Author: Kevin Wirthwein
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A Smashing Debut
Opening night in 1966 against the Knoxville Smokies rekindled minor league baseball in Evansville after the E-Braves exited after the 1957 season. Nicknamed the “Esox,” the city was back in the business of baseball. Chilly weather and a day-long threat of rain kept many new fans away. The April 21 game attracted a disappointing paid…
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The Team that Never Was
On December 2, 1936, with little fanfare or warning, Joe Mathes, a veteran baseball player and minor league manager, was named manager of the new Evansville Hubs in the new Three-I League for the 1937 baseball season. Evansville had been without a team since 1931. The announcement came in a front-page story in the Courier.…
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Fred Kovner – From Bosse Field to the Orchestra Pit
Fred Kovner’s future was bright when he graduated from Old Dominion University in the Spring of 1965. He set virtually every batting record at the college and was an exceptional centerfielder. His 1964 team won the NCAA College Division East Regional at historic Yankee Stadium and Fred was named All American in his final two…
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Diamond Death – 1895
Although not part of Evansville’s professional baseball history, a tragic event occurred on a city baseball field in 1895. The event, death by shooting, is documented in the Robert Gorman and David Weeks book, “Death at the Ballpark,” a journal of more than 2,000 deaths that have occurred on baseball diamonds in the United States.…
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Walter Dilbeck, Evansville Baseball and Veterans Day
Although the title of my first book prominently calls out a “Global Disaster”, referring to Dilbeck’s attempt to form a third Major League, this man was really a hero in many ways. I may have been a little harsh in my book’s title, but any objective observer would say things did not go well in…
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Happy Birthday to Steel Arm Tyler – Evansville’s Major League record holder
His nine victories with the Memphis Red Sox in 1925 are the most by a 17 year-old pitcher in Major League baseball history. https://www.seamheads.com/NegroLgs/player.php?playerID=tyler01ste Born in Evansville in 1907, he began his professional pitching career at the young age of 15. William “Steel Arm” Tyler was considered the greatest black pitcher in baseball during his…
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The Continuing Story of Wee Willie
My second book has gone to print, so I’m back with more of what didn’t make my first book (see Books section). I devoted a short piece in my first book to this young phenom, who pitched a no-hitter for the Evansville Hoosiers at the age of 15 in storied old League Park on Louisiana…
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Cotton – Fame by a Few Inches
The NCAA Division I Basketball Championship is over. So, this will be my final entry about Evansville baseball and prominent college basketball players. Charles Francis “Cotton” Nash was a Kentucky basketball legend along the lines of Corky Withrow, but unlike Corky he plied his college hoops trade at the summit. Like former Evansville Brave Ralph…
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Black Ball in Evansville: Diamonds in the Shadows 1900-1960s.
Now Available. Don’t Miss It. While researching my first baseball in Evansville book I knew I had to write another on the subject. I urge baseball lovers to step up to the plate for another taste of baseball in the Pocket City from Evansville’s own M.T. Publishing Company. This topic is one I couldn’t wait…
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Corky – The Long Road
Another in the winter series of basketball stars who played baseball in Evansville. This one is a little longer because there’s a lot to tell. As the 1956 season was nearing an end, a sports story started with a single Evansville player at bat. Evansville’s professional baseball teams had a history of spawning stories from…