Starting tomorrow (Sunday), I’ll have a whole week of Louisiana and NOLA-based posts, mostly about three subjects: Napoleonville native and manager extraordinaire Winfield Welch and his hometown; the war hero ancestors of comet-through-the-sky, one-armed pitcher Edgar “Iron Claw” Populus; and the Louisiana roots of Jimmy Bonner, the first a African American to play professional baseball in Japan.

So buckle up, folks, for a weeklong trip through the Bayou State’s African-American baseball history, starting tomorrow with a piece on Winfield Welch’s first big year as a manager — the 1930 New Orleans Black Pelicans.