Remembering The Evangeline League: Roy Price

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 remembered Joe Turk.

Today, Roy Price

Price was a left-handed pitcher, who played seven seasons in the Evangeline League, from 1940-1941, and then again, from 1946-1952, when the league returned following World War II.

After having moderate success with the Lafayette White Sox, Alexandria Aces, and Abbeville Athletics in his first few seasons in the Evangeline League, Price moved on to the Houma Indians in 1951 and had a career-year, compiling 17 wins, while registering 344 strikeouts, a league record which would never be broken.

What made 1951 even more impressive for Price is that he pitched for a Houma team that only won only 60 games that year, tied for the fewest in the league.

In seven seasons in the Evangeline League, Price compiled an overall record of 66-57 with a 2.62 ERA.