Tombstone
Born: September 1983 – Affiliation change from Nashua Angels
Moved: December 1986 (Harrisburg Senators)
First Game: April 13, 1984 (L 4-0 @ New Britain Red Sox)
Last Game: August 30, 1986 (L 4-3 @ Glens Falls Tigers)
Eastern League Championships: None
Stadium
Holman Stadium (6,500)
Ownership & Affiliation
Owners: Jerry Mileur & George Como
Major League Affiliation: Pittsburgh Pirates
Attendance
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Source: The Encyclopedia of Minor League Baseball (3rd ed.), Lloyd Johnson & Miles Wolff, 2007. Pages 608 – 616.
Background
The Nashua Pirates were a Class AA farm club of the Pittsburgh Pirates for three summers in the mid-1980’s. Nashua is a city of approximately 80,000 that sits on the border of southern New Hampshire and northern Massachusetts, 45 miles north of Boston. The city’s Depression-era historic Holman Stadium hosted the country’s first racially integrated minor league team of the modern era, the Nashua Dodgers (1946-1949) of the New England League.
Team owners Jerry Mileur and George Como acquired the Eastern League club in 1982 when it played in Massachusetts and was known as the Holyoke Millers. After one season (1983) in Nashua as a California Angels farm team, the club became affiliated with Pittsburgh in 1984.
Struggles With Pittsburgh
Pittsburgh arrived in Nashua with great enthusiasm in September 1983 after nudging aside the California Angels as the Gate City’s parent club. Pirates officials noted with glee that Nashua drew 138,000 fans in 1983 to watch a losing Angels squad muddle along to a 60-80 record. Pittsburgh’s own Eastern League club in 1983, the Lynn (MA) Pirates, suffered through a miserable year with barely 30,000 fans for 70 home games.
Pittsburgh’s excitement proved unwarranted.
The 1984 Nashua Pirates finished in 7th place with a 58-82 record. Attendance was still strong at 126,263, which ranked third in the EL. But in 1985, Nashua put another lousy team on the field (66-73) and six prominent players on Nashua’s Major League parent club were named in the Pittsburgh Drug Trials cocaine scandal. Attendance plummeted by 50,000 fans.
One bright spot was the play of future National League All-Star Bobby Bonilla in 1984. The 21-year old outfielder spent the entire summer with Nashua and led the club with 11 homers and 71 RBIs.
The End
The Pirates put a third straight losing squad on the field in 1986. Nashua finished last in the EL with a 62-78 record. In late April, Nashua officials humiliated their parent club by cancelling an exhibition against the Major League Pirates scheduled for May 12, 1986 at Holman Stadium. The team had sold just 150 advance tickets. The Nashua-Pittsburgh exhibition attracted 6,000 fans at Holman just two years earlier.
In December 1986, owner Jerry Mileur and George Como packed up and headed to Harrisburg, Pennsylvania where a brand new ballpark beckoned. The former Nashua Pirates franchise continues to play in the Eastern League today as the Harrisburg Senators, who will be their 32nd season of play in April 2018.
Trivia
Branch B. Rickey, the minor league director for the Pittsburgh Pirates during the Nashua years, was the grandson of Branch Rickey. The elder Rickey integrated both Major League Baseball by signing Jackie Robinson in Brooklyn and the minor leagues by forming the Nashua Dodgers in 1946 and assigning Don Newcombe and Roy Campanella to the team.
Source: The Encyclopedia of Minor League Baseball (1st ed.), Lloyd Johnson & Miles Wolff, 1993
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Links
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