After the Civil War, the Yankee textile industry began a steady transfer south, bringing with it the tradition of a mill village, usually owned by the mill’s owner, where the workers and their families lived. The new game of baseball quickly became a foundation of mill village life. A rich tradition of textile league baseball in South Carolina is here reconstructed from newspaper accounts and interviews with former players and fans. Players such as “Shoeless” Joe Jackson and Champ Osteen made their marks as “lintheads” in these semipro leagues. The fierce rivalries between competing mills and the impact of the teams on mill life are recounted. Appendices list club records and rosters for many of the teams from 1880 through 1955.

Thomas K. Perry is a writer living in Newberry, South Carolina.

Thomas K. Perry

Format: softcover (6 x 9)
Pages: 327
Bibliographic Info: photos, appendices, notes, index
Copyright Date: 2004 [1993]
pISBN: 978-0-7864-1875-6
eISBN: 978-1-4766-2168-5
Imprint: McFarland

• “THE guide to this neglected aspect of sport in South Carolina”—The State (Columbia, South Carolina)
• “clearly a labor of love…Perry has made a useful contribution to our knowledge of South Carolina baseball”—South Carolina Historical Magazine
• “quite a story and quite a research job”—Southern Partisan