Episode 313: "The Best Little Baseball Town in the World"

Baseball by the Book

Justin McGuire

Authors, Baseball, Books, Statistics, Sports, History, Arts

4.9 • 655 Ratings

🗓️ 13 July 2021

⏱️ 45 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

For a short time in the 1950s, tiny Crowley, La. was the toast of the baseball world as its Class C Millers drew enormous crowds and won multiple pennants. Then it all ended as quickly as it began. Author Gaylon White joins us to discuss a remarkable tale of murder, mystery and tragedy.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hey, everybody, I'm Justin McGuire.
0:20.3	And this is baseball by the book, the only podcast that matters.
0:25.1	That's right, folks, you are once again listening to Baseball by the Book, the podcast in which we talk to authors of baseball books past and present.
0:33.4	Let's get right to today's episode. We are joined by author Galen H. White. He is a former
0:39.6	newspaper sports writer and the author of several books on baseball, including The Bilko Athletic
0:45.7	Club and Singles and Smiles. Today he's here to talk about the best little baseball town in the
0:52.6	world, the Crowley Miller's and minor league baseball
0:55.7	in the 1950s. Let's get started. Hi, Galen. Welcome to Baseball by the book. Thanks for the
1:04.6	opportunity. Your book is called The Best Little Baseball Town in the World. And of course,
1:10.0	that title refers to Crowley, Louisiana, which for a baseball town in the world. And of course, that title refers to Crowley,
1:12.7	Louisiana, which for a few years in the 1950s was indeed considered the best baseball town in the
1:18.9	world. Why was that? Crowley, Louisiana did not have a baseball team until 1950. That's a
1:25.6	professional baseball team. They had a semi-pro team up to that time.
1:28.9	They even built their stadium, Miller Stadium, prior to having a team. That's how badly they
1:34.5	wanted to join the professional ranks. Their first year with a professional team was in the Gulf
1:41.1	Coast League. That was a new league founded in 1950. It wasn't a league they wanted to be in. They wanted to be in the Gulf Coast League. That was a new league founded in 1950. It wasn't a league they wanted
1:46.3	to be in. They wanted to be in the Evangian League, which was made up almost exclusively of
1:51.8	Louisiana teams. And it had been around since 1934. So the Millers, starting in 1950,
1:59.4	they came close to 100,000 that year, but they had 19 rainouts,
2:03.3	which prevented them from reaching that mark because the rainouts led to double hitters.
2:08.4	But beginning in 1951, they started a string of three straight years of topping the 100,000 attendance mark.
2:15.5	And this was at a time where minor leagues were starting to shrink.
	...

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