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 1946 season, and the gambling scandal that gave the league a black eye.
Today, the 1947 season.
The Evangeline League remained the same in 1947, as it did in 1946, with eight franchises, all of which remained in the same cities.
The Hammond Berries defeated the Thibodaux Giants, four-games-to-none, in the finals, to win the championship.
It was a worst-to-first turnaround for Hammond, who finished last just one season prior, winning only 44 games in the process.
The Alexandria Aces finished with the most wins (79) during the regular season, followed by Thibodaux and the New Iberia Cardinals (76), Hammond (73), the Houma Indians (63), the Natchez Pilgrims (58), the Baton Rouge Red Sticks (54), and the Abbeville Athletics (53).
Abbeville's Alvin Aucoin, a right-handed hitting outfielder from Port Arthur, Texas, led the league in hitting, at a .351, finishing 8 percentage points ahead of New Iberia's Len Ochim, a terrific two-way threat, who also won 20 games on the mound.
Houma's Dan Seiler was the big power threat in 1947, leading the league in both home runs (22) and runs batted in (115), while New Iberia's George Sopko paced the league with 180 hits, with Hammond's Bob Gales scoring 138 runs.
Hammond veteran Paul Bruno, who began his professional career 13 years earlier with New Iberia in the Evangeline League, had a big year, pitching-wise, leading the league in wins (25), ERA. (1.96), and strikeouts (260), in a year in which there were five 20-game winners.
Hammond defeated Thibodaux in the first round of the playoffs, while Alexandria eliminated New Iberia, as the two teams advanced to the finals.
Alexandria led the league in attendance in 1941, drawing 149.899 fans.
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