Episode 191: Life as Hardball – The Evangeline League, Plus Post-War New Orleans

There was a time and region where a homerun might have been exclaimed as being a coup de circuit! The added excitement that the ball may have landed in a field such as near the southwest Louisiana towns of Rayne or Crowley (whose teams were the Rice Birds and the Millers) added to the local color. Those were the days of the Evangeline League, a minor but colorful baseball group that played ball mostly west of the Atchafalaya between 1934 and 1957. Historian Brian Altobello joins Louisiana Life Executive Editor Errol Laborde along with Producer Kelly Massicot to talk about the league including its stars and its controversies; such as gambling questions and racial issues. Altobello, whose book “Whiskey, Women, and War: How the Great War Shaped Jim Crow New Orleans,” provides great insights into the city’s postwar period also talks about that rugged time. As in baseball, a constant goal was to be safe at home.