Play ball!

Baseball always gets people talking

I must admit I am not much of a sports fan. But if I were going to follow a sport, it would be baseball. My late father-in-law once professed his love for baseball because he could follow a baseball game on television perfectly well while reading a book at the same time. More importantly, baseball is a game of the American people, a sport bound up in our history, providing diversion during times of both prosperity and depression.

Part of baseball's appeal was its affordability. Every crossroads village in the land could field a team, and most did. Given its broad appeal and popularity, it is surprising that baseball got caught up in the social and religious controversies that followed World War I -- perhaps a foretaste of today's "culture wars." In no state did this conflict play out more dramatically than in Arkansas.

The exact origin of baseball is unclear, but the game had taken on standard rules in America by the mid-1840s. Abner Doubleday did not invent the game as is commonly believed. The game prospered following the Civil War. Baseball came early to Arkansas, with Little Rock getting its first baseball team -- strangely named the Accidentals -- in May 1867.

Though baseball grew rapidly in popularity throughout America, it also quickly became caught up in the national movement to outlaw playing the sport on Sundays. American efforts to guard the Sabbath extend back into the colonial era, and the pious folks of Arkansas were not unusual in adopting numerous "blue laws." In 1885, the Arkansas legislature outlawed Sunday baseball along with a host of other activities. Seventh-day Adventists, who do not recognize Sunday as the Sabbath, were especially unwelcome in Arkansas during the 1880s when more than 200 were prosecuted.

In the years following World War I, when America was undergoing rapid and dramatic change, baseball was one of the popular activities which incurred the wrath of traditionalists and more conservative religious leaders. In 1923, when a state senator from Helena introduced a bill to legalize Sunday baseball in his district, conservative religious leaders mounted an intense and sustained counterattack. This conflict encapsulated the larger battle against change which dogged what came to be known as the Jazz Age.

Leading the opposition to legalizing Sunday baseball were perhaps the two most prominent Protestant leaders in Arkansas: A.C. Millar, the popular and devout editor of the Arkansas Methodist newspaper, and Baptist lion J.C. Compere. Millar charged that Sunday baseball would lead to a commercialized Sabbath, by which the devil would "degrade and debauch people, defeat the churches and pollute society."

The legislature quickly killed the 1923 Helena bill. Moreover, the conservative forces unleashed a torrent of bills to bolster the defense of the Sabbath: outlawing golf, tennis and fishing on Sunday; forbidding the sale of gasoline on Sundays; prohibiting men and women swimming together; and prohibiting women's "bathing suits which strike above the knee."

Some of these proposed bills were subterfuges -- intended to demonstrate the unequal nature of the current laws. Rep.e John C. Sheffield of Phillips County, for example, sponsored the anti-golf bill to show that the existing blue laws discriminated in favor of the wealthy, or the "golfing classes." Likewise, some think the proposal to outlaw showing movies on Sundays was actually aimed at the growing numbers of preachers who used the new technology to bolster their Sunday evening crowds.

The Rev. Harry Knowles, the relatively liberal pastor of First Christian Church of Little Rock, argued for Sunday baseball, if not commercialized, and for Sunday movies. "There is no theater in Little Rock with better or more up-to-date motion picture equipment than we have at the First Christian Church," Knowles noted.

When the 1925 General Assembly convened, the Sunday baseball debate began all over again. The focus shifted from Helena and Phillips County to Little Rock, when Pulaski County Rep. Neill Bohlinger introduced a bill to allow Sunday baseball in any county with a population of 100,000 or more -- in other words, Pulaski County.

While many legislators railed against the Bohlinger proposal, it drew much support, especially from newly elected female legislators. The newly elected Rep. (Miss) Erle Chambers of Pulaski County said Sunday baseball "enables the man or woman or child who labors eight to 10 hours every weekday in the workshop to get some of God's sunshine." In the end, the legislature passed the Bohlinger bill, but Gov. Tom Terral, a Baptist, vetoed it.

Two years later, the 1927 General Assembly, again after a bruising fight, passed legislation to legalize Sunday baseball, but again it was vetoed. Finally, in 1929, the legislature quickly passed a bill to allow Sunday baseball, and this time it attached an emergency clause, demonstrating to Gov. Harvey Parnell that a veto would be overridden. Parnell reluctantly signed the bill.

Within two weeks of the governor's signing, Pulaski County residents voted three-to-one to allow Sunday baseball. On April 7, 1929, fans watched the first legal Sunday baseball game. The Arkansas Travelers beat Shreveport 9 to 3. Since the legislation covered only Pulaski County, prosecution of Sunday baseball players continued for a time in other counties. For example, Sunday baseball was outlawed in Newport in 1931.

Some baseball teams refused to play on Sunday even after it became legal. In 1937, the Batesville team was ejected from the Northeast Arkansas League because of a refusal to play on Sunday as the League rules required.

Tom Dillard is a historian and retired archivist living near Glen Rose in rural Hot Spring County. Email him at [email protected]. An earlier version of this column appeared Aug. 12, 2012.

NAN Profiles on 04/15/2018

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