Category: North Atlantic League

1996 Altoona Rail Kings Baseball Scorecard from the North Atlantic League

Altoona Rail Kings

April 16, 2023

The Altoona Rail Kings were a low-level professional baseball team that began play in 1996, amidst the “independent” baseball boom that saw non-Major League affiliated leagues and teams sprout up all across the United States. The team played two summers at Veterans Field in 1996 and 1997 before getting displaced by the impending arrival of a Pittsburgh Pirates Class AAA farm club, the Altoona Curve, set to begin play in 1998. The Rail Kings moved away to Huntington, West Virginia in 1998 and went out of business soon thereafter.

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2000 Catskill Cougars Baseball Program from the Northern League

Catskill Cougars

December 8, 2019

The Catskill Cougars were an on-again, off-again minor league baseball team that floated through several independent (non-Major League affiliated) pro baseball leagues during the late 1990’s. The Cougars played at Baxter Stadium in the tiny hamlet of Mountain Dale, New York (pop. 869). They opened for business in 1996, following on the heels of the short-lived Sullivan Mountain Lions (1995), who left town a few months earlier after just one summer of play.

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1997 Massachusetts Mad Dogs Baseball Program from the Northeast League

Massachusetts Mad Dogs

February 9, 2013

The Massachusetts Mad Dogs were an independent pro baseball outfit that played at Fraser Field, a Depression-era ballpark in Lynn from 1996 through 1999. Former Red Sox star George “Boomer” Scott managed the ball club and ex-Sox pitcher Dennis “Oil Can” Boyd briefly pitched for the Dogs during the 1997 season. The decrepit condition of Fraser Field hinderedthe clubs final seasons, with the park’s unique clamshell roof condemned and propped up by wooden beams in 1998. The franchise left Lynn and went on hiaturs in 2000, later re-surfacing in Pittsfield, Mass in 2002.

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