4 May 1921: YMCA Summer Ball Teams Announced

On this day in 1921, the Athens Banner published the members and schedules for the early summer Y.M.C.A. baseball teams:

Y.M.C.A. Ball Clubs Now Organized

 The following is a roster of the teams and the schedule for the season:

      N. G. Slaughter (captain), R. McWhorter, W. F. Pittard, Fred Dean, George Thornton, George Williams, France Price, Tony Costa, Harry Dews, B. Joel, Tom Stokes.

      W. R. Bedgood (captain), Julian Erwin, Henry M. Bacon, Hope Smith, W. H. Owen, Bradberry, Hugh Hodgson, C. D. McDorman, Joel A. Wier, W. A. Clark, Abit Nix, W. T. Dean.

      W. E. Hopkins (captain), J. C. Hutchins, Tom McNiebling, S. R. Cook, Harry Cason, John W. Nicholson, E. F. Porter, R. L. Moss III, O. M. Roberts, Fred Davis, Jr., Hubert Rylee.

      W. K. Meadow (captain), Howard McWhorter, D. D. Quillian, Fred McEntire, Clyde Anderson, Morton Hodgson, Edward Hightower, G. A. Booth, Garland Hulme, P. E. Holliday, T. Marvin Cox.

      "Whitie" Davis (captain), Abe Link, Marion Conolly, E. H. Dorsey, Jr., W. B. Thornton, Ernest Hollingsworth, Paul Conolly, Joe Costa, L. A. Scarborough, J. E. Patman, Jack Wilkins.

      "Starr" Smith (captain), W. T. Forbes, Sr., Abe Goodman, Fleetwood Lanier, Rucker Ginn, M. B. Wingfield, Paul Weatherly, Guy Hancock, Harry Burton, L. A. Booth, I. Myerson.

 -- Athens Banner, 4 May 1921, page 3, columns 2-4.

The early season lasted through the first week of June, when the championship game was played between Captain Slaughter and Captain Davis. According to the Banner, "Slaughter was slaughtered and the crown rests serenely on the heads of Whitey's team-mates." 


A second season began July with new teams comprised of essentially the same group of young men in different groups. For the July season, the teams were given names and new captains, with the Tigers, Bear Cats, Wild Cats, Bull Dogs, Eagles, and Buffaloes sparring against one for approximately one more month. 


The men on the team were all between the ages of 18 and 40, many of them from prominent local families, such as the McWhorters, Costas, and Hodgsons, while others were businessmen of note in their own right, such as Abit Nix, Joel Wier, and W. K. Meadow. 

Most of the young men on the team were familiar names on the Banner society pages, and because most were business and family men, teams sometimes had to play without a full roster to cover all the positions. 


The "Field League" grew in popularity over the summer of 1921, with over 100 men divided into eight teams for the August season. As the Banner noted, "the second larger league is expected to cause some big excitements in local amateur sports circles."




Learn More:

• Athens Banner, Oct. 1920 - May 1921 on Microfilm in the Heritage collection.
• Athens Historic Newspaper Archive collection in the Digital Library of Georgia.
• History of the Y timeline on the YMCA website.
• History of Athens and Clarke County by H. J. Rowe in the Heritage and general collections.
• The Baseball Scrapbook by Peter C. Bjarkman in the general collection.
• Classic Ballparks by James Buckley in the general collection.
• Total Baseball, edited by John Thorn and Pete Palmer in the Reference collection.
• The Code: Baseball's Unwritten Rules by Ross Bernstein in the general collection
• The Way Baseball Works by Dan Gutman in the general collection.
• The Baseball Anthology: 125 Years of Stories, Poems, Articles, Photographs, Drawings, Interviews, Cartoons, and Other Memorabilia, edited by Joseph Wallace in the general collection.
• Casey at the Bat by Dan Gutman in the children's collection.
• Baseball: A Celebration! by James Buckley in the general collection.