Tombstone
Born: February 27, 1956 – Missoula replaces the failed Butte Copper Sox franchise in the Pioneer League1ASSOCIATED PRESS. “Missoula Now Member of Pioneer League”. The Missoulian (Missoula, MT). February 28, 1956
Folded: November 5, 19602Kenyon, Quane. “Twin Falls Returns To Pioneer League; Giants Seek Tie-Up”. The Idaho State Journal (Pocatello, ID). November 6, 1960
First Game: May 1, 1956 (L 10-4 vs. Magic City Cowboys)
Last Game: September 6, 1960 (W 6-2 exhibition contest vs. Bonner Lumberjacks)
Pioneer League Champions: None
Stadium
Campbell Park
Ownership & Affiliation
Owners: Missoula Baseball Club, Inc. (Nick Mariana, et al.)
Major League Affiliations:
- 1956: Co-op
- 1957-1959: Washington Senators
- 1960: Cincinnati Reds
Attendance
Background
Pro baseball returned to the Western Montana community of Missoula in hurried, chaotic fashion late in the winter of 1956. The previous fall, the Cincinnati Redlegs had moved their Class C Pioneer League farm club from Ogden, Utah to Butte, Montana where Mining City civic leaders promised a new $200,000 ballpark. The team was to be known as the Butte Copper Sox. But Copper Sox organized shocked Pioneer League officials by dropping from the league entirely in early February 1956, citing projected cost over-runs on the ballpark.
Left to scramble for an eighth team to complete the 1956 schedule, the Pioneer League turned to Missoula where a civic group led by Nick Mariana swiftly organized to fill the vacancy left by Butte. Mariana was a Missoula businessman by this point, but had previously served a long stint as General Manager of another Montana Pioneer League club, the Great Falls Electrics.
While at Great Falls, Mariana famously shot 16mm footage of two UFO’s flying over that city’s minor league baseball diamond on August 15th, 1950. Footage of the “Mariana Incident” represents some of the earliest video footage ever taken of UFO’s and has been debated and analyzed by researchers, believers and skeptics for decades.
That’s more of a great falls story, but I couldn’t resist. SO ANYWAY … Mariana successfully raised enough stockholders to bring the former Butte Copper Sox club to Missoula in time to open the 1956 season. The team’s local ownership would eventually swell to include “1,687 individuals connected with 71 business firms, 24 corporations, two unions, two service clubs and two chambers of commerce”.31958 Missoula Timberjacks Program
Notable Names
Only three Timberjacks players ultimate advanced to spend full seasons in the Major Leagues. This included future Hall-of-Fame pitcher Jim Kaat (Missoula ’58), outfielder Sandy Valdespino (Missoula ’58) and utility man Cesar Tovar (Missoula ’60).
Kaat won 16 games for the Timberjacks in 1958 as a 19-year old teenager. He would go on to a remarkable 25-year Major League career than spanned four decades between 1959 and 1983. Kaat won 283 Major League games and earned a World Series championship with the St. Louis Cardinals in 1982. He was inducted into the National Baseball Hall of Fame in 2022.
Cesar Tovar is a member of the Minnesota Twins Hall of Fame (as is Jim Kaat).
Other notable Timberjacks included catcher/manager Jack McKeon, infielder Minnie Mendoza and pitcher Charley Pride.
McKeon served as Missoula’s youthful player/manager for three seasons from 1956 through 1958. McKeon never made the Majors as a player but went on to a long career and a manager and executive, winning over 1,000 Major League games. He managed the 2003 Florida Marlins to the World Series championship.
After sixteen (!) seasons in the minors, Minnie Mendoza won a spot on the Minnesota Twins opening day roster in 1970 and made his Major League debut at the age of 36. He would stay just 16 games before returning to the minors to finish out his career.
Charley Pride pitched in three games for Missoula during the Timberjacks final season in 1960. These were Pride’s final appearances in a baseball career short-circuited by arm problems. He would soon devote his full attention to country music where he became the genre’s biggest African-American star of the 1960’s, 70’s and 80’s.
Felled
At the end of the 1950’s, attendance plunged across the Pioneer League. During the Timberjacks’ debut season in 1956, the Salt Lake City Bees led the eight-team circuit with 103,307 fans through the turnstiles. But by 1960, the Pioneer League was down to only six clubs. And the Billings Mustangs led the loop in attendance in 1960 with just 39,123 fans, a figure that would have ranked dead last in the league just four years earlier. Missoula saw its own attendance fall from a peak of 63,138 in 1958 to just 25,935 the following summer.
At the end of 1960 season, long-time Timberjacks president Nick Mariana announced that the debt-ridden club could not survive without a full Major League working agreement. (The Cincinnati Reds had provided only a limited agreement support for the 1960 season). But Major League clubs had let it be known that they were dissatisfied with Campbell Park’s lighting and lack of a visitor’s dressing room.4NO BYLINE. “Pioneer League Has Reached End Of Line In Missoula”. The Missoulian (Missoula, MT). October 22, 1960 Missoula officially dropped out the league days later.
After a 39-year absence, pro baseball and Pioneer League returned to Missoula in 1999 with the arrival of the Missoula Osprey club. That franchise still exists today, now playing as the Missoula Paddleheads following a 2019 re-brand.
Missoula Timberjacks Shop
In Memoriam
Infielder/outfielder Cesar Tovar (Timberjacks ’60) died of pancreatic cancer at age 54 on July 14th, 1994. Tovar, who played in the Majors from 1965 through 1976, was inducted posthumously into both the Venezuelan Baseball Hall of Fame (2003) and the Minnesota Twins Hall of Fame (2022). New York Times obituary.
Links
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