Evansville Evas

The Evansville Evas was a primary nickname of an early minor league baseball team in Evansville, Indiana. Early Evansville teams played in three leagues under a variety of nicknames from 1901–1931. Evansville was without a team until the 1938 Evansville Bees restarted Evansville baseball. Baseball Hall of Fame Inductees Hank Greenberg (1931) and Chuck Klein (1927) and Edd Roush (1912–1913) played for Evansville during the early era, joining Warren Spahn as Evansville alumni in the Hall of Fame. Beginning in 1915, Evansville played home games at Bosse Field, which is the third oldest baseball stadium in the United States, still in use today by the Evansville Otters of the Frontier League.

After early Evansville minor league teams began play in 1887 as the Evansville Red, other teams followed in the late 1800s: Evansville Hoosiers (1889-1892; 1896), Evansville Brewers (1897) and the 1895 Evansville Black Birds of the Southern Association.

In 1901, the Evansville River Rats began league play in the new Class D Illinois–Indiana–Iowa League (Three-I) as a 1901 charter franchise. Evansville joined the Bloomington Blues, Cedar Rapids Rabbitts, Davenport River Rats, Decatur Commodores, Rock Island Islanders, Rockford Red Sox and Terre Haute Hottentots in the new league.Bloomington, Illinois, Decatur, Illinois and Terre Haute, Indiana left the Central League to join, while Evansville and the others were new franchised.