American Legion Post 28 Takes The Field

Dr. Edwin C. Epps

June 11, 2026•3 min read•2 views

Summer has arrived at Duncan Park Stadium: American Legion Post 28’s baseball season is well underway. This year the Post will sponsor both a Junior (players born on or after January 1, 2009) and a Senior team (players born on or after January 1, 2007), and as usual its home games will be played at the historic ballpark which opened in July 1926.

American Legion Post 28 Takes The Field

Dr. Edwin C. Epps•June 11, 2026•3 min read•2 views

Summer has arrived at Duncan Park Stadium: American Legion Post 28’s baseball season is well underway. This year the Post will sponsor both a Junior (players born on or after January 1, 2009) and a Senior team (players born on or after January 1, 2007), and as usual its home games will be played at the historic ballpark which opened in July 1926.

The American Legion season begins at the end of May and lasts until the end of July with league playoffs and the naming of the new state champion at Founders Park at the University of South Carolina on July 31st. New Athletic Director Henry Lech steps up to the plate this year as the successor to veteran AD and team historian John Barron.

Post 28 Hellcats (Seniors team) coach is Wyatt Lundsford ([864] 494-7994, lunsforw@email.sc.edu); assistant coaches are Noah McGarity (a player at Lander University) and Campbell Whitener (who plays at USC Sumter). Hellcat Juniors coach is Stephen Harris; Sam Harris is assistant coach. AD Lech can be reached at lechhenry@gmail.com or (910) 514-1983. Lech also coaches The Spartanburg County Peaches, a summer collegiate wooden bat league team in the Blue Ridge League. On Saturday, July 11th, the Peaches will play the Greenwood Flying Monkeys as part of the celebration of the Centennial of Duncan Park Stadium.

Collage of eight Blue Ridge League team logos, including the Disco Turkeys, Wampus Cats, Corndogs, Hornets, Pioneers, Flying Monkeys, and the Spartanburg County Peaches.

Legion ball has a long and storied history at Duncan Park. The Legion began to sponsor youth baseball teams nationally in 1925, and the local Post followed soon after, fielding its first team in 1933. The national program received financial support from Major League Baseball in 1928, and that support has continued virtually uninterrupted until today; there has been a national American Legion championship tournament every year except 1927 and 2020, the latter because of COVID.

Volunteers provide most of the services which maintain Legion baseball locally; and moms and dads, friends, neighborhood groups, and other civic organizations contribute funds, snacks, after-game meals, transportation, uniforms, and equipment to teams in their areas. Such benefactors help teams—especially in rural, small-town, and city center locales—provide access to youth who might otherwise not be able to play organized baseball in the spring and summer months. Such opportunities are particularly important to young men whose families cannot afford to foot the bill for their sons’ participation in more expensive and remote travel leagues.

Spartanburg American Legion Post 28 coaches, players, administrators, and advisors proudly pose on their home field in celebration of 100 years of Legion baseball.

Street signs at the corner of Duncan Park Drive and Union Street in Spartanburg, with an American Legion Baseball "Since 1925" yard sign in the foreground.

Giant baseball monument at Duncan Park Stadium listing Spartanburg American Legion Post 28 championships: National Champions 1936, Regional Champions 1936 and 1938, and State Champions in 1933, 1936, 1937, 1938, 1939, 1941, 2003, 2004, and 2017.

Familiar signs of a new season of Legion baseball at Beautiful Duncan Park

In addition to providing recreation and many fond memories to generations of young men and their families in the Hub City, Post 28 baseball is also the repository of important baseball history. The father-son duo of Wayne and Steven Tolleson, both future Major Leaguers, played here; and the 1936 team, playing before more than 50,000 fans over the course of the tournament and 20,000 in the final game, defeated a team from Los Angeles to become National Champions of the Legion Little World Series.

Young Ty Wood, the batboy of the 1936 team and a player himself in the 1938 tournament, is remembered by local fans as one of the founders of the annual Textile League reunions held for many years at Spartanburg Memorial Auditorium. Ty also played Minor League baseball for the Spartanburg Peaches.

Textile League teams played on mill village fields, but Textile League players also took the field at Duncan Park for both Post 28 and the Peaches.

The 1936 Championship trophy is on display today at the American Legion building just down Park Drive from the ballpark.

Tickets from the 1938 American Legion Little World Series, also played at Duncan Park, in which Post 28 lost to a team from San Diego. This and the preceding two photographs are of items from the collection of Susan Wood Pope.

The complete 2026 schedule of American Legion Post 28 can be found at www.scalb.org/teams/?u=SPARTANBURGPOST28&p=home&s=baseball; admission is $7.00. The schedule of The Blue Ridge League is at www.blueridgeleague.com/schedule.

Dr. Edwin C. Epps

Author

Dr. Edwin C. Epps is a retired educator with more than forty years' experience in public school classrooms... He is the author of Literary South Carolina (Hub City Press, 2004) and a proud member of Phi Beta Kappa who believes in the value of the humanities in a rapidly changing world.