History
The Midwest League came to Fort Wayne in 1993. The franchise dates back from the league's days as the Illinois State League, starting in 1947 in Mattoon, Illinois. In 1958 the team moved to Keokuk, Iowa, where it spent five seasons; it was based in Wisconsin Rapids, Wisconsin (1963-1983) and Kenosha, Wisconsin (1984-1992) before moving to Fort Wayne. The team was a Minnesota Twins farm team before they affiliated with the Padres in 1999. In 2006, the team was sold to a pair of businessmen from Atlanta who also own the Salem Red Sox.
Prior to the 2009 season, the team was known as the Fort Wayne Wizards. The name TinCaps was chosen following the 2008 season, alluding to John Chapman, better known as the cooking pot-wearing Johnny Appleseed. The Tin Cap refers to a fictionalized depiction of John Chapman wearing one in the 1948 Walt Disney movie "Johnny Appleseed" and is not supported by any historical facts.Chapman lived in Fort Wayne in his final years and is buried in the city.
The team's home park was Memorial Stadium, which opened in 1993; a franchise attendance record of 318,506 was also set that year. As part of the Harrison Square revitalization project, Parkview Field became the official home of the TinCaps at the start of the 2009 season. To coincide with the new ballpark, the team held a contest to determine a new name for the Wizards once that new ballpark opened, and "TinCaps" was the result.
The mascot of the TinCaps is Johnny. Previously, for the Wizards, it was Dinger the Dragon and prior to that, the Wizards were represented by Wayne the Wizard.
The team won the Midwest League 2009 championship by sweeping the Burlington Bees, 3-0. The first two games were played at Parkview Field and the final, decisive game was played in Burlington, Iowa. The team and its staff were honored at Parkview Field in a special victory rally on September 18, 2009. In addition to winning a franchise record-setting 94 games in their new home, fans shattered the previous attendance record for the season, with 378,529 coming through the turnstiles.
The TinCaps also clinched playoff spots in each of the following two seasons.
Read more about this topic: Fort Wayne TinCaps
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“A man will not need to study history to find out what is best for his own culture.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“There has never been in history another such culture as the Western civilization M a culture which has practiced the belief that the physical and social environment of man is subject to rational manipulation and that history is subject to the will and action of man; whereas central to the traditional cultures of the rivals of Western civilization, those of Africa and Asia, is a belief that it is environment that dominates man.”
—Ishmael Reed (b. 1938)
“History, as an entirety, could only exist in the eyes of an observer outside it and outside the world. History only exists, in the final analysis, for God.”
—Albert Camus (1913–1960)