Former Minor League Baseball team in Buffalo, New York from 1886?1970
The
Buffalo Bisons
were a professional
Triple-A
minor league
baseball
team based in
Buffalo, New York
that was founded in 1886 and last played in the
International League
from 1912 to 1970.
Over the course of their existence, the Bisons won the
Junior World Series
three times (1904, 1906 and 1961). They also won ten league championships, including the inaugural
Governors' Cup
in 1933. The 1927 Bisons were recognized as one of the
100 greatest minor league teams of all time
.
[1]
The team was last affiliated with the
Montreal Expos
of
Major League Baseball
and played its home games at
War Memorial Stadium
. The franchise moved to
Winnipeg, Manitoba
in the middle of the 1970 season to become the
Winnipeg Whips
.
History
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]
Organized baseball in Buffalo had existed since at least 1859, when the Niagara baseball club of the
National Association of Base Ball Players
played its first season. The first professional team to play in Buffalo began in 1877 as a member of the
League Alliance
;
[2]
this team was invited to become a
major league
club, the
Buffalo Bisons
of the
National League
, and played from 1879 to 1885. In 1886, the Bisons moved into
minor league baseball
as members of the original
International League
, then known as the Eastern League. (An "outlaw" team also known as the
Buffalo Bisons
played in the
Players' League
, an upstart third major league, in 1890, but that team is not considered part of the Bisons history.) This team joined the
Western League
in 1899, and was within weeks of becoming a
major league team
when the Western League announced it was becoming a major league and changing its name to the
American League
in 1900. However, by the start of the 1901 season, Buffalo had been bumped from the league in favor of the
Boston Americans
; the Bisons returned to the minors and the Eastern League that year.
This franchise continued in the Eastern/International League through June 1970, when it transferred to
Winnipeg, Manitoba
as the
Winnipeg Whips
, due to poor attendance, stadium woes, the
Montreal Expos
affiliating with the franchise, and an increasingly saturated-Buffalo sports market that saw the
Buffalo Sabres
of the
NHL
and
Buffalo Braves
of the
NBA
established the same year. (The team had narrowly avoided relocation in 1955, but an idea of selling common stock in the team by John Stiglmeir prevented the team from leaving; it nonetheless was forced to move into a football venue,
Buffalo War Memorial Stadium
, a few years later, after its existing ballpark closed.) In 1969,
Hector Lopez
became the first black
manager
at the
Triple-A
level while managing Buffalo?six years before
Frank Robinson
became the first black manager in
Major League Baseball
.
[3]
After stops in Winnipeg and
Hampton, Virginia
, the team was suspended after the 1973 season to make way for the
Memphis Blues
, who were moving up from
Double-A
only to move to Charleston as the reborn
Charleston Charlies
, before picking up stakes again to become the
Maine Guides
/Phillies. The team moved one more time in 1989, becoming the Scranton-Wilkes/Barre Red Barons - today, the
RailRiders
.
Robert E. Rich Jr.
in 1979 launched the current
Buffalo Bisons
franchise, returning
professional baseball
to Buffalo.
National Baseball Hall of Fame members
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]
References
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]