The Day Babe Ruth Came to Crowley

Wherever Babe Ruth barnstormed, whether in the United States or across the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans in Europe and Asia, throngs turned out for the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to watch the great Bambino in person.

Anticipation was always high, and the magnetic Ruth never disappointed. Even if Ruth didn’t connect on one of his titanic home runs, his mere presence thrilled the crowd. Ruth did more for baseball than any player in the game’s history. Not only was Ruth baseball’s most productive player, but he would have been one of the all-time greatest left-handed pitchers had he not switched from moundsman to a slugging right fielder.

In 1921, Ruth and his New York Yankees’ teammates made a swing through Louisiana, and stopped in Crowley, Louisiana, an event which baseball historian Gaylon White described in his new book, “The Best Little Baseball Town in the World.” Crowley’s baseball-crazy fans came out to root for their colorful minor league franchise, the Millers. A baseball scribe calculated that the Millers’ 1952 throng of 119,333 represented nearly 10 times Crowley’s population, the rough equivalent of the New York Yankees drawing 80 million fans.

True to their reputation as rabid fans, when Ruth and his Bronx Bombers came to Crowley on St. Patrick’s Day exactly a century ago, nearly half the city squeezed into a hastily built baseball field inside a racetrack. By 1921, Ruth had hit 54 homers the previous season, was on his way to 59 that year, and eventually 60 in 1927, all records at the time. But the Shreveport Times reported that on March 17, Ruth’s “remarkable” day “was without strikeouts, bases on balls and homeruns,” categories that he normally led the league in.

But Millers’ fans didn’t need Ruth’s presence to field an interesting if not bizarre cast of unusual characters on the diamond. The brightest Millers’ star was heavy-hitting Conklyn Meriwether, remembered not so much for his baseball talents, but for inexplicably killing his mother-and-father-in-law with an axe years after he retired. Although Meriwether never played in the major leagues – he won a roster spot on the 1946 St. Louis Cardinals’ roster in 1946, but never got into a game – the six-foot, 210-pounder racked up impressive credentials during his 15 minor league seasons, four of them with the New York Yankees farm system.

Meriwether hit .307 in his career with formidable power, blasting 280 home runs for an average of nearly 20 a season. A World War II veteran, Meriwether was declared insane by a Florida judge, and committed to an institution, thus avoiding a certain death sentence.

Millers’ manager Johnny George, the popular skipper who won two league titles out of the three years he piloted the team, was in fact a con man. George died at age 36 in a Birmingham jail awaiting his trial on embezzlement charges. The word buzzed among disappointed Crowley citizens: the manager was a crook.

“The Best Little Baseball Town in the World” reads more like fiction than fact. But the book tells the important story of minor league baseball in the 1950s. The Millers were part of the Evangeline League, known variously by the nicknames “Tabasco,” Hot Sauce” and “Pepper Pot” because of the countless wild events that passionate fans came to expect. Fans berated umpires and fellow players in Cajun French.

The Crowley Millers’ history has taken on special importance today because MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred has overhauled minor league baseball, and callously removed franchises from small town American communities like Crowley. Not only are middle-America’s baseball fans deprived of their summer enjoyment, but Manfred’s actions also take away important jobs from blue-collar workers who need employment or to supplement their earning with part-time jobs. White’s book takes readers back to a more joyous baseball era, and entertains them every word of the way.

Joe Guzzardi is a Society for American Baseball Research and an Internet Baseball Writers Association member. Contact him at guzzjoe@yahoo.com.