Before the San Diego Padres of Major League Baseball (MLB), “America’s Finest City” was home to the San Diego Padres of the Pacific Coast League. When the city was granted an MLB franchise, the team moved to Eugene, Oregon but left the name behind for the new club.
The San Francisco Seals baseball team was a charter member of the Pacific Coast League starting with that loop’s formation in 1902. The Seals stayed in San Francisco through the 1957, when the announcement of the New York Giants relocation forced the team to move to Phoenix.
The Oklahoma RedHawks (later the Oklahoma City RedHawks from 2009 to 2014) were a Class AAA farm club of the Texas Rangers and Houston Astros from 1998 through 2014. Although the RedHawks identity has now passed into history after seventeen seasons, the franchise itself is historic and remains a strong entry in the Pacific Coast League (PCL) to this day. During the RedHawks era, Oklahoma City produced future Major League stars such as George Springer, Michael Young, R.A. Dickey and J.D. Martinez among others.
The Oilers were Tulsa, Oklahoma’s minor league baseball team for most of the 20th century. The team competed in various league at different levels of competition. But at their competitive zenith, the Oilers spent eleven seasons from 1966 until 1976 serving as the top farm club of the National League’s St. Louis Cardinals. During this era, the Oilers won three Class AAA playoff championships and supplied a steady stream of future Major League stars.
Today we look at the original Portland Beavers baseball team of 1906-1972, the first and most enduring of three clubs to play under the Bevos name in the storied Pacific Coast League. When the team finally moved away to Spokane, Washington in early 1973, Portland became the last of the original six PCL cities of 1903 to lose its minor league baseball franchise. The second version of the Beavers would return to Portland’s Civic Stadium in 1978.
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