A Baseball Town on the Brink: Drawing the Aces

Alexandria did not stumble into the Evangeline League. It had to be recruited, with conditions: local money, outside experience, a manager with something to lose, and a ballpark question.

Artwork by Lamar White, Jr. Original black and white photographs by Tony Vidascovich of The Times-Picayune. Excerpts from the original caption, from left to right: Millard Haley, Alexandria catcher, with the league’s only mascot, a goat which does not answer to the name of “Dugan”; Jimmy Lawrence, formerly of Texas Christian, with whom he starred against L.S.U. in the Super Bowl; and Opelousas native Al Nixon, one of the league’s 16 umpires.

This is the third installment in a multi-part series on Bringhurst Field and the long, improbable history of organized and professional baseball in Alexandria, Louisiana.

Part I began near the end of the story’s most haunting chapter: Andy Strong’s final night at Bringhurst Field. Part II returned to the years before Bringhurst, when Alexandria was already a complicated baseball town: a city of Black ballparks, white professional clubs, summer crowds, unpaid bills, river names, red ink, and one lost team it could not quite forgive.

By 1933, Alexandri…