Remembering The Evangeline League: 1940

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”.

Today, the 1940 season:

The Evangeline League changed a little bit for the 1940 season, after remaining the same for the previous four years, from 1935-1939, with the Port Arthur Tarpons and Houma/Natchez Pilgrims coming into the league, replacing the Jeanerette Blues and Abbeville A's..

The Alexandria Aces, an affiliate of the Detroit Tigers, defeated the New Iberia Cardinals, an affiliate of the St. Louis Cardinals, four-games-to-none in the finals.

The Lake Charles Skippers finished with the most wins (86) during the regular season, followed by Alexandria (84), New Iberia (78), the Lafayette White Sox (77), Port Arthur (63), the Opelousas Indians (59), Houma/Natchez (51), and the Rayne Rice Birds (37).

Lafayette’s Harry Strohm, who played 23 years of minor league ball, led the league with a .361 batting average, while teammate Ken Grosse led the league it hits, with 188.

Lafayette featured three of the top six hitters in the league in 1940, with Strohm, Grosse, and Ray Parrott.

New Iberia's Woody Fair led the league in homers, with 24, nine more than Houma's Woody Salmon, while also driving in a league-high 125 runs.

New Iberia's Gordon Pixley led the league in wins, with 26, while Alexandria's Sam Eaton paced the league in both ERA. and strikeouts, at 1.77 and 256, respectively, while also recording 23 wins.

New Iberia defeated Lake Charles in the first round of the playoffs, while Alexandria eliminated Lafayette, as the two teams advanced to the finals.

Lake Charles led the league in attendance in 1940, with 49, 230 paid fans.