Stockton Ports

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Stockton Ports
Stockton Ports
League California League
Division North
Year founded 1941
Major League affiliation Oakland Athletics
Home ballpark Banner Island Ballpark
Previous home ballparks Billy Hebert Field
City Stockton, California
Current uniform colors Red, White, and Blue
Previous uniform colors
Logo design A block "S".
Division titles
League titles (10): 1946, 1947, 1963, 1965, 1969, 1980, 1986, 1990, 1992 and 2002
Manager Darren Bush
Owner Tom Volpe

The Stockton Ports are a baseball team in Stockton, California, USA. The Ports play in the Northern Division of the Class A California League and is a minor league affiliate of the Oakland Athletics. Their home field is the Banner Island Ballpark which seats over 5,000 people and opened in 2005.

Contents

[edit] History

Baseball first came to Stockton in the 1860's. By the 1880's Stockton began to field a team in an earlier incarnation of the California League. In 1888 the Stockton team won the California League pennant with a record of 41-12. That same team also gained a bit of notoriety as a possible inspiration of Casey at the Bat, a famous baseball poem by Ernest Thayer. Thayer was a journalist for the San Francisco Examiner at the time and the games were hosted in a ballpark on Banner Island, a place once known as Mudville.

The Stockton Flyers were established as a charter member of the California League in 1941. The league suspended operations in June, 1942 due to World War II. The Flyers were rechristened as the Stockton Ports to recognize Stockton's status as an inland port city when the league resumed operations in 1946. That season, the Ports went on to win their first California League pennant.

In 1947, the Ports won the California League pennant again without a major league affiliation (they had a limited working agreement with the PCL Oakland Oaks). After going 24-18 playing through June 4, they went on a 26-game winning streak and took first place, never to relinquish again in that season. The win streak is one of the longest in professional baseball and is still a California League record. The Ports finished that season with a record of 95-45 and sixteen games ahead of the two teams tied for second place. Years later, baseball historians Bill Weiss and Marshall Wright rated the 1947 Ports as one of the one hundred best Minor League teams of all time, ranked at #98.

Owned by Stockton local Carl W. Thompson, Sr. 1971-1973, the Ports would disband after the 1972 season, coming back as an affiliate of the Seattle Mariners in 1978. In an homage to the team in the Ernest Thayer poem the Ports were renamed as the Mudville Nine in 2000 and 2001, the returned to the Ports name in 2002. In 2002 the Ports won their most recent California League Championship, bringing their total to ten. With ten league titles, the Ports have the most among the league's active franchises, with the defunct Reno franchise having won eleven.

In 2005 the Ports became an affiliate of the Oakland Athletics and began play at the Banner Island Ballpark.

[edit] Major League Affiliations

[edit] Notable Ports Alumni

[edit] External links


Oakland Athletics Franchise
AAA AA A Rookie
Sacramento River Cats Midland RockHounds
 Stockton Ports
Kane County Cougars
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California League
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