus had a difficult time raising sufficient funds in these early months. 

Following their initial meetings, the group assembled in Valdosta to continue their talks, formalize the organization of the league, and elect Sinclair to the office of league president. It would be a short reign. The league’s board of directors, made up of a representative from each of the member cities, scheduled a meeting for February 19 in Brunswick to finalize plans for the season. Sinclair, however, was done. Citing his growing need to attend to his business matters, he announced his impending resignation. In Brunswick, the league quickly moved to fill his place, electing a local businessman, C. C. Vaughn, to the presidency. Oscar Groover of Thomasville was elected vice president, and L. J. Leavy of Brunswick was elected to the post of secretary/treasurer. Leavy was immediately instructed to contact the National Association of Professional Baseball Leagues in order to apply for entry on behalf of the league. 

An important step for the nascent league was to seek membership in the National Association, which was granted in March. The Empire State League could have gone into the season as an “outlaw” league simply by organizing a schedule for the member teams. This would not have been much different from the current situation. But the teams would still just be playing for bragging rights, not national recognition. Membership in the National Association provided a level of stability that was important to the league’s organizers. As a member of the association, the league gained protection for its players, because all association members were required to respect the contracts of other member leagues. In addition, only a limited number of players could be drafted by leagues with a higher classification, and only at the end of the season. The league was admitted as a Class D minor league; teams in this class made up about half of all the professional leagues in 1913.[fn]The classifications of minor leagues in the National Association in 1913, and the total number of leagues at each classification level, were: Class AA (3 leagues), Class A (2 leagues), Class B (9), Class C (6), and Class D (22). In all, there were 130 Class D teams, representing 47 percent of the total number of minor-league teams.[/fn] 

Empire State League rosters were limited to twelve players, and no more than three of the men could have prior service with higher-classification minor-league teams (C or above). Salaries were capped at $1,000 for the season (about $21,000 in today’s dollars), though few if any of the players received the maximum allowable salary.[fn]Based on the cost to enter the league and operating costs during the season (including travel and lodging), the 10 percent of gate receipts that went to the league, and accounting for the average attendance and admission price, each team would have roughly $3,000 to $3,500 to spend on player salaries and/or retain as profit.[/fn] Because of these constraints, we can reconstruct some of the organizational logic behind the make-up of team rosters. This was the era of the player-manager, so the highest-paid roster spot would presumably go to such a player. For most teams, this accounted for one of the three spots limited by “prior service.” Any remaining “prior-service” spots, and the higher salaries that would go with them, might be used for pitching or hitting, depending on the manager’s preference. A player-manager would also typically be a position player, rather than a pitcher, meaning that seven more roster spots would be taken by position players. This leaves four roster spots, which were taken up by four pitchers or three pitchers and a utility player. Many of the pitchers could play the outfield when they weren’t on the mound, providing a little flexibility in the roster. In this league, an injury generally meant the end of a player’s season, as a roster spot could not be held while the man recuperated. 

More than 180 men played in the Empire State League—enough to fill the team rosters two-and-a-half times over. Most of these players were from other Class D leagues, “on loan” or released from higher-level minor-league teams, or trying to break into professional baseball for the first time. There was no formal arrangement between the Empire State League and any other leagues, though many of the teams entered into agreements on a player-by-player basis. For example, Tom Bowden, property of the Boston Braves, was “farmed out” to Cordele, and Americus’s “Mr. Popularity,” Dick Manchester, was property of the Albany, Georgia, South Atlantic League team. Several players from Macon (Sally) “rehabbed” with a league team. During the season, more than forty men from higher-classification leagues found playing time in the Empire State League. 

The creation of the Empire State League should be seen as a “professionalizing” of the game in South Georgia rather than as introducing something entirely new. Many of the players from a 1912 “town” team roster played for the same team in the league the next year. The towns that made up the league had been playing each other for years, and rivalries were well established. Some of these were continued in the Empire State League, but some, such as the fierce rivalry between Thomasville and Monticello, Florida, faded out when one of the teams involved was not part of the new league. In the seasons leading up to the creation of the league, Americus, Brunswick, and Waycross fielded the strongest teams in the region. Ironically, these three finished out of the running in 1913. 

THE SEASON 

The Empire State League scheduled a 90-game season, with teams playing three home and three away games each week, taking every Sunday off. No doubleheaders were scheduled—save for the Fourth of July holiday—though several would be held in order to make up rainouts. Games would typically start around 3:30, and a nine-inning contest lasted an average of just under two hours. Average take at the ticket booth was a bit less than 50 cents per person.[fn]The per-ticket average is based on contemporary attendance and receipt accounts. The teams charged different rates for grandstand and pavilion seats and frequently held special promotions, such as “Ladies’ Day,” which introduces some variability into this average.[/fn] Teams traveled by train and dressed for the game in a local hotel or boarding house. Based on available evidence, the parks can charitably be described as “unrefined,” with sandy ground that made growing grass difficult. Seating was provided in covered band-box “pavilions” and open-air grandstands, set to one side of the field, usually along the first-base line. Bullpens didn’t exist; pitchers warmed up down the foul lines. The ballpark might also be used for other events. In Valdosta, the field was within a dirt track oval used for motorcycle races. 

The Empire State League began play on May 1, with Waycross visiting Brunswick, Americus appearing in Cordele, and Valdosta hosting Thomasville. Businesses closed early, parades were held, city officials strutted, and the ballparks were mobbed. Special trains ran from each visiting team’s city and the surrounding towns. But even before the season was properly underway, there was controversy. The league had announced a contest to award a trophy to the city that had the largest home-opener crowd; determining the winner became clouded by allegations of over counting by some teams. Brunswick claimed the opening-day attendance title with 3,000 fans—exactly 3,000—and over 2,700 were claimed by Waycross for its opener on May 5. Given that the other teams reported more realistic figures for the period and ballpark sizes (1,200 to 1,500 fans), and given that the postseason games averaged 770 spectators, it seems likely that some over counting did, in fact, occur. Still, the opening-day scenes must have been impressive, and the overflow of fans would have been accommodated along the foul lines and in the outfield. When Thomasville held its first game at home, the team reported almost 1,200 fans in attendance in a park that was described to have a capacity of about 800. 

The league scheduled a meeting to discuss the attendance prize, but more important matters took center stage. Two weeks into the season, it was time to change league presidents again. On May 19, C. C. Vaughn, who had been elected to the position just three months earlier to succeed James Sinclair, gave notice of his intention to resign. Actually, Vaughn had tried to get out earlier but had withdrawn his previous resignation. Now he had a good excuse—he was moving to New Orleans. Vice President Groover was elevated to the presidency and would retain that post for the remainder of the season. (And no attendance trophy was awarded.) 

Like the rest of the teams, the Americus Muckalees,[fn]Team nicknames were seldom if ever used in press accounts of the games. Four of these teams would keep the same names for the 1914 season; Cordele changed its team name to the Ramblers, and Waycross became the Grasshoppers or Moguls.[/fn] named for a local tributary of the Flint River, actually began play before the regular season was underway, facing off with minor-league and college opponents in a sort of preseason exhibition tour. Americus’ 13-game schedule was more ambitious than most. In addition to the practice time, the team may have needed the gate receipts just to start the season. The Americus team was an uneven nine. They had the bats, but not the arms, to be successful. Numerous four- and fivegame losing streaks, along with a few winning streaks, gave the team a certain mediocre consistency. Three managers came and went over the course of the season: Harry Weber, Hal Griffin, and Bill Kuhlman. Weber quit after two weeks; Griffin then took over but shortly gave way to Kuhlman. The team finished fourth in both halves of the season, and its overall record also placed it fourth among the six teams of the league. The season for Americus was not without its bright spots, however. Late in the season, catcher Dick Manchester was voted the “most popular player” in the league by the fans; he won the title, and a loving cup, over the second-place finisher, Valdosta’s Otto Jordan. 

With the offensive prowess of outfielder Henry Chancey, Americus should have fared much better. Chancey led the team—and the league—in batting with a .386 average and also led in home runs (10), hits (142), total bases (212), and extra base hits (46).[fn]The batting, fielding, and pitching statistics in this article include appearances in the postseason and/or tie games. The author is currently at work on calculating more accurate regular-season figures based on contemporary box scores. Suffice it to say that whether or not postseason or tie games are counted, the individuals identified here were the best on their respective teams.[/fn] He was second in the league in doubles (32) and third in runs (68). Third baseman Grady Bowen was close behind, batting .324, and was ranked fifth in the league in hits (118). The team’s pitching was led by “Red” Dacey, with a 9–3 record, and Pratt, who went 9–6. First baseman Hal Griffin led the league in putouts (983), with Bowen at third base and Kuhlman at second ranking fourth and fifth, respectively. 

The Cordele Babies played in the smallest city in the circuit but in front of some of the most rabid fans in the league. “Babies” seems like an unusual team name to us today, but was a common nickname around the country for teams of the period and was also used in 1913 by the South Atlantic League (Class C) team in nearby Albany, Georgia.[fn]No formal relationship between the two teams has been found, and it is unlikely that one existed, as the two cities were bitter rivals in attracting businesses and industrial development.[/fn] The team was managed by Eddie “Rip” Reagan, a former Sally and Southern Association player.[fn]Reagan played in a different league every year from 1906 to 1912.[/fn] Reagan was well known to Cordele fans, having played for the city in the 1906 Georgia State League. The team’s strength was its pitching, led by Cleo “Kid” Wilder (16–10) and Dana Fillingim (15–10), who pitched back-to-back no-hitters in a doubleheader against Waycross on July 23.[fn]The two games of the doubleheader were each seven innings, and both games were umpired by another pitcher—Gentle of Valdosta. Also of note, Cleo Wilder has been misidentified in at least one source (Johnson and Wolfe) as “Percy” Wilder. Percy, manager of a team in Jacksonville in 1913, did play a role in the creation of the league, as a member of the committee assembled by James Sinclair, but he was not on the roster of any Empire State League team.[/fn] Evidently, the Babies had that team’s number; Wilder also recorded 15 strikeouts on May 17 against Waycross. Wilder and Fillingim had faced each other as pitchers on top high-school teams in 1912; ten years after being teammates in Cordele, Dana would be in the majors and Wilder would be pitching against Shoeless Joe Jackson in an outlaw league. However, pitching was also Cordele’s weakness; no other moundsman on the staff posted a winning record. With a 12–16 record, Hall recorded the most losses in the league. Outfielders Brazier (.308) and Wassem (.306) led the team in batting. Catcher Carl Eubanks finished fourth in the league in putouts, the only player in the top five in that category who was not a first baseman. 

By the third week of the season, Cordele and Valdosta separated themselves from the rest of the league and stayed close to each other in the standings for the next several weeks. After 45 games, the halfway point of the schedule, the two teams were well out in front of the others. They seemed destined to leave the rest of the field behind, fighting it out to the end for the league championship. However, there was concern among league directors that only two teams—three if the strong Thomasville nine was included—were really in a race for the championship. At the midpoint of the season, Brunswick, Waycross, and Americus were all within a few games of each other, grouped together seven to ten games behind the leaders. The lack of interest in noncontending teams could have a negative impact at the box office. On June 11, President Groover announced that the league’s directors would gather to discuss splitting the season. At that point, Cordele trailed Valdosta by one game in the standings. 

League officials met on June 13; up for discussion were possible changes to the playing schedule. The proposal for the league champion to meet the champion of the South Atlantic League in a postseason series had died on the vine. With the teams in relatively good financial health and with no other postseason opponent available, the league decided to extend the schedule from 90 to 102 games, splitting the season in order to set up a championship contest between the first- and second-half winners. There was also some hope that, by dividing the season, currently weak teams would have an opportunity to compete for the second-half crown and thus build interest—and ticket sales—in their cities. Whether or not that would be the case, the decision did have an immediate effect on the race to win the first half. At the time the new format was announced, Valdosta’s lead over Cordele was only two games, with fewer than two weeks left to play in the first half. 

The Empire State League directors had more on their minds at that June meeting than just adjusting the season schedule. Umpiring had become a problem. For league officials, the math was simple. With six teams in the league, there would be three games going Professional Baseball on at any one time. Thus, to their in Georgia – 1913 minds, just three umpires would be required, with perhaps a few more identified as potential substitutes. Lamar Ham, who had played in the 1906 Georgia State League, Robert Carter, and M. J. McLaughlin were the first “men in blue” for the league. Umpires were hired and paid by the league and, given the financial uncertainties before play began, it made sense to be conservative. For the umpires, however, facing potentially hostile crowds alone, without knowing what level of support to expect from the league, could make their jobs unnecessarily difficult and sometimes dangerous.[fn]On June 28, 1913, an umpire was killed by a bat-wielding player at an amateur game in Louisville.[/fn] The umpires pushed for two-man umpiring crews, but the season began with umpires working games alone. The league turned out not to be a weak partner in this arrangement; President Groover handed out several player suspensions for actions on the field during the season. Even so, the issue of crew size came to a head in mid-June, and the umpires disappeared from the field. Players filled in, at least fourteen of whom umpired games from June 11 to June 27. Typically, these were two-man umpiring crews, drawing a player from each team, though a few games featured three-man crews. One of the players—the Valdosta pitcher Gentle—evidently found the task to his liking, and he quit his team to finish out the season as an umpire. As the season progressed, the league, recognizing that it was in good financial shape, capitulated. More umpires were hired, and two-man crews became the norm. By the end of the season, about a dozen umpires, not counting players, had worked for the Empire State League. 

The Valdosta Millionaires, led by player-manager Otto “Dutch” Jordan, a former major leaguer and Southern Association All-Star,[fn]Otto Jordan played in the New York State League from 1901 to 1903; with Brooklyn (National League) from 1903 to 1904; and in the Southern Association from 1905 to 1913, mostly with Atlanta. As captain of the Atlanta Crackers, he was once arrested in New Orleans for stealing a baseball from the Pelicans during a game—but that’s another story.[/fn] were one of the best teams in the league. Jordan replaced opening-day manager “Whitey” Morse just one week into the season, to the delight of the locals, who welcomed the “prince of the second sackers.”[fn]Atlanta Constitution, 8 May 1913, 11.[/fn] The “Millionaires” nickname was the result of a newspaper contest; the team was more often referred to locally as “Otto’s Otters.” Jordan paced his team in batting with a .344 average in 96 games, but the defense showed some unevenness. Jordan at second base was second in assists in the league with 262, while third baseman Leininger was second in the league in errors (45). Valdosta’s best pitcher was Winges, who compiled a 17–7 record; also notable was pitcher “Rube” Zellars, who posted a 15–13 record, tied for the second-most losses in the league. 

With a week to go in the first half, Valdosta held a two-game lead over Cordele. But was there just a week left to play? Back on June 13, Secretary Leavy had identified July 3 as the starting point for the second half. But that would have resulted in an uneven schedule, putting more games in the first half than the second. President Groover issued a statement on June 25 that the end of the first half would be June 28—three days hence. This caused an immediate outcry in Cordele. With three games left to play, Valdosta’s lead was down to one game. In the final series of the first half, Valdosta would host Cordele, who would have to win two of the three games to gain a postseason berth. In the end it wasn’t much of an issue, however, since if the first half ended on July 3 as originally announced, Cordele would have had to play three more games against Valdosta, for a total of six straight, and would have had to win four of them. As it was, Valdosta won the first two games of the set and secured a place in the postseason championship series. The first half of the season ended on a good note for the league, with half of its teams finishing above .500. So far, so good.

The second half of the season began on June 30, with Americus in Waycross, Thomasville hosting Brunswick, and Valdosta visiting Cordele. Perhaps Cordele came out of the gate looking for a little payback; in the second game of the series they prevailed over Valdosta by a score of 13–0. It would be one of the few bright spots in what remained of their season, as the team— which had been vying for a playoff berth just a week earlier—would finish the second half in last place. With the first half of the season in the books, fans were now looking forward to that Friday’s Fourth of July holiday, which would feature home-and-home twin-bills between Thomasville and Valdosta, Americus and Cordele, and Brunswick and Waycross. Team owners around the league were also looking forward to the holiday payday. 

The Brunswick Pilots, their nickname derived from the river pilots who were hired to guide ships in and out of the town’s busy port, were the most poorly run team in the league. The Pilots had three managers during the season: Bert Kite, Charlie Moran,[fn]Beginning in 1902, Charlie Moran had a long and varied baseball career and was later a major-league umpire.[/fn] and “Whitey” Morse (who also had a brief managing stint with Valdosta at the start of the season). Brunswick fielded the largest number of players during the season in an ultimately frustrating attempt to find a winning combination. All the league teams rotated players on and off their rosters, but none did it with Brunswick’s verve. The team went through enough players to fill the rosters of three league teams. The Pilots had some good hitters, but many of them did not play with the team long enough to make a difference. First baseman/manager “Whitey” Morse was second in the league in putouts (873). Only one Brunswick pitcher— Hartner—had a winning record (15–8). In the first half of the season, the team had a six-game winless streak and two five-game winless streaks, which guaranteed a poor finish. The team performed better in the second half, avoiding any lengthy losing streaks, but they still could not consistently win games. Only the poor play of Cordele kept Brunswick from a last-place finish in the second half of the season. Cordele faded in the last third of the second half, suffering through an 11-game winless streak late in the season, followed by one win and then a six-game losing streak. When the 11-game streak began, the team was in second place; a week and a half later, Cordele was in last place to stay. 

When the Empire State League was created, attention was paid to ensuring a balanced geographic reach for the league. In doing so, obvious rivalries were created or, as in the case of Valdosta and Thomasville, were carried over into the new league. Cordele and Americus were separated by 30 rail miles; Brunswick and Waycross were 57 miles apart; Thomasville and Valdosta had just 44 miles to travel to meet one another. Because of these pairings, the league could celebrate the Fourth of July with games in every league city. Special trains were run so that fans could see their team in both cities where they played that day. Picnics and other events were scheduled to coincide with the games. 

Although the league made it past July 4 with all its teams in good shape, trouble was brewing in Americus, creating a crucial test for the league. For a number of other minor leagues, not just the aforementioned 1906 Georgia State League, the Fourth of July was often the make-or-break point. If the league lost a team now, no one could tell how far reaching the effects might be. Even if the season could be completed with a five-team circuit, the fact that South Georgia could not fully support a minor league would be embarrassing for business leaders and civic promoters, potentially affecting business recruitment in the region. Thankfully for all involved, Americus limped along, though it was forced to hold a fund-raising drive to sell subscriptions in order to keep the team in operation through the remainder of the season. 

The Waycross Blowhards represented the most populous city in the circuit, but the highest average attendance in the league couldn’t help a team with the worst batting average. The origin of the “Blowhards” nickname was the result of a fan contest and reflected the major industry in town—railroad-engine construction and repair. Waycross was managed for most of the season by Charlie Wahoo, formerly of the Carlisle Indian School. He was followed in the manager’s seat by Jack Hawkins and then Willie Clark. Infielder Charles Anderson was the standout on the team, batting .301 in 85 games. Outfielder Fenton batted just .259 but was second in the league in home runs, with 7 roundtrippers. Pitcher “Wild Bill” Clark led the team with a 16–9 record, tied for third most wins in the league; no other Waycross pitcher had a winning record. 

The league’s decision to split the season helped to make the races in the second half more competitive, as all the teams stayed within four or five games of each other. But with two weeks to go in the season, Thomasville took off, eventually finishing six and a half games ahead of second-place Valdosta. The team posted an 11-game winning streak from August 12 to 25, which put the top spot out of reach for any other team. The Thomasville Hornets—the nickname was literally picked from a hat—were managed by Martin Dudley, who played the previous few seasons in the Class D Cotton States League and had appeared in the South Atlantic League in 1910. Shortstop Herbert “Dummy” Murphy[fn]Murphy was deaf and received the standard nickname of the time for deaf players. His given name was Herbert Courtland, but he was called “Pat” by friends.[/fn] led the team in batting with a .338 average, followed by second baseman “Piggie” Parker, who batted .321. Murphy also led the league in errors (47 in 73 games). The team featured a strong pitching staff with three moundsmen posting winning records: Vincent Roth (18–8), who also batted .283 and led the league in wins; “Red” Day (16–6); and Larry Cheney (10–6).

Thomasville walked away with the second half of the season, which ended on August 27.[fn]The results shown for the second half of the season do not match those previously published in other sources. This variance is most likely due to several transcription errors in the Atlanta Constitution’s reporting. The Constitution’s final standings for the second half appear to have been directly copied by both Sporting Life and Sporting News. Simple addition demonstrates that the overall team totals for wins (150) and losses (149) do not agree in those results. (You can’t have a win without someone else having a loss, and vice versa.) From these sources, especially the oft-cited Sporting News, the erroneous results have been repeated in later publications. Baseball Reference cites a different set of totals also at variance with the results presented here. The “won/lost” figures shown in the included tables are based on game accounts from multiple contemporary sources. The corrections do not affect the order in which the teams finished for the second half of the season. It is also worth mentioning that one game in the second half was protested and officially dropped from the records by the league (July 9, Thomasville at Americus). The Atlanta Constitution correctly reflected this change.[/fn]

The average attendance for the regular season was about 400 fans per game, and all six teams were close to that average. Waycross led the league, with an average of 431 paid admissions per game, followed by Brunswick (411) and Thomasville (405). Cordele had the lowest average attendance for the season (364), with Americus (380) and Valdosta (394) doing somewhat better. To tell the whole story, however, these figures have to be considered in terms of the total population in each town. Waycross, for example, had the highest total attendance, but, being the largest city in the league, actually drew the smallest proportion of its population to the park on average (2.8 percent). Cordele, about one-third the size of Waycross and with the lowest total attendance, actually did the best in terms of the percentage of its total population attending its games (6 percent), with Thomasville, half the size of Waycross, coming in right behind (5.7 percent).

THE POSTSEASON

The championship series began on Friday, August 29, using a best-of-seven format. It was somehow appropriate that Thomasville and Valdosta were playing for the championship. Four months earlier, these two teams faced each other to open their seasons; they also faced each other on the Fourth of July. Since the two towns involved were so close to one another, the games were scheduled to alternate between the two cities, with Valdosta hosting the opener as winner of the first half of the season. That game attracted 741 fans. Otto Jordan had kept his team sharp, winning seven of nine games in the closing weeks of the regular season. In the first game, Valdosta walked away with a win. Thomasville pitcher Cheney loaded the bases in the first inning, which allowed the Otters to score a run on an error by shortstop Murphy. Thomasville came back in the next inning, scoring two runs to edge ahead. This score held up until the bottom of the fourth, when Valdosta erupted for five runs, assisted by two errors and several walks. Valdosta added two more runs in the fifth; Thomasville started a rally in the seventh but could only get two runs across. Final score: Valdosta 8, Thomasville 4. It was a good start for the Otters, and the series moved to Thomasville. 

The second game of the series was held on Saturday in Thomasville before a crowd of 595. This game would prove to be a bit tighter than the first one, but the outcome was the same. Both teams scored a run in the first inning; Valdosta’s Van Landingham hit the second pitch of the contest over the center-field fence for a home run—the first in the series. By contrast, Thomasville scored its first run on a walk, a sacrifice, and a double. The Otters went ahead in the top of the second, with Van Landingham, on his way to a three-for-five day at the plate, getting the RBI. The Hornets tied the score in the bottom of the third via a double, a bunt, and a single. Valdosta went ahead for good in the fourth inning, scoring a run and then building on this lead with two additional runs in the seventh, including the second home run of the series, this one hit by left fielder Jack Hawkins. Final score: Valdosta 5, Thomasville 2. Valdosta now led the series two games to none. 

There was no baseball the next day since it was a Sunday. However, it was not an off day for the Thomasville team. That day, Hornets shortstop Murphy got married to Miss Ella Sanford of Thomasville. It would make a nice story to report that Murphy, up to now hitting a combined two-for-nine, suddenly came alive at the plate. Or that he settled in and reduced his league-leading error rate. Unfortunately for Murphy, neither was the case. Fortunately for the team, on the other hand, the good spirits of the wedding party carried over to the next game of the series. 

On Monday, September 1, the two teams were back at it. If Thomasville wanted to stay alive, the team needed to start winning. The series had returned to Valdosta, and the largest crowd of the series—1,018 cranks—was present to root for the teams. Special trains from the surrounding towns ran for this game, and it was the Hornets’ turn to shine—although that wasn’t immediately apparent. Valdosta started the scoring off with a run in the bottom of the second inning and increased their lead with a second run in the fifth. But the Otters’ pitching failed them late in the game; Thomasville scored five runs over the final four innings. The Hornets tied the game in the seventh, chasing Vaughn, the starting pitcher. The relief pitcher, Zellars, walked in another run, giving Thomasville the lead, and allowed single runs in the next two innings. On the mound for Thomasville, Cheney, who had a rocky start in Game 1 of the series, came through for the Hornets, allowing just two runs on nine hits. Newlywed Murphy led all players with two errors; perhaps he was tired. Final score: Thomasville 5, Valdosta 2. The Hornets had made a good showing, although Valdosta still led the series, two games to one. 

On Tuesday, the contest returned to Thomasville. The 732 fans who turned out to see the game were treated to a pitching beauty. Vincent Roth went the distance for the Hornets, keeping Valdosta off the scoreboard and surrendering just two singles. He helped his own cause by swatting a home run in the third inning; Thomasville second baseman Murch also hit a home run, his coming in the first. The Hornets scored two runs in the opening frame and three in the third. The Otters, meanwhile, could not solve Roth, who struck out six, walked two, and stranded five on his way to a complete game shutout. Final score: Thomasville 5, Valdosta 0. The series was now tied at two games apiece. 

Game 5 was on Wednesday, September 3, in Valdosta, before a crowd of 742. Valdosta came out swinging, outhitting the Hornets through nine innings but ultimately falling short of victory. This game was a defensive gem, with Thomasville’s “Red” Day facing off against Winges for the Otters. Both men struck out three batters; Winges walked three to Day’s two. Valdosta opened the scoring in the third inning with a run scored off a single, a sacrifice, and another single. The Hornets came back in the sixth inning, scoring two runs on a walk, an error, a single, a sacrifice, and another single. This was the epitome of “small ball” in the Deadball Era. Day made those two runs hold up, going the distance for the victory. Final score: Thomasville 2, Valdosta 1. Thomasville now led the series three games to two—just one win away from a championship. 

Thomasville got that win the next day, September 4, at home in front of a crowd of 789. In his third start of the series, Cheney’s performance on the mound, combined with the defense behind him, cemented victory for the Hornets. Valdosta managed five hits off Cheney but produced no runs. The big bats of the Otters were generally silent; Jordan went one-for-four, as did Van Landingham. Thomasville got on the scoreboard in the bottom of the first, scoring one run on two singles and an error. The Hornets added another run in the second on two singles and a sacrifice and then put the game out of reach in the seventh, with three runs scored off a round-tripper hit by left fielder John Wagnon. It was his first home run of the entire season, and fans responded by collecting $30 in the stands, which they then delivered to the player. Appropriately enough, Hornets manager Martin Dudley caught a popup to end the game and the series. The Thomasville pitching staff had its second complete game shutout of the series. Final score: Thomasville 5, Valdosta 0. 

The City of Thomasville was ecstatic. The Hornets had won the “rag”—the championship banner—in the inaugural season of the Empire State League. People cheered, honked horns, and rang bells. There was also cause for celebration of a financial sort. Each team received $774 from gate receipts; players on the winning team received $266 to divide among themselves, while players on the losing team got $177 to split.[fn]Members of the winning team received about $22 apiece ($462 in today’s dollars); players on the losing team got $15 each ($315 in today’s dollars). Each team received over $16,000 in today’s dollars.[/fn] 

At a banquet on the day after the series win, Manager Dudley had more good news: his own wedding plans. Dudley’s announcement came in the form of a telegram; he was in Valdosta with his betrothed. Present at the banquet was the team’s shortstop, newlywed “Dummy” Murphy, who was now looking north to the major leagues. 

THE LEGACY 

The Empire State League made it to the finish line with all six franchises intact. This outcome was not always assured and was quite an accomplishment for a firstyear circuit. Sporting Life reported that the season “was an artistic and financial success, all of the clubs that entered the race finishing in good condition for another fling at the game next year.”[fn]Sporting Life 62, no. 1 (6 September 1913): 29.[/fn] The men who played in the league had demonstrated day in and day out that the desire to succeed at their craft could carry them through the rough times and muggy afternoons of South Georgia. More than 30 of them went on to play in higher-classification minor leagues; two— “Dummy” Murphy and Dana Fillingim—made it from the Empire State League to the major leagues.

In November 1913, the Empire State League changed its name to the Georgia State League for the upcoming season, a nod to the 1906 circuit.[fn]Two unrelated Georgia State Leagues, which operated in the Middle and Western Georgia regions, fielded teams in 1920–21 and 1948–56.[/fn] The salary limit was raised to $1,200. There was also a change at the top of the league. At the November 11 league meeting in Cordele, I. J. Kalmon of Americus was elected president, replacing Groover, who had retired. Kalmon was not the group’s first choice; J. B. Jemison, the brother of Atlanta Constitution sports editor Dick Jemison, was selected but turned down the offer. In a surprising turn, James Sinclair, the man whose idea had launched the league, returned to the fold, winning election as vice president. All six teams from the 1913 league stayed on as members of the Georgia State League, and 35 players from 1913 (70 percent of the 50 men on the “reserve” lists of the teams) returned for 1914. Seven players were drafted from the Empire State League to play in higher leagues for 1914, most going to Class C clubs. 

The 1914 season was a complete success and finished with Cordele beating Thomasville in four straight games for the championship. By 1915, however, problems began to overtake the league. The major liability of the circuit was the size of its member cities. Operating costs (equipment, travel, and lodging), player salaries, and team profits were all directly related to the number of people each team could attract to its games. Smaller cities had less of a population base to draw from, even though some of these cities were fairly successful at putting people in the seats. Cordele dropped out before play began in 1915 and was replaced by a franchise in Dothan, Alabama. Americus, again struggling financially as it had in 1913, disbanded three weeks into the season; the league filled its spot with a team from Gainesville, Florida. Bowing to the obvious, the circuit was renamed the FLAG (Florida-Alabama-Georgia) League on June 15. But the changes weren’t enough; the league folded on July 17, 1915. A playoff series was attempted but not completed. It would be 20 years before the Empire State League cities were back in professional ball to stay. Still and all, two years of sustained operations had convinced many that professional baseball could work in South Georgia. By proving that Class D baseball could be successful, the Empire State League laid the foundation for later minor-league ball in the region, though events conspired against an immediate continuation of the South Georgia Class D circuit. World War I, an influenza pandemic, the Great Depression, and a second world war, each in their way, delayed the return of the six cities to professional baseball, just as those events delayed the population and business growth of the region. By the end of World War II, five of the six cities once again hosted minor-league teams; in 1951, Brunswick became the last Empire State League city to welcome back minor-league baseball. The dream of professional baseball in the region turned into a nightmare in 1906; it was made a success in 1913. The Empire State League proved that business and sporting interests could come together to field professional teams in South Georgia. 

WILLIAM F. ROSS III is writing a book on professional baseball in South Georgia during the Deadball Era.

Sources

The majority of the information presented in this article is based on contemporary newspaper and other periodical accounts. Primary sources include the Atlanta Constitution, Sporting Life, and The Sporting News. The author also wishes to recognize the assistance provided by Ephraim Rotter, Curator of Collections with the Thomas County Historical Society. The following sources were also consulted:

Websites

• Baseball Reference: www.baseball-reference.com 
• Retrosheet: www.retrosheet.org 
• SABR Minor League Database: www.minors.sabrwebs.com 
• United States Bureau of Economic Analysis: www.bea.gov 
• United States Census Bureau: www.census.gov

Books

• Anderson, Alan. Remembering Americus, Georgia: Essays on Southern Life. Charleston, S.C.: The History Press, 2006. 
• Bell, John. Georgia Class-D Minor League Baseball Encyclopedia: A Statistical History of the Georgia-Alabama, Georgia-Florida, and Georgia State Leagues. Carrollton, Ga.: Vabella Publishing, 2003. 
• Caldwell, Wilber W. The Courthouse and the Depot: The Architecture of Hope in an Age of Despair. Macon, Ga.: Mercer University Press, 2001. 
• Faber, Charles F., and Richard B. Faber. Spitballers: the Last Legal Hurlers of the Wet One. Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland & Company, Inc., 2006. 
• James, Bill, and Rob Neyer. The Neyer/James Guide to Pitchers: An Historical Compendium of Pitching, Pitchers, and Pitches. New York: Fireside, 2004. 
• Johnson, Lloyd, and Miles Wolff, eds. Encyclopedia of Minor League Baseball. 3rd ed. Durham, N.C.: Baseball America, 2007. 
• McQueen, A. S., and Hamp Mizell. History of Okefenokee Swamp. Tallahassee, Fla.: Rose Printing Co., 1992 (reprint). 
• O’Neal, Bill. The Southern League: Baseball in Dixie, 1885–1994. Austin, Tex.: Eakin Press, 1994. 
• Rogers, William W. Transition to the Twentieth Century: Thomas County, Georgia, 1900–1920. Tallahassee, Fla.: Sentry Press, 2002. 
• Simon, Tom, ed. Deadball Stars of the National League. Washington, D.C.: Brassey’s, Inc., 2004. 
• Simpson, John A. “The Greatest Game Ever Played in Dixie”: The Nashville Vols, Their 1908 Season, and the Championship Game. Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland & Company, Inc., 2007. 
• Sullivan, Neil J. The Minors: The Struggles and the Triumph of Baseball’s Poor Relation from 1876 to the Present. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1990. 
• Utley, Francis Lee, and Marion R. Hemperley, eds. Placenames of Georgia: Essays of John H. Goff. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1975. 
• Wiggins, Robert Peyton. The Federal League of Base Ball Clubs: The History of an Outlaw Major League, 1914–1915. Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland & Company, Inc., 2009. 
• Wright, Marshall D. The Southern Association in Baseball, 1885–1961. Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland & Company, Inc., 2002. 
• The South Atlantic League, 1904–1963: A Year-by-Year Statistical History. Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland & Company, Inc., 2009.