Baseball in Oneonta
Oneonta's first pro baseball team came to town on August 7, 1924, when the Utica Utes of the old New York-Pennsylvania League (not the current league with this name) moved there. The newly-renamed Indians folded at the end of the season. In 1940, the Cornwall, Ontario club in the old Canadian-American League (again, not to be confused with the current circuit with this name) moved to Oneonta. The Oneonta Indians (who, despite the name, were an affiliate of the Boston Red Sox) won back-to-back championships in 1941-42 before the loop shut down for three years due to World War II. After the war, the renamed Oneonta Red Sox took two more titles, in 1948 and in the league's final season of 1951.
In 1966, the Red Sox shifted their franchise in the (current) New York - Penn League from Wellsville, New York to Oneonta. In 1967, Sam Nader purchased the team and renamed them the Oneonta Yankees, or O-Yanks, an affiliation they would have for three decades. Stocked with future New York Yankees stars, the O-Yanks won NYPL titles in 1968, 1969, 1971, 1974, 1977, 1979, 1980, 1981, 1985, 1988 and 1990. Since 1991, the franchise has participated in the annual New York-Penn League Game in Cooperstown, NY. This is an official New York-Penn League game played at Doubleday Field in conjunction with the Hall of Fame's Induction Weekend festivities. In 1999, the Yankees moved their affiliation to the Staten Island Yankees, so the Detroit Tigers organization moved in.
Notable Oneonta Yankees alumni include Don Mattingly (1979), Bernie Williams (1987) and Jorge Posada (1991). NFL hall-of-fame quarterback John Elway batted .318 over 45 games in 1982 for the Oneonta Yankees in his brief professional baseball career.
Read more about this topic: Oneonta Tigers
Famous quotes containing the word baseball:
“How, in one short century, has this ersatz sport so strangled the consciousness of the country in the grip of its flabby tentacles that the mention of women’s baseball gets no reaction other than blank amazement?”
—Darlene Mehrer, As quoted in Women in Baseball. Ch. 6, by Gai Ingham Berlage (1994)