Minor League history: Dixie Association

The Dixie Association was a cooperation between the Southern League and the Texas League in 1971. As both leagues lost a team after the 1970 season, both leagues were left with an uneven number of teams. To overcome this problem the leagues decided to join forces and to have an interlocking schedule.

The problems arose when the Expos and the Reds moved their AA teams to the Eastern League. Normally this void could have been filled with AA teams of the Milwaukee Brewers and the San Diego Padres, but both teams got permission by Minor League Baseball not to have an AA team that year.

In a ten hour meeting between both leagues, it was decided to create a new league in which the teams from both leagues could play each other. Both leagues expressed the hope that the Dixie Association would last for only one year.

The temporary league contained three divisions:

The East Division (Charlotte Hornets (SL), Asheville Tourists, Montgomery Rebels, Jacksonville Suns, Savannah Braves and Columbus Astros), all Southern League members.
The Central Division (Arkansas Travelers (TL), Memphis Blues (TL), Shreveport Captains (TL) and the Birmingham A’s (SL))
West Division (Amarillo Giants, Dallas-Fort Worth Spurs, Albuquerque Dodgers and San Antonio Missions), all Texas League members.

The league played one of the longest game ever played in professional baseball. The Arkansas Travelers beat the Dallas-Fort Worth 5-4 in a 22-inning game that lasted 5 hours and 56 minutes.

The winner of each division (Arkansas Travelers, Charlotte Hornets and the Amarillo Giants) plus the best runner up (Asheville Tourists) played in the play offs for the Dixie Association’s championship. In the semi finals Charlotte beat Asheville 2-1 and Arkansas beat Amarillo 2-0. Charlotte beat Arkansas in the Dixie Association’s championship series for the only Dixie Associaton championship.

Even though the two leagues expressed their intention to let the Dixie Association last for only one season, some newspapers came up with the news that the league was doomed to last only one season. The newspapers already talked about Albuquerque being rewarded a AAA franchise the next season. The Dallas-Fort Worth team would have to move as the area would be awarded a Major League team. Albuquerque got their AAA franchise indeed as the Hawaii Islanders moved to the US mainland. The Dallas-Forth Worth area got its MLB team as the (second) Washington Senators moved to Texas to become the Texas Rangers.

The next season, the Southern League would add the Knoxville Sox to get an even number of teams again. The Texas League added three new teams; one to fill the void of the Dallas-Fort Worth team that was lost to MLB, one to fill the void of the Albuquerque team that went to the Pacific Coast League and one to get to an even number of teams. The new members of the Texas League were the Alexandria Aces from Louisiana, the Midland Cubs from Texas and the El Paso Dodgers from Texas.  Despite expressing the wish to move to the Southern League, the Memphis Blues stayed in the Texas League. It would take until 1974 before the team would move to the International League.