Published by The Evansville Courier

Games at Bosse Field among war workers drew good baseball-starved crowds. The Evansville Courier covered them nearly as thoroughly as it had the minor-league Bees.

Games also were played against teams from nearby Army bases - Camp Breckinridge, Ky., and George Field, Ill. In May 1944, a War Plant League All-Star team played the Boston Braves in an exhibition before 3,600 fans at Bosse Field. The Braves won 8-1.

The Detroit Tigers held spring training in Evansville in 1945 because of wartime restrictions on travel.

With the war over, minor-league baseball boomed from 1946 to 1952 with Bob Coleman returning from managing the Boston Braves to pilot Evansville in the Three-I League. But with television coming on strong, along with radio broadcasts of major-league games, the honeymoon ended in 1957 as attendance steadily dropped in the minors.

It wasn't until 1966 that Evansville returned to baseball as an affiliate of the Chicago White Sox and competed as the northernmost city in the Southern League. The Cincinnati Reds played the Esox in an exhibition game at Bosse Field that season and drew a crowd of 5,714.

The Esox lasted three years but in 1970 the Minnesota Twins brought a team here to participate in the triple-A American Association, the highest level of competition for a local club.

Mayor Frank McDonald Sr. was instrumental in this move. Ralph Rowe was manager of the Triplets and pitcher Bert Blyleven was a teen-ager embarking on his long, illustrious career.

Johnny Bench, Joe Morgan, Pete Rose and the rest of Cincinnati's "Big Red Machine" played an exhibition here on June 7, 1973, and were defeated by the Triplets, 3-2.

(Much of the information included in this story was furnished by Jack Wettmarshausen as an independent study project while pursuing his degree at the University of Evansville.)