Baseball Standouts Grew Up On These Diamonds

Baseball grew in popularity throughout North Carolina following the Civil War.  By the late 1800s most towns, colleges and high schools had teams.  Transylvania County has been home to town teams, industrial league teams and Major Leaguers since the early 1900s.

In 1903 the Brevard Baseball Club played 28 games against other town teams, including Hendersonville, Tryon and Spartanburg.  They finished the season with a 17-11 record.  Newspaper articles boast of defeating their archrivals, Hendersonville, several times.

Within a few years other Transylvania communities and the Brevard Institute also had baseball teams.  Information on these early teams is limited to scattered reports in local newspapers.

In 1931 the Sylvan Valley League in Transylvania County consisted of teams from Lake Toxaway, Penrose, Pisgah Forest and Rosman.

Can you help identify these 1941 Ecusta ball players?

Industrial or textile league baseball was popular from the 1930s through the 1960s.  Local teams began forming in 1934.  The Gloucester CCC Camp, Pisgah Cotton Mills, Rosman Tannery and Transylvania Tanning all had teams.  Ecusta formed a baseball team in 1940.  Their first game was against Brevard Tannery on April 27, 1940.  Ecusta won by a score of 6-4.  The team finished their first season in 5^th place but won the WNC Industrial League pennant in 1941.



Gil Coan came to Brevard College to play baseball in 1941.  Coan worked for Ecusta in the early 1940s before signing to play professional baseball with the Washington Senators.  His first major league game was April 27, 1946.  Over the course of an 11 year career he also played for the Baltimore Orioles, New York Giants and Chicago White Sox.  Coan had a .254 batting average with 39 home runs and 83 stolen bases in 2877 at bats.

This Brevard team made up of mostly African-American players
played teams from Western North Carolina and upstate South Carolina.
Back, l to r:  William Mills, Eddie Moss, Jake Smith, Charles Whitmire,
Joe Lewis Norman, Dolphus Robinson, Arthur Robinson, Johnny Whitmire
and Lewis Howell.
Front, l to r:  Willie Bussey, Herbert Avery, Charles Gardin, Charles Whitmire, Jr., 
Hugh Whitmire, Lawrence Mills, Dennis Robinson and Walter Mall Benjamin.

Transylvania County native Art Hefner played baseball in the Negro Leagues for five years.  Hefner played minor league ball for the Nashville Black Vols in 1945 and the Asheville Blues in 1946 and part of 1947.  On the Major League level he played part of 1947 and 1948 with the New York Black yankees and 1949 with the Philadelphia Stars of the Negro National League.  Few Negro League statistices survive but Hefner did hit .273 with the Stars.






Next week Picturing the Past  will feature athletics at Brevard College.  A short series of articles on the history of Brevard College will begin on October 26.

Photographs and information for this column are provided by the Rowell Bosse North Carolina Room, Transylvania County Library.  Visit the NC Room during regular library hours (Monday-Friday) to learn more about our history and see additional photographs.  For more information, comments or suggestions contact Marcy at marcy.thompson@transylvaniacounty.org or 828-884-3151 x242.