Members of the 1939 Urbanna Baseball Club (above) include, front, from left, William Fitchett, Tyler Thrift, Dick Murray, Victor Hazelwood; middle, same order, Richard Moore, John Davis, Jim Green, Charles Wheeley, Warner Ashburn; and back, same order, Coach Watty New, Richard Smith, Dorsey Richardson, Lewis Richardson, Woodrow Bristow, unknown player and Manager Woodford Harwood. A 1940s-era poster (right) touts a special multi-team exhibition lineup at the Urbanna Ball Park, which once stood in the area where the town’s public library is now located. The Urbanna semi-pro baseball team invited four local all-stars, including Deltaville’s Norton Hurd, to come and play for the team in against such barnstorming major league players as Allen Gettel of the Cleveland Indians, and Russ “Babe” Meers and two-time major league all-star team catcher Clyde McCullough, both of the Chicago Cubs. On that day, the 300 seats in the stands were filled and another 700 people spread over the standing room only spaces at the ballpark. (Courtesy of Bonnie Williams and Louise Gray)
This is the second part of a special three-part series on Middlesex County semi-pro baseball teams and is on the Urbanna team. It was first published in the Aug. 8, 1991 issue of the Sentinel. The third and final part of the series will be in next week’s paper on the all-black baseball teams of yesteryear.
by Larry Chowning –
Just before and right after World War II, the American pastime on summer Sunday afternoons was a trip to the local ballpark.
If fans lived in a city, professional ball was around and they’d attend a fancy ballpark. But, baseball fans who lived in rural America would most likely be watching or playing a game in a converted cornfield with a good-sized oak tree situated right behind home-plate to back-up the catcher.
In the late-1940s, baseball was “king” in Urbanna and in many other little towns and communities of the area. The hometown heroes from that era were the boys who had just come home…
