Strange fact about the Toronto Blue Jays: during the expansion team’s 1977 debut season in Major League Baseball, the club made due with only one minor league farm club! Odder still, Toronto placed their lone affiliate in Utica, New York in the Class A New York-Penn League, a short-season circuit made up largely of teenagers still years away from Major League Baseball on the developmental ladder.
The Niagara Falls White Sox were one of several Niagara Falls entries in the New York-Penn League between the years 1970 and 1993. The Sox followed the Niagara Falls Pirates (1970-1979) and preceded the Niagara Falls Rapids (1989-1993). Notable alumni included future Cy Young Award winner Doug Drabek and closer Bobby Thigpen, who established the Major League single-season saves record with the Chicago White Sox in 1990.
The small town of Newark in Western New York hosted New York-Penn League baseball from 1968 until 1987. The town’s first NY-Penn League ball club owed its unusual name to its original Major League parent organization, the Seattle Pilots. The Pilots, a doomed American League expansion club, lasted for only one season in 1969. After the Pilots relocated to Wisconsin in 1970 and became the Milwaukee Brewers, the Co-Pilots retained the now obsolete name for another decade, mostly as a Brewers farm club.
New York-Penn League (1977-2001) Born: 1981 – Re-branded from Utica Blue Jays Moved: 2001 (Aberdeen Ironbirds) First Game: June 19, 1981 (W 5-4 @ Little Falls Mets)
Professional baseball returned to Erie, Pennsylvania after a 14-year absence in the summer of 1981. Beginning in 1976, local businessmen Dave Masi and Joe Castelli worked for five years to secure a franchise for Erie. The club secured New York-Penn League franchise and a Player Development Contract with the St. Louis Cardinals and played at Erie’s Ainsworth Field for seven summers from 1981 through 1987. The Cardinals franchise departed for Hamilton, Ontario in 1988. However, the Erie Orioles immediately replaced the departing Cardinals. Thanks to successor clubs like the Orioles, Sailors and the SeaWolves, Erie has not missed a summer of professional baseball since the Cardinals’ founding in 1981, save for the onset of the the COVID-19 pandemic that cancelled the 2020 season.
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