This is the team called the D'Arbonne Yellow Jackets and was from the Standpipe
area of Claiborne Parish. I feel that this was taken around 1900-1905. Fred
Camp died in 1905 so I know it was before that. I think the team that was written
about in the article was a few years before this picture was taken as those
men were a little bit older. Same team though.
The young men in the photo are :
Front Row L-R: Tom Camp, Creighton/Craton Adkins, Jim Camp, Gus Adkins, Bud
Adkins.
Back Row L-R: Fred Camp, Dr? DeLoach, Mr. Coker, Ike Adkins and Willie Harris.
All but the DeLoach fellow and the Coker fellow are related to me.
Razzle-Dazzle Barefoot Baseball
By B. Touchstone Hardaway
Shreveport Times
May 6, 1973
Some 60 miles northeast of Shreveport just off U.S. 79 between Homer and
Haynesville, there was at one time a thriving community called Stand Pipe.
It was so named because the trains took on water for their boilers there
from a pipe standing near the L&NW Railroad. This pipe ran to a pond fed
by
two big springs.
That same pond was the community's ole swimming hole with a sand and
gravel bottom. And on the Fourth of July everyone for miles around gathered
at the pond for the annual picnic and baseball game.
According to Claiborne Parish records, at the turn of the century there
were two general stores, a post office, school, blacksmith shop, cotton gin,
a doctor's office, Masonic meeting hall and scores of houses. Now only one
or two old houses and the dilapidated ruins of the post office remain. Not
even the pipe to the pond stands anymore. The name and fond memories are
about all that's left.
Officially, the community is now known as Camp. But it is still by some
Claiborne residents remembered as Stand Pipe, home of as rugged a baseball
team as ever swung a red elm bat. They called themselves the D'Arbonne
Yellow Jackets because they all came from up and down the creek named
D'Arbonne which flows through Stand Pipe and over much of Claiborne Parish.
The eyes of the old timers in the parish light up at the very mention of the
team.
Doy Adkins, a retired oilfield worker and now a resident of Haynesville,
is the son of the organizer of that well-known team. And he cautioned that
the D'Arbonne Yellow Jackets are not to be confused with a later team by the
same name. "They were good too," he said, "but couldn't hold
a pine knot
torch to the first ones."
Adkins and others said that the players switched positions frequently and
were all good no matter where they chose to play. However, they recalled
that the lineup was usually something like this:
Pitchers - Gus Adkins and George McKenzie.
Catchers - Bud Adkins, Big John Adkins and Frank Gentry.
First Base - Craton Adkins and Elijah Kendrick.
Second Base - Menzo Adkins.
Third Base - Ike Adkins and Tom Camp.
Short Stops - Jim Camp and Will Harris.
Left Field- Willie Prestridge.
Center Field - Fred Camp and Big John Adkins.
Right Field - McLendon Lewis.
Also playing outfield was "Dock" DeLoach, a medical doctor at Stand
Pipe.
The year was 1905; the place, up and down the creek. It was hot summertime
and Menzo Adkins whittled on a red elm bat he was making. It would withstand
all kinds of hits, even the hard ones by Craton Adkins, who, according to
everyone interviewed, could "almost knock the cover off a ball."
It seems to be common knowledge among the oldsters in the community that
the Yellow Jackets were men who could plow a mule all day and then walk
several miles to practice for the big game until dark.
Lula Adkins, a spry little woman in spite of having lived 80 odd years,
smiled broadly when asked about the players. "I'm positive that if there
had been scouts then like there are today, some of those boys would have
gone on to the big leagues," she said.
Eyes bright with happiness as she spoke of the time of her youth, she
said, "The young fellows were all kin to each other in some way, either
brothers or cousins or what have you. They were farmers or sawmill workers
during the week, but let it come Saturday afternoon, and they were ball
players from inside to outside."
When asked where they played their games, she pointed a hand slightly
gnarled with arthritis and answered, "Oh, they had several diamonds around
town and took turns at them. I think the Dick Lewis Diamond must have been
the popular one though."
Doy Adkins told how he remembered his father, Menzo: "Why, 'Poppa' could
just raise his arm and the muscle looked like it was going to bust through
his shirt sleeve. He wasn't a very tall man, but powerful. They all worked
hard; it was a way of life for them --walked, most everywhere they went and
didn't mind doing it neither. You chop wood with an ax every day and walk a
few miles and you can't help but have strong arms and legs, I reckon."
Jehu Adkins, who has lived all his 70 or so years in and around Stand
Pipe, beamed when the Yellow Jackets were mentioned."The D'Arbonne Nine,
as the team was sometimes called, was organized by Menzo Adkins just a few
years after I was born," he said. "I had older brothers who played
with
them. Menzo and his brothers, Craton, Gus and Ike, had always loved the
game, just like their folks before them. Why, baseball's been played up
and down this creek by Adkins, Kendricks, McKenzies and Camps for a hundred
years. He straightened his overall strap and asked, "Did you know that?"
Then eyes aglow, he continued, "Those D'Arbonne Yellow Jackets were tough.
Had to be to stand the sting of a hard ball caught against the naked flesh."
He shook his head and straightened his felt hat. "Can you imagine
playing baseball without gloves?" he asked. "Well, there was one glove,
an old fielder's glove used by the catcher. For several seasons, they
played barehanded and barefooted. Oh, some of 'em had shoes they could run
in, but most of 'em had those old brogans and couldn't run in them. Why,
they played ball like they was gettin' a thousand dollars a game".
He laughed and leaned against a big pile of fireplace wood. "But they
weren't gettin' a single dime for it. Just played their hearts out, they
did."
Doy Adkins recalls that his father was an easygoing fellow with an even
temper, who played ball as he later raised his family, with kindness and
humor. He knew how to make everybody feel good.
He played ball like his life depended on it and for the 21 years he
played, he was never struck out.
The son said, "it was quite a record, and opponents, like guns of the
old West trying to outdraw a fast gun reputation, came from far and near to
try and strike him out, but none ever did."
He told of a time, not too many years before his father died, when some
young men were having a game. Menzo, now long past his ball-playing prime,
was confronted by the pitcher, who asked if it were true that he had never
been struck out. Menzo told him he had not and asked if he would like to
try.
Adkins laughed as he remembered. "The young fellow grinned and the old
baseball veteran walked to the batter's plate flexing his shoulders. Then
he asked the pitcher a question which brought laughter from the crowd.
'Where you want it, son?' Poppa always asked that of the pitcher. The ball
went far into out field.
"He kept pitching and Poppa kept hitting.' The young fellow shook his
head. He couldn't believe his own eyes. Finally Poppa put his arm around
the young fellow's shoulder and said, "Don't feel too bad, son, but you
could throw at me till black dark and not fan me out." Poppa retired with
his record."
Naomi Adkins Zimmerman, a retired railroad employee and daughter of
Craton Adkins, said, "At that time, Claiborne Parish had a lot of little
towns and villages which all had pretty good baseball teams; there was Homer
and Haynesville, Athens, Summerfield, Lisbon, Tulip, Terryville,
Kimbalville, Arizona, Colquitt and Gordon. Don't know how many of them
played the boys but nearly all that did were beat." She laughed as her
mother, sitting across the room, heartily agreed.
Naomi said the Yellow Jackets also played the "faraway places" -Arcadia,
Gibsland, Dubach - all within a 30-mile radius of town. She said they used
to leave one day and come back the next, going either by train or wagon.
She said that finally, after several unbeaten seasons, they were invited
to play the "All Stars," who are remembered as a loose association
of
players, a team comprised of two or three of the best players from teams of
various communities. Legend has it they beat the All Stars, and then
went on to win a series of similar playoff games around the state - the
particulars of which have grown dim with the passing of time.
But whether they traveled or the opponents came to Stand Pipe, Naomi said
it was nearly always the same - the D'Arbonne Yellow Jackets were the
winners. It was as though they couldn't be beaten and they became a golden
legend in own time all over the parish. There were no official records
available, but team descendents and oldtimers in and around Stand Pipe boast
of high scores and rollicking good times.
The way they tell it, Willie Prestridge could outrun any rabbit; Craton
Adkins could hit a ball the hardest of all - as Doy Adkins said, "Craton
could knock it one - of a long way."
The Jackets' brand of baseball was not always serious. Lula Adkins said
there was always "funning" going on when they played and Ike Adkins
was the
comic of the bunch. She said he would even stand on his head on top of a
rail fence to make the spectators laugh. Doy Adkins, an avid baseball fan,
said when the team played it seemed easy for some of them to catch a hard
ball coming straight at them with bare hands. And the outfielders just
scooped up the ball "easy as taking hold a baby's hand," he recalled.
He
said he had never seen big league ball played with such gusto and ease of
motion.
People talk about Bob Feller's fast ball, once timed at 145 feet per
second,and Doy Adkins said that if somebody had timed Gus Adkins' fast ball,
it might have gone one better, because he could throw a ball so fast, you
could actually hear it whistle. Nobody taught him about curves, he just
practiced and it seemed to come naturally to him, or so they say.
Adkins said Craton could hit a ball so far that there was "no use to get
in a hurry to go after it." They say no ball escaped the steady hands of
Jim Camp or Will Harris when they reached for it from short stop position,
and that big, double-jointed, slow-moving McClendon Lewis could reach up and
take a fast ball out of the air like picking an apple off a tree. Adkins
recalled hearing this story about his father many times:
Once while playing an important game with a tied-up score, Menzo was playing
in the outfield. Re backed up against a barbed wire fence and bent over
backwards to catch a long fly that would have gone into an abandoned well in
its path had he not caught it. Some free spender in the crowd was so
excited over the catch that he ran out on the field, holding up the game,
and gave Menzo $10 for his dexterity. Did any of these unique players go on
to play professional ball? No, but the oldtimers are convinced that they
could have had they been discovered in time.
Recently a visitor walked through the cemetery on top of the hill near
Stand Pipe, gathering dates from the tombstones of six of the D'Arbonne
Yellow Jackets buried there. She stopped by the grave of Menzo and
listened. At first, she heard only the wind in the giant hickory trees
lining the rusting fence. But then she listened again and shut her eyes.
She thought for a moment that she heard Menzo say in his booming voice,
'Knock the cover off it, Craton! And maybe she did!
(C) June, 2007