New York-Penn League (1999-2009)
Tombstone
Born: October 7, 1998 – Affiliation change from Oneonta Yankees
Moved: January 27, 2010 (Connecticut Tigers)
First Game: June 16, 1999 (W 4-3 vs. Staten Island Yankees)
Last Game: September 6, 2009 (W 2-0 @ Hudson Valley Renegades)
New York-Penn League Championships: None
Stadium
Ownership & Affiliation
Owners:
- 1999-2008: Sam Nader & Sid Levine
- 2009: Miles Prentice
Major League Affiliation: Detroit Tigers
Background
The Oneonta Tigers were the short-season Class A farm club of the Detroit Tigers for a decade between 1999 and 2009.
Tiny Oneonta (pop. 13,000), located just 30 minutes from the National Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, was a mainstay in the New York-Penn League for more than 40 years, beginning with the arrival of the Oneonta Red Sox in 1966. For virtually that entire run, the ball club was owned and championed by former Oneonta Mayor Sam Nader, who controlled the team from 1967 until 2008. Under the management of Nader’s Oneonta Athletic Corp., Damaschke Field was a dry building. By the early 21st century, the Tigers were the only team in organized baseball that didn’t sell alcoholic beverages.
End of an Era
The stadium construction boom of the 1990’s and 2000’s brought the previously sleepy New York-Penn League into sparking facilities in larger cities like Brooklyn, Lowell (Mass.) and Staten Island. Small New York cities and towns like Geneva, Little Falls and Watertown with aging, no-frills ballparks became an endangered species in the league. That Oneonta hung in as long as it did is largely a tribute to Nader, who reportedly turned down multiple offers for the franchise over the years. By 2008, however, Nader was nearly 89 years old and Tigers attendance consistently ranked at the bottom of the league at around 1,000 patrons per game. That July, Nader sold the club to veteran minor league investor Miles Prentice, who already owned the Huntsville (AL) Stars of the Southern League and the Midland (TX) Rockhounds of the Texas League.
The sale terms included a provision that Prentice would keep the team in Oneonta through the 2010 season. However, after playing one final season in the Oneonta in 2009, Prentice moved the team to Norwich, Connecticut in January 2010. The former O-Tigers franchise plays on today in the NYPL as the Norwich Sea Unicorns. The Tigers were replaced at Damaschke Field by the amateur Oneonta Outlaws of the New York Collegiate Baseball League.
Oneonta Tigers Shop
Links
New York-Penn League Media Guides
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2 Responses
I believe that Oneonta is the smallest town (in terms of total population) to ever have a minor league team.
Made it there for a game in 2005 when a reporter from my local paper, the Williamsport Sun-Gazette interviewed the Oneonta manager who was from Chambersburg, PA and went to college @ Mansfield University which is 50 miles north of Williamsport. I sat in the grandstand behind the plate, and the Tigers fans were nice to me even with me being from Williamsport. The game started on time after a pregame thunderstorm, but the ride home was interesting to say the least with dense fog the whole way.