With the 3-0 sweep by the Tulsa Drillers in the championship series, a Texas League era in San Antonio comes to an end. An era that began in 1888 and with some hiatuses, the city was a long-lasting member of the Texas League until yesterday. Until yesterday as the AA San Antonio Missions are no…
In this episode of Minor League history we pay attention to the fourth and fifth run of the Kentucky-Illinois-Tennessee League (KITTY League). After the previous edition folded in 1916, President Dr. Frank H. Bassett made another attempt to revive the league in 1922. In 1922 and 1923 the league contained eight teams but in the…
In today’s edition of Minor League History, we pay attention to the Kentucky-Illinois-Tennessee League or KITTY League. The KITTY League had various runs. The first edition ran from 1903 through 1906, the second one from 1910 through 1914, the third edition lasted only one season (1916), edition four lasted three seasons from (1922-1924), the fifth…
tThe Kansas-Oklahoma-Missouri league or KOM for short was founded in 1946 in a period in which minor leagues popped up like mushrooms. Like many of those minor leagues, the KOM league did not last a full decade as it folded at the end of the 1952 season. The Kansas-Oklahoma-Missouri League got a class D rating…
In this edition of Minor League History, I pay attention to the Kansas State League. The league had several runs of which the first was in 1887. The last started in 1909 and would last three seasons. After the league folded for the final time, the Central Kansas League adopted the vacant name in 1913….
It has been a while since I last wrote about the minor league history. This time I pay attention to the Iron and Oil League. The Iron and Oil League was a minor league at the end of the nineteenth century. It had two runs that lasted (parts of) a season. The first played in…
The Spokane Indians have earned a spot in the baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown. Since 2006 the team is cooperating with the Spokane Tribe of Indians. This cooperation now has earned a place in the HOF. The Spokane Indians (A-Short Season affiliate of the Texas Rangers in the Northwest League) signed a deal with the…
The Cleburne Railroaders were a minor league team that landed in the Texas League in 1906. In the previous season, the team played in Temple, but the financially strapped owner, Doak Roberts, was forced to move the team to Cleburne. The team had two future major leaguers in its ranks, of which one would end…
This is one of those special stories of the dead ball era. In 1912, Heinie Heitmuller of the Los Angeles Angels won the batting crown of the Pacific Coast League with a batting average of .335. Nothing special you would say. But this batting title had a bizarre twist. Heinie Heitmuller was a career minor leaguer,…
The Illinois State League saw the light in 1947 and lasted two years before it changed its name in the Mississippi-Ohio Valley League in 1947. Eventually, the league became the current Midwest League. In its two years of existence, the Illinois State League operated as a class D league. The league was created with completely new…
