Jim Bradshaw: Picks and shovels first, then bats and balls
Organized Little League baseball was still far in the future when the Crowley Rotary Club decided in the spring of 1923 to set up a four-team league for any boy between the ages of 12 and 16 “whether he be a star or whether or not he feels that he is a good player.”
Several other south Louisiana communities had youth teams that year, but a team made up of Crowley’s best players was too good for most of them.
The Rotary Baseball Association planned a schedule of two games a week, “giving enough games to sustain the interest of the boys, with not too many to tire them out.”
Each member of the Rotary Club put up $5 to pay for “the necessary equipment and the expense of preparing the grounds for games.”
About 60 boys turned out for the first meeting and most of them remained interested even after Rotary President L.A. Williams told them that before playing a game they would have to turn out “armed with picks, shovels, hoes, and other paraphernalia” to create a diamond on land provided by Mr. and Mrs. P. J. Chappuis near the municipal power plant.
That number swelled to 100 after the Rotarians decided to put the diamond on the North Crowley School grounds rather than the Chappuis property because much less work was needed to get a field in shape.
The boys were grouped into four teams, each reflecting Crowley’s primary business — the Rice-O-Las, the Rice Warehousemen, the Rice Millers, and the Rice Brokers.
They played a regular schedule among themselves, but “a picked team” with players from each of them also played teams from other towns.
They beat a team from Roberts Cove in mid-June, and kept on winning. By mid-August their streak stood at six wins and no losses.
The Crowley Signal said good pitching had a lot to do with that, but that Rotarian Larry Martin, who was manager, “no doubt [had] one of the fastest boys’ teams in this part of the country,” and that “it is hard for a hitter to get one past the stone wall infield.”
I don’t find a final tally for the season, but by Sept. 1 the “Rotary Boys” had also beaten teams from Prairie Hayes, Lafayette and Jennings.
It’s not clear whether the Rotarians continued to sponsor the four-team league, but they did organize the “hand-picked” team for the next several years, albeit with not the same sterling results.
In 1925, the team was challenged to a charity match by the Abbeville Farmers, who “declared they would play on [the Crowley] diamond, provided that the proceeds were turned over to the Louisiana Children’s Society.”
Five hundred people paid to watch Crowley win 1-0 in a ten-inning pitchers’ duel.
According to the Signal, it was the third consecutive time that they had been forced to play extra innings. They won each of those games, but had some other tough outings on the schedule.
Several weeks later the Signal reported that “Crowley’s railway baseball team romped unmercifully through the Rotary nine in a game played in the Old Spanish Trail park.”
You can contact Jim Bradshaw at jimbradshaw4321@gmail.com or P.O. Box 1121, Washington LA 70589.