Textile League Baseball: South Carolina's Mill Teams, 1880-1955

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 m...