Remembering The Evangeline League: 1949

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 took a look back at the 1948 season.

Today, the 1949 season.

The Evangeline League remained the same in 1949, as it did in 1948, with eight franchises, all in the same locations.

The only minor change was that the New Iberia Franchise, who had used the nickname "Cardinals", from 1934-1942, and continued to use from 1946-1947, before switching to the "Pelicans" for the 1948 season, switched back to their original name in 1949.

The Hammond Berries defeated the Alexandria Aces, four-games-to-two in the finals, to win the championship, their second title in the last three years.The Houma Indians finished with the most wins (81) during the regular season, followed by the Lafayette Bulls (79), Hammond (76), Alexandria (75), the Abbeville Athletics (68), the Thibodaux Giants (64), New Iberia (61), and the Baton Rouge Red Sticks (50).

New Iberia's Sid Gautreaux, a tough right-handed hitting catcher from Schriever, Louisiana, led the league in hitting, batting a .355 at the age of 37.

Gautreaux, who played 16 professional seasons, including seven in the Evangeline League, had spent the previous two seasons with Thibodaux.

Hammond's Raymond Dunn was the league-leader in hits (165) and home runs (30), while Houma's Mike Ryan paced the league in runs batted in (108).

Hammond right-hander Herman Gilreath, in the final year of his four professional seasons,  led the league in wins (22), while Tom Spears of Lafayette had the top ERA. (1.04), easily outdistancing his nearest challenger, teammate Theodore Beck (2.25).

In 1948, only two pitchers finishing the season with a sub 3.00 ERA, but that changed in 1949, with 14 pitchers doing so.

Alexandria defeated Houma in the first round of the playoffs, while Hammond eliminated Lafayette, as the two teams advanced to the finals.

Alexandria led the league in attendance in 1949, drawing 107,597 fans, marking the fourth-straight year they led the league in that category.