las vegas baseball

Las Vegas most commonly refers to:
Las Vegas, Nevada, a city in the United States Las Vegas metropolitan area for the city's metropolitan area that is a center of entertainment and gambling. Las Vegas Boulevard, also known as Nevada State Route 604 Las Vegas Strip for the location of many of the largest hotel, casino and resort properties in the world. Las Vegas may also refer to:
The Las Vegas Wranglers were a minor league baseball team that played in various leagues in the 1940s and 1950s. They were Las Vegas' first professional team in any sport.
The Wranglers were one of the charter franchises of the Class C Sunset League in 1947. Despite Paul Zaby's league-leading .402 batting average and a historic offensive season from Calvin Felix, the Wranglers (a Boston Braves affiliate) finished just 73-67, third place, and were beaten in the semifinals by Riverside, California. The 21-year-old Felix led the Sunset League in nearly every offensive categories in 1947, including 52 home runs, the second-most ever hit in a pro league by such a young player (Tony Lazzeri, also then 21, hit 60 HR for Salt Lake City in 1925, but his team played 200 games). Felix was sold to the Class AAA Hollywood Stars of the Pacific Coast League after the season, but never made the majors.
Actor Cameron Mitchell pitched one game for the '47 Wranglers; Las Vegas, needing all the pitching help they could get in the offense-minded Sunset League, signed Mitchell after he shut out the Los Angeles Angels (PCL) for four innings in an exhibition game. But the actor was shelled, allowing eleven runs in less than an inning to the Ontario, California Orioles. [1]
Las Vegas continued to be one of the circuit's top teams the next three years. In 1948, the Wranglers moved up to second place and made to the championship series before losing to Reno. However, the team drew only around 600 fans per game (Las Vegas' population was less than 10,000 then) and faced a $15,000 deficit at season's end, partially because they were no longer affiliatd with the Braves. In 1949, however, the Wranglers blew the league away with a 88-38 record and easily claimed the pennant, with attendance climbing to over 1,000 per contest. (Due to budget cuts, there were no playoffs that year, and the '49 Wranglers remain Las Vegas' only pro sports championship). After a third-place finish in 1950, the top teams in the Sunset League merged with the Arizona-Mexico League to form the new Southwest International League in 1951.
Declining attendance vexed minor-league ball throughout the country in the early 1950s, and Las Vegas was no exception: despite two more winning seasons in 1951-52, the Wranglers (along with the rest of the SWIL) died after the 1952 season.
Baseball returned to Las Vegas in 1957, but the new team (also called the Wranglers) finished fourth in the Arizona-Mexico League, then folded. On May 26, 1958, however, the San Jose Pirates of the California League shifted operations to Las Vegas, renaming themselves (once again) the Wranglers. But the team finished a poor seventh and disbanded after the season when the Cal League contracted from eight teams to six. Professional baseball would not return to Las Vegas until the Las Vegas Stars joined the Pacific Coast League in 1983.
Minor league baseball is a hierarchy of professional baseball leagues in North America that compete at levels below that of Major League Baseball. All the minor leagues are operated as independent businesses, and many are members of Minor League Baseball, an umbrella organization for leagues that have agreements to operate as affiliates of Major League Baseball. Several leagues, known as independent leagues, do not have any links whatsoever to Major League Baseball, and thus are not members of Minor League Baseball (the organization).
Each league affiliated with Minor League Baseball is composed of teams that generally are independently owned and operated, but always, with the exception of the Mexican League, directly "affiliated" with (and occasionally named after) one major-league team; some affiliations stay relatively constant, while others change from year to year. For example, the Omaha Royals (briefly renamed the Omaha Golden Spikes from 1999-2001, but changed back to Royals in 2002) have been the Class AAA affiliate of the Kansas City Royals since the Royals joined the American League in 1969, but the Columbus Clippers changed affiliations for the 2007 season from the New York Yankees to the Washington Nationals. However, a small number of minor league teams are directly owned by their major-league parent, such as the Springfield Cardinals, owned by the St. Louis Cardinals, and all of the Atlanta Braves' affiliates except for the Myrtle Beach Pelicans; this effectively locks these teams down during affiliation shuffles.
The purpose of the system is to develop players available to play in the major leagues on demand.
Today, 20 minor baseball leagues operate with 246 member clubs in large, medium, and small towns, as well as the suburbs of major cities, across the United States and Canada.
Minor league baseball also goes by the nicknames the "farm system," "farm club," or "farm team(s)," because of a joke passed around by major league players in the 1930s when St. Louis Cardinals general manager Branch Rickey formalized the system, and teams in small towns were "growing players down on the farm like corn."
Baseball evolved in the mid-to-late 19th century from an amateur pastime into an organized professional sport.
Fully and openly professional baseball teams arose in 1869. The earliest professional association, the National Association of 1871 to 1875, comprised all fully professional teams. This proved unworkable. There was no way to ensure competitive balance, and financially unsound clubs often failed midseason. This problem was solved in 1876 with the formation of the National League, with a limited membership which excluded less competitive and financially weaker teams.
Professional clubs outside the National League responded by forming regional associations of their own. There was a series of ad hoc groupings, such as the New England Association of 1877 and the Eastern Championship Association of 1881. These were loose groups of independent clubs which agreed to play a series of games for a championship pennant.
The first minor league is traditionally considered to be the Northwest League of 1883 to 1884. Unlike the earlier minor associations, it was conceived as a permanent organization. It also, along with the National League and the American Association, was a party to the National Agreement of 1883. Included in this was the agreement to respect the reserve lists of clubs in each league. Teams in the National League and the American Association could only reserve players who had been paid at least $1000. Northwest League teams could reserve players paid merely $750. This implicitly established the division into major and minor leagues.
Over the next two decades many more minor leagues signed various versions of the National Agreement. Eventually the minor league joined together to negotiate jointly.
In the late 1890s, the Western League run by the fiery Ban Johnson decided to challenge the National League's position. In 1900, he changed the name of the league to the American League and vowed to make deals to sign contracts with players who were dissatisfied with the pay and terms of their deals with the National League. This led to a nasty turf war that heated up in 1901 enough to concern Patrick T. Powers, president of the Eastern League, and many other minor league owners.
They worried about the conflict spilling over into their operations. Representatives met at the Leland Hotel in Chicago on September 5, 1901. In response to the National-American battle, they agreed to form the National Association of Professional Baseball Leagues, called the NABPL, or "NA" for short. (The "NA" uses the name Minor League Baseball today.) Powers was made the first president of the NABPL, whose offices were established in Auburn, New York.
The purpose of the NA at the time was to maintain the independence of the leagues involved. Several did not sign the agreement, and continued to work independently.
In 1903 the dog fight between the American and National Leagues ended in the National Agreement of 1903. The NABPL became involved in the later stages of the negotiations to develop rules for the acquisition of players from their leagues by the National and the American.
The NA was signed because players were being pilfered from clubs in other leagues with little or no compensation to the teams. The 1903 agreement ensured that teams would be compensated for the players that they had taken the time and effort to scout and develop.
No NA team was required to sell their players, although most did because the cash became an important source of revenue for most teams.
These leagues were still fiercely independent, and the term "minor" was seldom used in reference to them, save by the major-market sports writers. News did not travel far in the days before heavy television and radio, so, while the leagues often bristled at the major market writers descriptions, their viewpoint of the situation in that day was that they were independent sports businesses, no more and no less.
Many baseball writers of that time regarded the greatest of the leagues in the NA, such as Buzz Arlett, Jigger Statz, Ike Boone, Buddy Ryan, Earl Rapp and Frank Shellenback, as equal to some major league stars.
In 1922 the United States Supreme Court decision which grants baseball a special immunity from antitrust laws had a major effect on the minor leagues. The special immunity meant that the American and National leagues could dictate terms under which every independent league did business.
By 1925 major league baseball crammed down a flat-fee purchase of $5,000 for the contract of any player from an NA league team. This power was leveled primarily at the Baltimore Orioles, then a Triple-A team that had dominated the minors with stars.
Leagues in the NA would not be truly called "minor" until Branch Rickey developed the first modern "farm system" in the 1930s. The Commissioner of Baseball, Kenesaw Mountain Landis fought Rickey's scheme, but ultimately the Great Depression drove teams to establish systems like Rickey's to ensure a steady supply of players, because many NA and independent teams could not afford to keep their doors open without the patronage of major league baseball.
The leagues of the NA became subordinate to the major leagues, the first "minor" leagues. Other than the Pacific Coast League, which under its president Pants Rowland tried to become a third major league in the Western states, the other leagues maintained autonomy in name, with total dependence upon the American and National league in economic and political fact.