Remembering The Evangeline League: 1936

The Evangeline League was a minor league baseball league that ran in southern and central Louisiana from 1934-1957.

The league, which had it’s name taken from Evangeline, the epic poem by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, began as a 6-team class D league in 1934, and then expanded to 8 teams the next season, before shutting down for two seasons following the 1943 season due to World War II.

After resuming play in 1946, the Evangeline League remained a class D league, before being promoted to the class C level in 1949.

The league remained in operation until 1957, when two of the six remaining teams dropped out, suspending play that season with no champion being named.

The Evangeline League, which featured a betting scandal back in 1946, featured teams in cities such as Lafayette, Abbeville, Crowley, Opelousas, Rayne, Jeanerette, and Lake Charles.

Despite the stability of the league, the only franchise they lasted all 21 seasons was the Alexandria Aces, while New Iberia had a franchise every season, with the exception of the final one.

Because of the close proximity of the franchises, a number of heated rivalries developed, with crowds that would certainly quality as raucous, getting into it with umpires, players, managers, and one another.

It was an immensely popular league for over two decades, with some franchises actually outdrawing some Major League Baseball franchises, in terms of attendance.

All summer long we’ll be going back in time and look back at the Evangeline League, which was commonly referred to as the “Pepper Sauce League”, “Hot Sauce League”, or “Tabasco Circuit”.

Yesterday, we looked back at the 1935 season.

Today, the 1936 season:

The Evangeline League remained as was in 1935, with eight teams in 1936.

The Alexandria Aces, an affiliate of the Detroit Tigers, defeated the Opelousas Indians, an affiliate of the Cleveland Indians, four-games-to-two in the finals, after the two teams finished as the leaders in wins during the regular season, with 96 and 89, respectively.

The Rayne Rice Birds finished the year with 83 wins, followed by the Jeanerette Blues (76), the New Iberia Cardinals (68), the Lafayette White Sox (58), the Abbeville Athletics (48), and the Lake Charles Skippers (34).

Alexandria's Cecil "Dynamite" Dunn led the league in almost every offensive category. Dunn won the Triple Crown, hitting a .378 with 47 home runs and 185 runs batted in, to go along with 219 hits, 45 doubles, and 431 total bases, all of which led the league.

Dunn's teammate Ken Huff, scored the most runs in the league, with 169, most of which were probably driven in by Dunn, who had twice as many homers that year as the next closest hitter.

Alexandria, led by Dunn, hit 175 homers in 1936, the most in league history, and an astonishing 43 more than Hammond, who hit the second-most in 1951.

Rayne's Rudy Woods was the top pitcher in 1936, leading the league in wins (23), while Harold Capdeville of Opelousas paced the league with 252 strikeouts.