The Pioneers were a Pocatello, Idaho entry in the Rookie-level Pioneer League in 1990 and 1991. Owing to the lack of a Major League Player Development Contract, the Pioneers were dreadful last-place finishers in both of their Pioneer League campaigns. Their .214 winning percentage in 1990 was the worst in all of Organized Baseball that summer.
The Buffalo Storm were a professional soccer club that played in the United Soccer League during the summer of 1984. The team was composed largely of offseason players from the far more popular Buffalo Stallions indoor soccer team. The Storm were hampered by numerous problems including the lack of lights for night time play at All-High Stadium and folded after only one season of play.
For a remarkable three-year period between 2004 and 2006 this amateur women’s soccer club that played in a 1,500-seat community college field in the Trenton suburbs managed to sign up a jaw-dropping roster of top players from all over the world. The Wildcats ran roughshod over the USL’s W-League during these years with only one North American women’s club – the Vancouver Whitecaps – able to stay on the field with them.
The Blackhawks were a top-flight Bay Area pro soccer club during the early 1990s, appearing in three straight league title games between 1989 and 1991 and winning the championship of the American Professional Soccer League in 1991. The ‘Hawks featured a number of top American players of the era, including Eric Wynalda, Marcelo Balboa, John Doyle, Dominic Kinnear and Troy Dayak.
The California Emperors were a One-Year Wonder pro soccer club that at Ted Runner Stadium on the University of Redlands campus in 1990. After a dreadful 0-6 start, the Emperors found their form and won their division with a record of 8 wins, 7 losses and 5 shootout decisions. The Emperors fell to the Los Angeles Heat in a single-leg playoff at the end of August. This proved to be the club’s final match. The APSL’s Western Conference disintegrated during the following winter, shedding eight of its eleven clubs, including the Emperors.
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