The Lynn Tigers were a Massachusetts-based farm team of the Detroit Tigers in the faltering Class B New England League during the summer of 1949. The New England League began the 1949 season on April 30th with eight clubs. But the wheels soon came off. On July 19th Lynn called it quits in midseason, with the Fall River Indians and Manchester Yankees also withdrawing from the collapsing circuit on the same night.
This Pittsburgh Pirates’ Class AA farm club lasted only season at Fraser Field in Lynn, Massachusetts in 1983. The Pirates followed on the heels of the Lynn Sailors (1980-1982), a Seattle Mariners affiliate that struggled to find an audience in the small, economically depressed city north of Boston. The club’s box office was so weak that the Pirates were asked to play all of their playoff dates on the road. Despite this disadvantage, the Lynn Pirates advanced to the Eastern League championship series in their only summer of play. The ball club moved to Burlington, Vermont in 1984.
The Lynn Red Sox were a Class B farm club of the Boston Red Sox that played in this North Shore community 30 minutes north of Boston from 1946 through 1948. Following the 1948 season, the Red Sox departed and the Detroit Tigers took over as Lynn’s new parent club the following summer. The New England League went out of business in 1949 and pro baseball would not return to Lynn’s Fraser Field until the arrival of the Eastern League’s Lynn Sailors in 1980.
The Massachusetts Mad Dogs were an independent pro baseball outfit that played at Fraser Field, a Depression-era ballpark in Lynn from 1996 through 1999. Former Red Sox star George “Boomer” Scott managed the ball club and ex-Sox pitcher Dennis “Oil Can” Boyd briefly pitched for the Dogs during the 1997 season. The decrepit condition of Fraser Field hinderedthe clubs final seasons, with the park’s unique clamshell roof condemned and propped up by wooden beams in 1998. The franchise left Lynn and went on hiaturs in 2000, later re-surfacing in Pittsfield, Mass in 2002.
The Lynn Sailors were a Class AA Eastern League Farm Club of the Seattle Mariners from 1980 through 1982. The arrival of the Sailors in 1980 marked the return of professional baseball to Lynn, Massachusetts’ Fraser Field for the first time since the departure of the Lynn Tigers in 1949. Following the 1982 season, the Mariners withdrew from Lynn and the Pittsburgh Pirates became Lynn’s new parent organization. The 1983 Lynn Pirates season would turn out to be the final summer that the North Shore community would host affiliated Minor League Baseball as the former Sailors/Pirates franchise moved to Burlington, Vermont in 1984.
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