Quad City Angels (1985-1991)

Midwest League (1962-1978)

Background

The second edition of the Quad City Angels minor league baseball team played in the Illinois-Iowa border community from 1985 to 1991. The latter day Angels were the same Midwest League franchise as the original Q-C Angels that played 17 seasons from 1962 until 1978. But from 1979 to 1984 the club played as the Quad City Cubs under a Player Development Contract with the National League’s Chicago Cubs.  (FunWhileItLasted has a separate entry for the original Q-C Angels here).

During Quad City’s disastrous 1987 season, the Angels went 47-91 and set an all-time Midwest League record for losses in a season. Only two players from that club, third baseman Chris Cron and pitcher Roberto Hernandez, ever made it to the Major Leagues.

The Angels rebounded a few summers later to capture the 1990 Midwest League championship, Quad City’s first league title since the Q-C Cubs won in 1979.

Notables

Both versions of the Angels served as a Class A farm team of the American League’s California Angels, as the Major League club was then known. Top future Major Leaguers that worked their way up the ladder at John O’Donnell Stadium during the second Angels era included:

• Outfielder Dante Bichette (Q-C ’85)
• Relief pitcher Bryan Harvey (Q-C ’85)
• Pitcher Chuck Finley (Q-C ’86)
• Pitcher Roberto Hernandez (Q-C ’87-’88
• Outfielder Jim Edmonds (Q-C ’89)
• Infielder Damion Easley (Q-C ’90)
• Outfielder Garret Anderson (Q-C ’91)

Garrett Anderson and Chuck Finley are both members of the Los Angeles Angels Hall of Fame. Jim Edmonds is a member of the St. Louis Cardinals Hall of Fame.

Anderson and Edmonds were the last active Q-C Angels players in professional baseball, both finishing their Major League careers during the 2010 season.

1990 Midwest League Champions

The highlight of the 1985-1991 Q-C Angels era was the club’s run to the Midwest League crown during the summer of 1990. Field Manager Don Long‘s team got hot during the season’s second half and upset the league’s best team in the regular season, the Cedar Rapids Reds, in the opening round of the playoffs.

In the championship series, the Angels faced the defending champion South Bend White Sox. It was a chippy series that featured a bench-clearing fracas in South Bend in Game 2 and five more hit batsman in Game 3 back in Davenport. The teams split the opening two games in Indiana. Back at John O’Donnell Stadium, the Angels battled back from a 5-0 deficit in Game 3 with pull out a dramatic victory on a bases loaded walk in the bottom of the 9th inning.

Game 4 gave the Angels the opportunity to close out the best-of-five series on their home field. Late game heroics were again the story of the day. Trailing 2-1 in the bottom of the ninth, pinch hitter Jeff Gay drove in the tying run on a sac fly. In the bottom of the 13th, Quad City third baseman Jim Alyward doubled home shortstop and future Major League All-Star Damion Easley to clinch the series.

At the gate, the Angels drew 204,889 fans to John O’Donnell Park in 1990, marking the first time a Quad City minor league club surpassed the 200,000 fan mark in a season.

Off The Field

Dating back to the early 1960’s, the Quad Cities’ Midwest League franchise was operated by community stockholders through the Quad City Baseball Fans Association (QCBFA). By the mid-1980’s, interest in the club was fading. During the 1986 season, Angels’ attendance fell 25% and the team lost an estimated $80,000, forcing the QCBFA to sell. Harry Semrow, a Chicago-area politician, purchased the team, reportedly for $350,000.

The 1987 season turned into an unmitigated disaster. The team was historically awful on the field, re-writing the Midwest League record book with a 91-loss season.  Meanwhile, 71-year old Harry Semrow had no experience as a professional baseball operator and was suffering from cancer that would soon take his life. Attendance cratered nearly 50% from the previous summer’s already glum turnstile count.

Harry Semrow sold the team to Rick Holtzman, a  hard-charging 37-year old Chicago developer and Vietnam veteran, in September 1986. Semrow would pass away two months later in November. Holtzman was in the early stages of building a small empire of Minor League Baseball clubs in 1987. Just a few months earlier, Holtzman purchased another California Angels farm club, the Midland Angels of the Class AA Texas League.

Under Holtzman’s ownership, John O’Donnell Stadium received a major face lift ahead of the 1989 season and attendance rapidly recovered. In 1991, the final season that Quad Cities played under the “Angels” name, the team led all Midwest League cities with annual attendance of 242,322 fans.

Ahead of the 1992 season, Holtzman and his front office team re-branded the team as the Quad City River Bandits. The River Bandits remained a California Angels farm club for one more season before switching to the Houston Astros in 1993. The franchise remains in the Midwest League today as the (slightly) re-named Quad Cities River Bandits and ownership has now changed hands a couple of times since the Holtzman era.

Quad City Angels Shop

In Memoriam

Owner Harry Semrow (Q-C ’87) died of cancer in November 1987. Chicago Tribune obituary.

Links

Midwest League Media Guides

Midwest League Programs

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