George Mundinger was a New Orleans born catcher whose “Dey gets nuddings!” cheer from behind the plate made him a local legend in the Crescent City.

Mundinger arrived November 20, 1854, born to John Mundinger and the former Magdalene Glock – George was the first child born in New Orleans. The older siblings and parents were immigrants from Baden-Wurttemberg. By the age of 15, George was living at the home of William Myers, an ice dealer who had married George’s sister, Frederika; George worked in the icehouse. On the side, George learned the game of baseball, playing for a number of amateur clubs in the city.

Mundinger earned a broader notoriety in the early 1880s when other teams toured the area, including Frank Bancroft’s Hop Bitters barnstorming team or when his own teams toured areas outside of New Orleans. Mundinger got a shot with Indianapolis of the American Association in May 1884. In his first game on May 9, he played well enough – getting notice in the Indianapolis Journal for “…{catching} a fine game.” He also had two hits and scored a run. In his next game on May 11, he left after breaking a finger in the third inning. After missing more than a week, he was given a third game on May 20 – and it was a disaster. It’s possible that his injured finger affected him; he allowed four passed balls. The Journal noted, “If Mundinger is a good catcher, he failed to develop that fact yesterday.”

Two days later “Mundy” was released. He landed with Minneapolis of the Northwest League but by mid-summer he was back in New Orleans where he belonged (he claimed he was released for financial reasons, and that league lost two franchises that summer, but I could be convinced Mundinger was also homesick after more than two months in the Midwest).

Noted briefly above, Mundinger played with a number of amateur baseball teams in New Orleans before and after his one season as a paid professional. Perhaps the most famous of the lot was the Thomas Brennans, which won a city league championship in 1883 then traveled throughout the south winning some fifty games without a loss against other amateur nines. A team photo uploaded to Ancestry.com by Susan Higgins Cvejanovich (a distant relative, by marriage, to Mundinger) shows Mundinger at center left holding his catcher’s mask while posing with his teammates. So many of the Brennan club, like Mundinger, got offers to play professionally the next season, the team was forced to disband during by the summer of 1884.

After his playing days, he moved north and spent some twenty years as a planter in East Baton Rouge Parish. He died October 12, 1910 after a lingering illness; he was shy of 56 years old, leaving behind a wife, the former Amelia Carstens, and six children. A writer in the Times-Picayune remembered Mundinger kindly. “…(T)here passed a man who, in baseball and life, played the game as fairly, as surely, as imperturbably as a machine.” Adding that he “…raised himself from comparative poverty to honorable wealth and prominence.”

Mundinger’s remains lie in Magnolia Cemetery in Baton Rouge.

Notes:

Mad props to Susan Higgins Cvejanovich, whose husband is the great-grandson of Mundinger. Susan’s own family research helped this essay immensely and she clarified and corrected items from the original draft. My friends at SABR were excited to have access to a baseball image of Mundinger.

New Orleans Birth Certificate
1870, 1900, 1910 US Census

“The Clouds Roll By,” New Orleans Times-Picayune, April 28, 1884: 8.
“Dots,” New Orleans Times-Picayune, April 28, 1884: 8.
“A Victory for Indianapolis,” Indianapolis Journal, May 10, 1884: 2.
“Indianapolis Beaten by Louisville,” Indianapolis Journal, May 12, 1884: 5.
“Shut Out by Cincinnati,” Indianapolis Journal, May 21, 1884: 2.
“Base Ball Matters,” Indianapolis Journal, May 24, 1884: 7.
“A Card,” Minneapolis Tribune, June 11, 1884: 2.
“Mundy at Home,” New Orleans Times-Democrat, July 16, 1884: 2.
“George Mundinger,” New Orleans Times-Picayune, Oct