Tag: One-Year Wonders

1961 Ardmore Rosebuds Program

Ardmore Rosebuds

September 14, 2021

The small Oklahoma city of Ardmore (pop. 20,184 in the 1960 census) hosted Class D ball in the Sooner State League during the post-WW II minor league baseball boom, but the Ardmore Cardinals folded along with the rest of the Sooner State League following the 1957 season. The city lucked into a Class AA ball club in the spring of 1961 when Derrest Williams, owner of the Texas League’s Victoria Rosebuds, grew weary of losing $500 per night playing to puny crowds in that Texas city. 43 games into the season, Williams gained approval from his fellow league owners to pull up stakes and move to Ardmore’s 2,800-seat Cardinal Park.

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Jacksonville Jets Continental Basketball Association

Jacksonville Jets

July 5, 2021

The short-lived Jacksonville Jets had played all of ten days in their new home city before team owner Ted Stepien began threatening to move his nomadic Continental Basketball Association (CBA) franchise. Again.

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Washington Caps American Basketball Association

Washington Caps

May 11, 2021

American Basketball Association (1969-1970) Born: August 20, 1969 – The Oakland Oaks relocate to Washington, DC Moved: July 30, 1970 (Virginia Squires) First Game: October 18, 1969

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Bend Timber Hawks Northwest League

Bend Timber Hawks

May 10, 2021

The Bend Timber Hawks were, ever so briefly, a Central Oregon-based farm club of the Oakland Athletics. The franchise joined the Northwest League in 1978 as part of an expansion that saw the short-season Class A circuit expand from six to eight teams that summer. Following the 1978 season, owner Doug Emmans moved the franchise to Medford, Oregon but the Northwest League swiftly put a new team into Bend, the Central Oregon Phillies, for the 1979 campaign.

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Rochester Aces Northern League Baseball

Rochester Aces

April 19, 2021

We’re talking Rochester, Minnesota today, not New York. The Rochester Aces were one of six original franchises that launched independent baseball’s Northern League during the summer of 1993. Three of these clubs – the St. Paul Saints (now the triple-A affiliate of the Minnesota Twins), the Sioux City Explorers and the Sioux Falls Canaries – are still around today, nearly three decades later. But the Aces saw the weakest community response of the original six and lasted just a single season in Minnesota’s third-largest city.

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