PONY League

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The Pennsylvania-Ontario-New York League, also known as the PONY League, was a Class D minor league baseball circuit that played from 1939 through 1956. The forerunner of the modern Class A New York - Penn League, the PONY served as the first professional baseball address of many future Major League Baseball players. Founded the year that Canada (as well as the rest of the British Empire) entered World War II, it was one of only two Class D leagues (along with the Appalachian) to remain active during the entire 1939-45 wartime period.

In its maiden season, the PONY League included clubs in Bradford, Pennsylvania; Hamilton, Ontario; and Batavia, Jamestown, Niagara Falls and Olean, all in New York. Olean, a Brooklyn Dodgers farm club, won the pennant.

It addition to those clubs listed above, the PONY League also had franchises in: Erie, Pennsylvania; London, Ontario; and Corning, Hornell, Lockport and Wellsville, New York.

One year after the Hamilton franchise, a longtime St. Louis Cardinals affiliate, disbanded in May 1956, the league changed to its current identity, which it has retained despite the re-entry of several franchises based in Ontario during the 1980s.