Mobile Bears

Mobile Bears
1886–1970
(1886–1887, 1889, 1892–1896, 1898–1899, 1903, 1905–1932, 1937–1942, 1944–1961, 1966, 1970)
Mobile, Alabama
Class-level
Previous
  • Class AA (1946–1961, 1966, 1970)
  • Class A1 (1944–1945)
  • Class B (1932, 1937–1942)
  • Class A (1908–1931)
  • Class D (1905–1907)
  • Class C (1899)
  • Class B (1892–1896, 1898)
Minor league affiliations
League Southern League (1966, 1970)
Previous leagues
Major league affiliations
Previous
Minor league titles
Dixie Series titles (2)
  • 1922
  • 1955
League titles (10)
  • 1906
  • 1907
  • 1937
  • 1938
  • 1941
  • 1945
  • 1947
  • 1955
  • 1959
  • 1966
Pennants (3)
  • 1899
  • 1922
  • 1947
Team data
Previous names
  • Mobile White Sox (1970)
  • Mobile A's (1966)
  • Mobile Bears (1944–1961)
  • Mobile Shippers (1937–1942)
  • Mobile Red Warriors (1932)
  • Mobile Marines (1931)
  • Mobile Bears (1918–1930)
  • Mobile Sea Gulls (1905–1917)
  • Mobile Baseball Club (1903)
  • Mobile Blackbirds (1896–1899)
  • Mobile Bluebirds (1894–1895)
  • Mobile Blackbirds (1892–1893)
  • Mobile Baseball Club (1889)
  • Mobile Swamp Angels (1887)
  • Mobile Baseball Club (1886)
Previous parks
  • Hartwell Field (1966, 1970)
  • League Park (1918–1961)

The Mobile Bears were an American minor league baseball team based in Mobile, Alabama. The franchise was a member of the old Southern Association, a high-level circuit that folded after the 1961 season. Mobile joined the SA in 1908 as the Sea Gulls, but changed its name to the Bears in 1918, and the nickname stuck. The club played in the Association until July 1931, when it moved to Knoxville, Tennessee. Almost exactly 13 years later, in July 1944, the Bears returned to Mobile when the Knoxville Smokies franchise shifted back from Tennessee. (A club known as the Mobile Shippers competed in the Class B Southeastern League from 1937–42.)

The Bears then continued in the SA (classified as an Double-A league in 1946) through its final season. During the 1940s and 1950s, the club was a longtime farm system affiliate of the Brooklyn Dodgers, then the Cleveland Indians. The Bears played in 5,000-seat Hartwell Field located on Virginia Street in midtown.

The nickname "Bears" lives on in modified form with the modern Mobile BayBears of the Double-A Southern League, a farm team of the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim.


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