Watertown Indians
February 15, 2021
The Watertown Indians franchise represented a second chance at Minor League Baseball for the small (pop. 29,000) upstate New York community of Watertown during the winter of the 1988-89. Early that year the city lost its previous New York-Penn League franchise, the Watertown Pirates, when that club’s absentee owners moved the team to Welland, Ontario. A group of local investors successfully appealed to New York-Penn League officials for a new franchise when the league expanded from 12 to 14 clubs that winter. The Indians stayed for ten summers, winning a New York-Penn League title in 1995, before moving to Staten Island in 1999.
