West Haven Whitecaps
In late 1979, the New York Yankees moved their Class AA minor league affiliate from West Haven, Connecticut to Nashville in the Southern League. West Haven lost the Yankees, but it didn’t lose baseball. New owner David R. Goldstein secured rights to West Haven and signed an affiliation with the Oakland Athletics. It must have seemed a dubious exchange for Western Connecticut baseball fans, living just over an hour outside the Bronx. Their four-time Eastern League champion Yankees were gone, replaced by an Oakland farm system mired in the decrepitude of the dying days of the Charlie O. Finley regime.