The Newark Orioles were a short-season Class A farm club of the Baltimore Orioles during the mid-1980’s. The club played in the tiny village of Newark, New York (pop. 10,000), not the urban metropolis of Newark, New Jersey. The community had a previous entry in the New York-Penn League, the Co-Pilots, that operated from 1968 until 1979.
The San Jose Expos were a Class A farm club of the Montreal Expos for a single summer in 1982. Peter “Woody” Kern, a 34-year old nursing home operator from Ohio, paid $65,000 for the California League’s San Jose Missions club in late 1981, changing the name when the Expos agreed to a Player Development Contract that winter.
The tiny upstate New York city of Little Falls (pop. 6,156 in 1980) hosted the New York Mets short-season Class A farm club from 1977 until 1988. In 1984, the Little Falls Mets won their own New York-Penn League crown, defeating the Newark Orioles in a husband-versus-wife championship series. Peter “Woody” Kern owned the Little Falls Mets while his wife Susan was the nominal owner of the Newark club.
The Tampa Bay Storm were arguably the greatest franchise in the 30-year history of the Arena Football League(s). The Storm played for 26 seasons and won 5 Arena Bowl titles. For many years the team was among the most popular box office attractions in the AFL. The Storm’s fierce “War on I-4” rivalry with the Orlando Predators lasted a quarter century from 1991 until 2016 and drew large crowds in both cities.
The Fort Worth Cavalry were a failed Arena Football League franchise now residing in our One-Year Wonders file. After one star-crossed season in Fort Worth, the team crossed the border into Mexico just in time for that country’s late 1994 financial meltdown and vanished without a trace.
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