Easter Monday Baseball: A Wake Forest Tradition of Old
4/13/2020 9:32:00 AM | Baseball
For the first half of the 20th century, the biggest sporting event in North Carolina was…a baseball game.
For the first half of the 20th century, the biggest sporting event in North Carolina was…a baseball game.
From the late 1800s to the mid-1950s, Easter Monday baseball was a tradition unlike any other in North Carolina. More specifically, it highlighted one of the best rivalries in the state between Wake Forest and North Carolina State.
Easter Monday games in Raleigh more resembled a 21st century football game. Special trains were scheduled to bring fans to Raleigh from across the state. The stands were packed, and the crowds were enormous, sometimes drawing as many as 7,000 fans to the contest.
The Demon Deacons and the Wolfpack played their first baseball game against each other in 1894 with the Deacs taking a 15-4 win. In 1899, the two met on the Saturday before Easter with Wake Forest winning 10-4. NC State was back on the field on Monday, April 3, the day after Easter, and defeated Mebane Military School in what is considered the first Easter Monday game in the state.
The first time the Deacons met NC State on Easter Monday was on April 16, 1900 as the Pack scored the lone run of the game in the ninth inning for a 1-0 win.
The two rivals met again on Easter Monday on April 8, 1901 when a large crowd and cold temperatures were present for the Deacons' 12-6 win over the school then known as North Carolina A&M.
Wake Forest and NC State playing on Easter Monday had not yet become a tradition as the Wolfpack played Horner Military Academy of Oxford in 1903 and then lost to Syracuse in 1904. NC State kept the rivalry in state the next two years, playing North Carolina in 1905 and Duke (then known as Trinity), in 1906.
It wasn't until 1907 that the two schools started what would become an outstanding spring tradition. The Deacons won the first game in front of a large crowd and despite cold weather. The following year, the game became more of a spectacle, outgrowing the confines of the foul lines.
In 1908, the Raleigh News and Observer wrote "The game was witnessed by 2,500 people, said to have been the largest number that ever attended a game in Raleigh." The Winston-Salem Journal estimated the crowd at 4,000 enthusiastic fans. The Greensboro Daily News claimed more than 500 fans had traveled from Wake Forest "so that both teams were abundantly supported in the rooting contest." The crowd was estimated at 3,000 in 1909 and by 1911, the papers were calling it "the largest crowd ever seen at the park." A crowd of 7,000 witnessed the 1925 game as Vic Sorrell went the distance for the Deacons. By "the distance," we mean that Sorrell threw all 12 innings of the 5-4 Deacon win.
Perhaps Sorrell was motivated by NC State's pre-game claim that he had pitched an excessive number of innings in a semi-pro league and was not eligible to pitch that day. He was deemed eligible before he stymied the Wolfpack. After his Major League career ended in 1946, Sorrell became the head baseball coach at NC State from 1946-66.
And it wasn't just the numbers of people. It was a "Who's Who" of North Carolina that attended the game, making the spectacle as much a story for the society page as the sports section.
One writer penned in 1908 that "Raleigh is alive today with visitors. Every train has brought in hundreds and the Seaboard train from Norlina had on board nearly 500. With the visitors from all points, it is estimated that fully 2,000 are here. Most of these came for the game between Wake Forest and the A&M College. The streets are thronged with college boys and girls and enthusiasm is running high."
The Raleigh Times described the crowd at the 1911 contest as "Grandstand packed, side lines crowded with automobiles and buggies decked in college colors, but the crowd even went to the centerfield bleachers and fairly filled them." The North Carolina Bankers Association would rent its own rail car for the occasion.
The game was so big it regularly outgrew its venues. Early games were played at the State Fairgrounds before moving to Riddick Field. By the 1940s, the contest had shifted to Devereaux Meadow, the original home of the Raleigh Capitals minor league team.
The rivalry was so big that the North Carolina General Assembly made Easter Monday an official state holiday.
Lew Powell of the Charlotte Observer wrote in 1988 "The tradition began in 1935 when the General Assembly gave in to state employees who wanted to attend the annual Easter Monday baseball game between cross-county rivals N.C. State and Wake Forest.
"That game was one of the biggest athletic events in the state," said Secretary of State Thad Eure, then clerk of the N.C. House. "It was like college football and basketball are today. The railroads even ran excursion trains to Raleigh.
"Everybody around the Capitol was raising hell about wanting to go. The bill finally passed on April 19, just a couple of days before Easter."
It was a rivalry that brought out the best of both teams. Both the Demon Deacons and the Wolfpack would schedule their best pitcher to start on Easter Monday.
Reputations, especially among pitchers, were made during the Easter Monday series. And once finding success on Easter Monday, the coaches kept bringing back their aces.
Take for instance Junie Barnes. The Deacon ace hurled Wake Forest to a 5-2 win in 1932 and a 12-1 victory in 1933. With that second win vs. State, Barnes posted his fifth career win against the Wolfpack.
But perhaps no Wake Forest pitcher enjoyed toeing the rubber against the Wolfpack more than lefty Raymond "Moe" Bauer. The future Wake Forest Hall of Famer beat NC State 13-3 behind a five-RBI day from shortstop Art Hoch in 1947. Bauer pitched well in finishing off a 5-0 shutout in 1948 behind the starting pitcher of Dale Blackwell. In 1949, Bauer helped Wake Forest to a 3-1 win by allowing just one hit before leaving in the ninth inning. And he completed the "grand slam" by striking out eight and earning the win in the 8-3 victory in 1950.
Of course, Bauer had perhaps the greatest collection of teammates that any Deacon pitcher has ever had. Hoch, third baseman Gene Hooks and second baseman Charlie Teague were all four-year starters along with Bauer and the core of the team that reached the finals of the College World Series in 1949. During the four-year stretch from 1947-50, the Deacons were undefeated in the Easter Monday series.
Teague, Wake Forest's first inductee into the College Baseball Hall of Fame, hit .412 in four Easter Monday games vs. NC State. Hoch hit .316 and Hooks, a three-time All-American, hit an even .400.
"Moe Bauer could beat State just by throwing his glove on the field," said Hooks in recalling the Easter Monday series. "He owned them."
That group of Deacons started as freshmen in 1947 but it might not have been fair to call them freshmen. Hooks, Hoch, catcher Russ Batchelor, outfielders Joe Fulghum and Charlie Kersh were all service veterans with more experience than what they learned through college baseball.
Hooks does recall Wake Forest's 8-3 victory in 1950 with glee. Leading 3-0 in the third inning, Hooks was on third base and NC State catcher Bill Wilhelm yelled at his pitcher, Irvin Page, to not bother checking Hooks' lead.
"Don't worry, he's not going anywhere," yelled Wilhelm.
"He was a lot of mouth," laughed Hooks. "I stole home out of spite."
Hooks, of course, became Wake Forest's Director of Athletics. Wilhelm would go on to coach baseball at Clemson.
As the popularity of the Easter Monday series grew, so did the opportunities to take advantage of the large crowds. Shortly after the 1907 initiation of the series, the Wake Forest and NC State track teams would compete in the mornings with the baseball game scheduled for the afternoon.
And the Wake Forest Debate team would regularly compete on Monday nights in Raleigh though its opponent was not limited to NC State.
The series was not without interruption. The Deacons did not field a baseball team from 1943-45 so State played Easter Monday games against the North Carolina Preflight team. And in 1916, the two schools suffered from "strained athletic relations" leading the Wolfpack to play the local Raleigh minor league team while the Deacons traveled west to face the Winston-Salem Twins at Prince Albert Park.
The Raleigh media blamed President Woodrow Wilson for State's 3-1 loss in 14 innings on March 31, 1918. It was Wilson's signature on the Standard Time Act on March 19, 1918 that set March 31 as the first day of the time change. Without that change, the media argued, State would have won the game had the sun set at its regular time.
In 1923, Wake Forest's Stanley Johnson was on the mound for a game in which the Deacons overcame a five-run deficit in the ninth inning to forge a 6-6 tie. The Asheville Citizen-Times lauded the pitcher's effort by writing that "Johnson pitched masterly baseball … he was tighter than the Volstead Act." The Volstead Act was also known as the National Prohibition Act which was enacted in 1920.
It was an intense series. Of the 46 Easter Monday games between Wake Forest and NC State, 14 games were one-run affairs with each team winning seven. A total of 25 games were decided by two runs or fewer. There were even two ties, meaning that over one-third of the games were decided by one run or fewer and more than half of the games had a margin of two runs or less.
A number of factors led to the demise of the series. The formation of the Atlantic Coast Conference in 1953 was a contributing factor but probably not as significant as Wake Forest's campus move from Wake County to Winston-Salem in 1956. The series lost its cross-county appeal.
In 1955, the Deacons and Wolfpack met on the Saturday before Easter with Wake winning to claim the inaugural Dixie Baseball Classic. The Easter Monday game was rained out and the two teams met on May 9 with the Pack scoring a 9-8 win. Like most games in the series, it was a thrilling finish with NC State scoring four runs in the ninth for the win. The loss was one of just seven that the Deacons experienced in 1955 en route to a 29-7 record and the College World Series championship. The 1955 game would mark the final Easter Monday contest as the 1956 affair was rained out.
But Easter Monday continued to be an official state holiday until 1988 when the N.C. Legislature approved moving the official Easter holiday, in part to ease problems for banks and financial markets in North Carolina that were out of step with the rest of the nation. North Carolina was the last state in the union to recognize Easter Monday as a holiday.
In the years since, with Wake Forest and NC State meeting annually as ACC rivals, they have never played on the Monday after Easter. In 1971 and 1977, they met on the Tuesday following Easter and even played a doubleheader on Easter Sunday in 1981. In both 1998 and 2019, the Wake-State three-game ACC series was played on Easter weekend.
The final tally on the series has Wake Forest winning 27 times, NC State claiming 16 wins and the two squads playing to a pair of ties.
Don't give up hope that there may ever be another Wake-State Easter Monday game. With the advent of the ACC Network and the growing number of televised Monday night baseball games, one can hope that we may one day see more of this ancient and historic rivalry.
From the late 1800s to the mid-1950s, Easter Monday baseball was a tradition unlike any other in North Carolina. More specifically, it highlighted one of the best rivalries in the state between Wake Forest and North Carolina State.
Easter Monday games in Raleigh more resembled a 21st century football game. Special trains were scheduled to bring fans to Raleigh from across the state. The stands were packed, and the crowds were enormous, sometimes drawing as many as 7,000 fans to the contest.
The Demon Deacons and the Wolfpack played their first baseball game against each other in 1894 with the Deacs taking a 15-4 win. In 1899, the two met on the Saturday before Easter with Wake Forest winning 10-4. NC State was back on the field on Monday, April 3, the day after Easter, and defeated Mebane Military School in what is considered the first Easter Monday game in the state.
The first time the Deacons met NC State on Easter Monday was on April 16, 1900 as the Pack scored the lone run of the game in the ninth inning for a 1-0 win.
The two rivals met again on Easter Monday on April 8, 1901 when a large crowd and cold temperatures were present for the Deacons' 12-6 win over the school then known as North Carolina A&M.
Wake Forest and NC State playing on Easter Monday had not yet become a tradition as the Wolfpack played Horner Military Academy of Oxford in 1903 and then lost to Syracuse in 1904. NC State kept the rivalry in state the next two years, playing North Carolina in 1905 and Duke (then known as Trinity), in 1906.
It wasn't until 1907 that the two schools started what would become an outstanding spring tradition. The Deacons won the first game in front of a large crowd and despite cold weather. The following year, the game became more of a spectacle, outgrowing the confines of the foul lines.
In 1908, the Raleigh News and Observer wrote "The game was witnessed by 2,500 people, said to have been the largest number that ever attended a game in Raleigh." The Winston-Salem Journal estimated the crowd at 4,000 enthusiastic fans. The Greensboro Daily News claimed more than 500 fans had traveled from Wake Forest "so that both teams were abundantly supported in the rooting contest." The crowd was estimated at 3,000 in 1909 and by 1911, the papers were calling it "the largest crowd ever seen at the park." A crowd of 7,000 witnessed the 1925 game as Vic Sorrell went the distance for the Deacons. By "the distance," we mean that Sorrell threw all 12 innings of the 5-4 Deacon win.
Perhaps Sorrell was motivated by NC State's pre-game claim that he had pitched an excessive number of innings in a semi-pro league and was not eligible to pitch that day. He was deemed eligible before he stymied the Wolfpack. After his Major League career ended in 1946, Sorrell became the head baseball coach at NC State from 1946-66.
And it wasn't just the numbers of people. It was a "Who's Who" of North Carolina that attended the game, making the spectacle as much a story for the society page as the sports section.
One writer penned in 1908 that "Raleigh is alive today with visitors. Every train has brought in hundreds and the Seaboard train from Norlina had on board nearly 500. With the visitors from all points, it is estimated that fully 2,000 are here. Most of these came for the game between Wake Forest and the A&M College. The streets are thronged with college boys and girls and enthusiasm is running high."
The Raleigh Times described the crowd at the 1911 contest as "Grandstand packed, side lines crowded with automobiles and buggies decked in college colors, but the crowd even went to the centerfield bleachers and fairly filled them." The North Carolina Bankers Association would rent its own rail car for the occasion.
The game was so big it regularly outgrew its venues. Early games were played at the State Fairgrounds before moving to Riddick Field. By the 1940s, the contest had shifted to Devereaux Meadow, the original home of the Raleigh Capitals minor league team.
The rivalry was so big that the North Carolina General Assembly made Easter Monday an official state holiday.
Lew Powell of the Charlotte Observer wrote in 1988 "The tradition began in 1935 when the General Assembly gave in to state employees who wanted to attend the annual Easter Monday baseball game between cross-county rivals N.C. State and Wake Forest.
"That game was one of the biggest athletic events in the state," said Secretary of State Thad Eure, then clerk of the N.C. House. "It was like college football and basketball are today. The railroads even ran excursion trains to Raleigh.
"Everybody around the Capitol was raising hell about wanting to go. The bill finally passed on April 19, just a couple of days before Easter."
It was a rivalry that brought out the best of both teams. Both the Demon Deacons and the Wolfpack would schedule their best pitcher to start on Easter Monday.
Reputations, especially among pitchers, were made during the Easter Monday series. And once finding success on Easter Monday, the coaches kept bringing back their aces.
Take for instance Junie Barnes. The Deacon ace hurled Wake Forest to a 5-2 win in 1932 and a 12-1 victory in 1933. With that second win vs. State, Barnes posted his fifth career win against the Wolfpack.
But perhaps no Wake Forest pitcher enjoyed toeing the rubber against the Wolfpack more than lefty Raymond "Moe" Bauer. The future Wake Forest Hall of Famer beat NC State 13-3 behind a five-RBI day from shortstop Art Hoch in 1947. Bauer pitched well in finishing off a 5-0 shutout in 1948 behind the starting pitcher of Dale Blackwell. In 1949, Bauer helped Wake Forest to a 3-1 win by allowing just one hit before leaving in the ninth inning. And he completed the "grand slam" by striking out eight and earning the win in the 8-3 victory in 1950.
Of course, Bauer had perhaps the greatest collection of teammates that any Deacon pitcher has ever had. Hoch, third baseman Gene Hooks and second baseman Charlie Teague were all four-year starters along with Bauer and the core of the team that reached the finals of the College World Series in 1949. During the four-year stretch from 1947-50, the Deacons were undefeated in the Easter Monday series.
Teague, Wake Forest's first inductee into the College Baseball Hall of Fame, hit .412 in four Easter Monday games vs. NC State. Hoch hit .316 and Hooks, a three-time All-American, hit an even .400.
"Moe Bauer could beat State just by throwing his glove on the field," said Hooks in recalling the Easter Monday series. "He owned them."
That group of Deacons started as freshmen in 1947 but it might not have been fair to call them freshmen. Hooks, Hoch, catcher Russ Batchelor, outfielders Joe Fulghum and Charlie Kersh were all service veterans with more experience than what they learned through college baseball.
Hooks does recall Wake Forest's 8-3 victory in 1950 with glee. Leading 3-0 in the third inning, Hooks was on third base and NC State catcher Bill Wilhelm yelled at his pitcher, Irvin Page, to not bother checking Hooks' lead.
"Don't worry, he's not going anywhere," yelled Wilhelm.
"He was a lot of mouth," laughed Hooks. "I stole home out of spite."
Hooks, of course, became Wake Forest's Director of Athletics. Wilhelm would go on to coach baseball at Clemson.
As the popularity of the Easter Monday series grew, so did the opportunities to take advantage of the large crowds. Shortly after the 1907 initiation of the series, the Wake Forest and NC State track teams would compete in the mornings with the baseball game scheduled for the afternoon.
And the Wake Forest Debate team would regularly compete on Monday nights in Raleigh though its opponent was not limited to NC State.
The series was not without interruption. The Deacons did not field a baseball team from 1943-45 so State played Easter Monday games against the North Carolina Preflight team. And in 1916, the two schools suffered from "strained athletic relations" leading the Wolfpack to play the local Raleigh minor league team while the Deacons traveled west to face the Winston-Salem Twins at Prince Albert Park.
The Raleigh media blamed President Woodrow Wilson for State's 3-1 loss in 14 innings on March 31, 1918. It was Wilson's signature on the Standard Time Act on March 19, 1918 that set March 31 as the first day of the time change. Without that change, the media argued, State would have won the game had the sun set at its regular time.
In 1923, Wake Forest's Stanley Johnson was on the mound for a game in which the Deacons overcame a five-run deficit in the ninth inning to forge a 6-6 tie. The Asheville Citizen-Times lauded the pitcher's effort by writing that "Johnson pitched masterly baseball … he was tighter than the Volstead Act." The Volstead Act was also known as the National Prohibition Act which was enacted in 1920.
It was an intense series. Of the 46 Easter Monday games between Wake Forest and NC State, 14 games were one-run affairs with each team winning seven. A total of 25 games were decided by two runs or fewer. There were even two ties, meaning that over one-third of the games were decided by one run or fewer and more than half of the games had a margin of two runs or less.
A number of factors led to the demise of the series. The formation of the Atlantic Coast Conference in 1953 was a contributing factor but probably not as significant as Wake Forest's campus move from Wake County to Winston-Salem in 1956. The series lost its cross-county appeal.
In 1955, the Deacons and Wolfpack met on the Saturday before Easter with Wake winning to claim the inaugural Dixie Baseball Classic. The Easter Monday game was rained out and the two teams met on May 9 with the Pack scoring a 9-8 win. Like most games in the series, it was a thrilling finish with NC State scoring four runs in the ninth for the win. The loss was one of just seven that the Deacons experienced in 1955 en route to a 29-7 record and the College World Series championship. The 1955 game would mark the final Easter Monday contest as the 1956 affair was rained out.
But Easter Monday continued to be an official state holiday until 1988 when the N.C. Legislature approved moving the official Easter holiday, in part to ease problems for banks and financial markets in North Carolina that were out of step with the rest of the nation. North Carolina was the last state in the union to recognize Easter Monday as a holiday.
In the years since, with Wake Forest and NC State meeting annually as ACC rivals, they have never played on the Monday after Easter. In 1971 and 1977, they met on the Tuesday following Easter and even played a doubleheader on Easter Sunday in 1981. In both 1998 and 2019, the Wake-State three-game ACC series was played on Easter weekend.
The final tally on the series has Wake Forest winning 27 times, NC State claiming 16 wins and the two squads playing to a pair of ties.
Don't give up hope that there may ever be another Wake-State Easter Monday game. With the advent of the ACC Network and the growing number of televised Monday night baseball games, one can hope that we may one day see more of this ancient and historic rivalry.
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